Wildlife Photography

One of the things I love to do most is get out into nature.  And since you can't (and shouldn't, really) always bring nature home with you, I love to take pictures.  Plants, critters, landscapes; they're all waiting to get captured by the lens.  And with the advent of digital photography, huge memory cards, and the ability to auto-focus, I find myself with lots of photos of wild things and wild places.  They usually get dumped in a folder on my computer, and that's about it.  But recently, I grabbed a few Recoup (like Groupon, but supporting a cause) vouchers for hardcover photo books from a company called PhotoBin, and spent a pretty fair amount of time looking for some of the better shots to print in coffee table style books.  They came out pretty well, and I'm looking forward to sharing them with guests as they drop by the house.  But now that I've gotten some of my photos sorted, I figure the Interwebs would be a pretty good place to share them as well.

A male osprey (Pandion haliaetus carolinensis) faces off against a bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus).  More of this story to come.

Getting rid of the lazies.

You're in your vehicle, being guided along the electric track back towards the Visitor's Center.  Things didn't go as well as they could have today, but you got to pet a Triceratops, so that's pretty cool.  All of a sudden, the vehicle stops.  You remain calm, and figure you'll be moving again in no time.  But the kid next to you can't figure out how to turn a flashlight off, and the next thing you know, you have a 6 ton Tyrannosaurus bearing down on you.  We all know how that scene plays through.

From the vault: MS Paint job, circa 2005.  I miss my Explorer.

Sometimes, you get out of the vehicle before it goes over the wall.  Sometimes, you end up going over with it.  Sometimes you get stranded in a tree, escape its branches before the vehicle falls on you, and somehow end up back in the car again (but at least you're out of the tree). We all have those days; it happens. But it's been over five months since I've posted to the blog, and I need to get the tyrannosaur off my back.

I'd love to say I've been busy with school/work/life; that I've been in a creative slump; anything really to explain my absence.  And truthfully, all of those things do come into play.  But that's not why it's been quiet on the blog-front.  It's really been because of me.  Because even though I've been busy, and not particularly inspired, I've also been a little down, and it's made me very, very lazy.   Don't get me wrong; I'm still passionate about the subject material of the blog.  And find myself doing a lot these days that reflects that.  But I'm not really reflecting anymore. And that bothers me more than a little. As much as I like "doing" in the real world, I miss taking part in the "online" conversation as well.  This blog is a way for me to not only communicate to others, but to really communicate with myself, too.  So how do you get rid of the lazies, and get back into it after so long? I'm not exactly sure, but I'm working it out.  And I hope that in the next few weeks, I can manage to produce some solid results.  Talk to you all soon.