Scattered Thoughts . . .

Lunch at the top of the Tower of the Americas.  This is a situation where the fisheye distortion actually works... not only was I able to get all of us in the frame but I got the rest of Earth in there too! There are all sorts of different lenses available today. There are long telephoto lenses, medium telephoto lenses, standard telephoto, wide telephoto, prime, macro, tilt-shift, wide angle, fisheye, portrait, and all sorts of additional specialty lenses. The list goes on and on... Lately I've been doing a lot of writing about long telephoto lenses for shooting photos of wildlife but I've been wanting to write about a completely different type of lens since arriving back from our long journey to San Antonio. This is a lens which provides a bit of a strange view and one which I had just used for the first time on this trip. For certain applications, this lens really was a great choice... the fisheye lens. I've wanted a fisheye lens for years. It really is an od

My new used Panasonic 45-200mm, f4-5.6 lens mounted on my new used Panasonic G3. Capturing crisp photos of wildlife requires considerable knowledge, skill and years of practice as well as the physical ability to effectively control the appropriate camera gear. Having the right photography gear for this task, or any particular task for that matter, helps considerably just like having the right tools for a carpentry job helps a carpenter get the job done effectively. Using a hammer and a screwdriver to drill a smooth hole just won't work!  Needless to say, I am always researching to learn the best tools for each task I hope to accomplish and for the knowledge to refine the skill needed for each task. As I've written in previous blog posts, I needed a long telephoto zoom kit that would be suitable for shooting photos of the wildlife here in our neck of the woods so I did a lot of research and searching online for available products and finally ordered a used Panasonic kit

O dark thirty... in the Family Reception Center. I finally managed to sort through the video clips from our trip to San Antonio and put together a bunch of video clips of Adam's graduation ceremony from Air Force Basic Training  (a big sigh of relief from me).  The video can be found at the bottom of this blog post. Admittedly, this video can be a bit boring so I don't blame people for losing interest quickly or wanting to hit that fast forward button but there are points of interest in the video which I feel I should mention here. If you find yourself getting bored, before you close the page, please fast forward to the end credits. These end credits are worth seeing. The main speaker at this graduation ceremony is the  commander of this huge training facility.  Please find the time to listen to what he has to say. He is a vibrant speaker and listening to him is very easy.  At lunch in a Mexican restaurant in Market Square after the graduation. I had asked Sheil

An everyday, 'normal' daily life with mast cell disease in any of its forms is kind of lousy even without any complications. When you add in something as mundane and common as the common cold... the cold seriously angers my mast cells... and it is felt all through my body and deep to the core of my bones. I suddenly developed a head cold on Thursday last week. My nose was running like a waterfall for two days. Cold medications didn't help much. Adding extra Mastocytosis medications didn't seem to make a dent in the cold either. Regardless, I needed to add the extra medications anyway to keep my body as stable as possible.   After two days of a constant, neverending waterfall flowing out of my nose, the pathway moved to down the back of my throat in a post-nasal drip...  well, post-nasal flow. Now it is Monday night and I don't have much of a voice and swallowing is difficult because my throat is covered in a layer of gunk. Fun times. Needless to say, with all

I've been playing around with some of my photography gear over the past few days while I am trying to recover from a nasty cold in an attempt to find the physical limits of my gear. This will help in choosing the right camera for each task... sometimes I will need long reach... sometimes I will need to go wide in tight quarters... sometimes I'll need the smallest lightweight gear... sometimes I'll need low light capabilities. Each situation is different and each camera has certain strengths as well as weaknesses. The key is to know which camera is good for which situations. I now own some full-frame Sony gear which is just amazing in low light. Low light or not, this Sony camera has crystal clear resolution and is simply spectacular in all light but especially in low light situations. This gear continues to wow me everyday. I love using it for portraits... I love using it for landscapes. While I was testing a new micro four thirds Panasonic camera over the past few days