Silverback Gorilla

This fella was guarding his remote island. Notice his escape vehicle in the background. 

Red Tail Hawk

Immature Red Tail Hawk. This is a wild hawk captured only a couple weeks before this pictures was taken. The bird is currently in training to become a hunter. It will hunt for one season and let go. Fantastic to see such a magnificent bird up close. 

Another Pelican snarled up in fishing lines. This pelican was unable to move since its legs were tangled up in a fishing line. I did not see if there was a hook stuck in him. I called the local animal rescue, they were unable to pick up the bird. They would help if we brought the bird in. I did not have the equipment or car or help to bring him in. A couple friends of mine took upon themselves to rescue the bird the next day. They caught him and cut the lines from his feet and he was able to fly away and probably eat some. They also found a second Pelican with "something" stuck in his beak. They were able to dislodge it and let him go. Thanks to those volunteers that came to the Pelicans rescue.

Sunsets after storms are ususally spectular. This one was no exception. These children were playing on Perdido Key after a mini hurricane.

Heron on Perdido Key, Florida

Small birds are hard to photograph. This one was good so I got quite close. This is a sanderling, a little bird with quick steps. It was on the beach in Perdido Key Florida.

Life must go on. Clowning is hard work, particularly if nobody laughs.

Coke anybody?

Small fishing village on an island in the North sea.

You can include you own scanned signature In these Photoshop framed pictures.

This is an example of Photoshop framing. Making these frames can be recorder in to an action and played back automatically for other pictures. The frame makes the pictures complete.

When the Canon D60 became too slow.

I have been shooting with the Canon EOS D60 for three years. Most of the time it has performed as expected, maybe a little slow at starting up, but acceptable 95% of the time. This camera has gone all over the world from sea level to 17,000 ft altitude. What most of photographed objects had in common was slow or no movement.
This all changed when a group of photographers went on a Black Skimmer shoot in Florida. To get the best quality and the most flexibility I use the RAW format. It took less than 5 min to figure out that this camera was chocking on continuous RAW shooting. After 5-7 RAW shots the camera would pause for up to 30 sec to clear the buffer. The situation improved some after switching to jpeg, but now we're compromising.
An ever bigger problem than the speed, was the accuracy for the tracking focus. We were shooting fast flying birds from 30-200 ft, flying sideways, towards you, up, down, etc. It was very difficult to get the focus to track the bird. In fact of the several hundred action shoots, less than 10% were useful. This is not all due to focus and speed, but it would account for the biggest share of the missed and bad photos.
The last reason has nothing to do with the camera, but the challenging situation. Imagine a bird flying 30 mph suddenly appears in front of you. It is relatively easy to spot with you wide angle eyes. But if you want a decent shoot you have to zoom in. Finding the fast moving bird in a small field of view is very challenging indeed.
One of the fellows was shooting with a Nikon D2x. He filled up 10 GB in less than an hour. The Nikon was shooting Raw (NEF) format at the speed of an M-16 (5 fps) and it never chocked. A third person was shooting with a Canon EOS 20D, with better results than the D60. The frame rate is higher and the focusing is better.
The other aspect of the shoot was the type of lens that was used. I personally used a 28-135mm lens. With the 1.6x factor it is equivalent to a 45-220mm. This proved to be a decent choice for close flybys , but a little short for anything else. The Nikon fellow was using a 70-200mm lens, 1.5x factor and that was probably the right lens for the job. The final shooter was using a 100-400mm lens and it was to big and heavy and only proved useful in 400mm zoom of still birds.

When was the last time you were in the Artic Ocean 300 miles northwest of Point Barrow Alaska, 500 miles north of the Bering Strait? This photo was taken 17 May 2006.

Notice the difference in the "old" illustration and the photo?

Pictures from New York harbor. I have a similar picture taken many years ago with the striking difference of two additional tall buildings. Anyhow, the Statue of Liberty is looks good there in front of America�s business capital.

