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

A Panasonic G3 in the micro four thirds format... As most of you know, one of my many hobbies is photography. As most of you probably do not know, there is no one camera that can do everything. Each camera has its strengths and each camera has its weaknesses. As a result, I have quite a little collection of gear, each piece sporting its own advantage. I have a very limited budget so I often pick up used gear at very tempting prices rather than buy new at unattainable prices.  A number of months ago I decided to drop my Olympus gear and upgrade significantly by getting some full-frame Sony gear.  "Full-frame" refers to the size of the sensor and this full-frame size is huge compared to most cameras. The sensor on this Sony camera is the same size as a single 35mm negative frame... hence the name "full-frame". By comparison, compact cameras have sensors the size of a pencil eraser... and higher quality cameras have sensors somewhere in between the two in

The past few days, my level of overwhelming fatigue was so...  well, overwhelming... that I couldn't help but wonder if I had enough energy left to recover. How low does one's energy level need to get that I actually wonder whether you can find the energy to recover? I don't know the precise answer to this question but I do know that it is exceptionally, frighteningly low. I sometimes forget that this overwhelming fatigue is also an active symptom of my illness and not simply a result of wearing myself down. This time, I did also wear myself down. Between the long rail trip and then some activity around the house, I definitely wore myself out. I definitely over-did it. History has proven that when I get worn out from this crazy amount of activity, it can take months to recover. This fatigue, however, can also be a symptom and a clue to impending poor health... a clue to a cascading mast cell degranulation event leading to anaphylaxis... this is what happened last night

In the couple of weeks that we've been back home, I have had some time while recovering to put together a few online photo albums.  I think I shot well over 1000 photos during this trip but chose just a couple of hundred to show online. We thoroughly enjoyed our trip! My only regret is that, although we spent more time in San Antonio than most families do for graduation, I am left feeling as though we rushed through this trip and didn't take enough time to just sit and enjoy. Spending an evening in a couple of pubs on the Riverwalk would have been really nice. Spending more time walking through San Antonio would have been nice. Spending more time learning and experiencing the rich history of this city would have been really nice. It appears as though Adam is about to get jumped on by his Instructor! In the end, we came home with a lot of really nice photos and some really nice memories. The memories we created also sparked memories of my own history in this city. I wa

Riding Coach on The Lakeshore LImited to Chicago Traveling is difficult with my health problems. Airline travel is something I avoid like the plague since procuring this illness for many reasons and the train has many benefits for me when it comes to managing my health. I could write a novel on why airline travel is horrendous for my health and yet train travel is much more friendly for my situation but this blog entry isn't about explaining any of this so I need to try to avoid getting sidetracked! I just wanted to write a few words about our cross country train journey... First, let me say that if you want to just view some photos and a short video of our journey with Amtrak rather than reading through all of this, skip to the links at the bottom of this blog entry.   For the most part, our experiences with Amtrak were good and I would definitely do it again. Some parts were outstanding, some parts were okay, some parts were fair, some parts were simply dumb luck, and, as