We watch and get watched...

I hope the moderators don't take me to task (too badly) for posting 2 images in one post. These aren't great photos, just images that are interesting from a photographer perspective. How often do we take photos from a distance with some of the longer lenses we own and think that perhaps we are hidden and not noticed by our subjects? Well, these two images I am posting blow that sense of security right out of the water.

In this first shot I was on the bank of the Willamette River near where I live and standing within a grove of trees with lots of shrubbery around me. I was going for birds but decided to take some shots of the boaters out on the river that day. I guess I wasn't as hidden as I thought...

In this second image I was sitting in my backyard and an ultralight (?? or what?) flew overhead and was perhaps a 150 feet in the air. Hmm, I think he saw me with the 300/4 on my 20D...

Geoff,
Looks like your having fun with that lens. Maybe at that distance they think you are pointing something other than a lens at them. Maybe more like a bazooka.

Hey Erik - I have lots of fun with that 300/4 but I'm more than ready to have fun with a 500 or 600 instead. I'm just not willing to put out the bucks for either of those lenses!

She is probably thinking "Oh great now my husband will really know I wasn't out shopping with Grace".

Oh, now Jim, the direction your mind is working... You don't really think she is doing that, do you?

Geoff,
No I don't. It would be fun to see if people could place a caption to the images. She looks as thrilled as a 2x4. It was either that or she is angry the male in the boat caught the largest fish so far.