Now this is a fine pot! It is rare these days to find high quality pottery. Many people are used to low price/low quality pots from box stores. Now there are handmade pottery available for those who value the pottery as much as their plants. These pots are lifetime investments. They will never go out of style, they have been around for a couple of thousand years already. The quality ensures a lifetime of enjoyment.

Moors Golf Course, Milton Florida. This was taken during Roy Jones, Jr. Golf Tournament May 2006.

How to unlock a Cingular Treo 650











This subject is not directly related to photography, but important enough for those of you that do any international travel and have a tri or quad band GSM phone. GSM is used extensively throughout the world, both in Asia and Europe. In order to use your phone over there you have two options. Connecting to local services using your current SIM card - VERY Expensive. Or, you can buy a prepaid SIM card in the country you're visiting. You will then become a local user and pay local rates.

In order to do the latter, your phone has to be unlocked. To prevent customers from switching providers by changing SIM cards, all cell phone companies lock their phone so only their card can be used. To unlock the phone, call Cingular a couple weeks before you go on an overseas trip and tell them you would like to unlocked your phone. They should give you an eight digit code; anything else is confusion or slowdown tactics. Once you receive the code, do the following key sequence to unlock the phone.

Press call button, (green phone), then
*#*#eight digit code#
press call button again.

You should get a message noting that your phone is now unlocked.

Now the phone is capable of using any SIM card including prepaid ones. Once you get back to the US you just plug in your regular Cingular SIM card and you're in business.

White Balance. This picture was taken in RAW mode. The camera was set to Auto White Balance. When shooting in Raw the White Balance is not applied to the photo, it just shows how it would look using the current White Balance setting. To get an accurate reading for the current light, we use a Neutral Grey/White card as reference.
In shooting RAW, this can be done before or after the current photo as long as the light has not changed appreciably. The next image shows the Grey card photo, and the current photo with corrected White Balance. It is important to note that this card is different from the 18% grey Kodak card. It was designed for Exposure correction, but it is not color neutral, so it is not recommended as a White Balance reference card.

Neutral Grey card used to set reference White Balance.

The same picture after correcting the White Balance using the Neutral Grey card as reference.

A Monastary outside of Atlanta, Gerogia. It was built during and after the seccond world war by a group of monks. The place is still going strong. This picture was taken in April 2006.

Uptown wineglass in Downtown Pensacola.

Pensacola Jazzfest 2006 -- base. This is the base being played a couple of pictures down.

Pensacola Jazzfest 2006.

Pensacola Jazzfest 2006.

Tampa Florida. Picture taken from the Plant Park at the University of Tampa.

Southern Alabama Pecan Orchards

Where did the people go?

Springtime in Southern Alabama - Magnolia Springs

The Double Creasted Cormorant evaluating his options. This and the following pictures were taken at the Gulf Breeze Zoo in March 2006

What are you looking at, up there? Tough for ostriches to look up. It tilts its head to the side to get at least one eye on the overhead action.

Sorry, just up!

Handsome!

Symmetry!

Passed out!

Somebody has to be the pretty one.

Bring your camera closer son! Just a little bit closer.

Tough to fly with just one and a half wing!

Zoos really trying hard to create a "Natural" environment. Llamas are native to the high altitudes and cold weather of the South American Andes. The Zebras are native to the central and eastern plains of Africa.

What do you do when a Rhino charges?

Providence Canyon State Park

Providence Canyon State Park

Providence Canyon State Park, Utah - NO, California - NO, Arizona - NO, Georgia - YES! This is Georgia's "Little Grand Canyon". A natural wonder that was caused by erosion due to poor faming practices in the 1800s. Most of man's mistakes don't turn out this good.

Here is boxing fight between a sea gull and a Brown Pelican (Pelicanus occidentalis).

For you birdlovers out there, what type of gull is this? This is same kind of gull as in the previous picture. To my best knowledge it is either a Laughing Gull (Larus atricilla) or a Franklin's Gull (Larus pipixcan). The picture was taken in early March 2006 in Pensacola, Florida.

George is trying to loose a few pounds.

The new Z car.