Here are some more shots from Callaway Gardens. You can find larger versions of all of them in the forums.
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My wife and I headed to Callaway Gardens yesterday to see what was going on in the world of butterflies and flowers. I haven’t been there in at least 10 years, and that was only for the Christmas lights show, and she hasn’t ever really looked around the grounds of the gardens, so we both were not prepared for some of the wonderfulness that we came across.
The day started with the Butterfly House (or whatever they call it), which is one of the gardens’ main attractions, and for good reason. You walk in to the lobby, with butterfly artwork and fat rednecks everywhere, then stroll through some double doors into the hatching area. From what I can tell, they let the caterpillars form cocoons in a lab type area, then pin them up in rows in a display behind glass so visitors can watch the process. Judging from the amount of butterflies in the conservatory combined with the short life span of a butterfly, taking care of the cocoons is a constant process.
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My old tripod was the cheapest full size tripod I could find one day when I walked into Wolf Camera (Ritz). It was fairly light, but mostly because it was made out of crappy materials and could not handle much weight on the top. It also could not lay flat and let the camera point straight down, which was a bummer for doing product photography for ebay and my website. Before my Costa Rica trip, I decided to upgrade and the end result was a Triopo C258KJ2 Tripod.
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I only took ~1000 pics in Costa Rica. Shame on me! Here are the better or more interesting ones. Keep in mind that they are not edited at all, so some of them are kind of rough. The only one I messed with was the little girl on the beach, and that was only to crop it a bit.
I’m working on the trip reports tonight, so hopefully I’ll have them all up this week.
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I spent about two hours outside playing with my dog and taking pics of the full lunar eclipse that happened tonight. Came inside, unloaded the pics to my PC and realized that I had been shooting in the shittiest jpg mode with no RAW. Oops.
There are a couple of halfway decent shots in there. I was outside shooting extended exposure shots in the dark, so of course I busted out some flashlights and took pics of the beams lighting up the neighborhood.
Meh, maybe I’ll do better in 2010.
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If any of you happen to be in the Atlanta area, our store is running a clearance tomorrow through Saturday. Prices will be in the REI super clearance ball park since we want to get rid of stuff to make room for the tons of spring/summer gear and clothing we have waiting in the warehouse.
Some brands that we have on sale:
Marmot
Mountain Hardwear
Patagonia
Horny Toad
Mission Playground
The North Face
Montrail
Wigwam
Black Diamond
Timbuk2
Osprey
and quite a bit more. Most of the store is 20-50% off our regular prices, which are already 20-50% off retail.
TGR
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Our website is finally almost ready to open for business after way too many months of delays. Test orders are going through from end to end tomorrow, so if that goes well, you might be able to start ordering cheap outdoor gear from us this week. We are headed to EORA next week, and the website will for sure be up and running by then. By the way, if anyone wants me to take pictures or get information on specific products at EORA, let me know.
For the site, think Sierra Trading Post, but with a prettier website and hopefully not as many hideous outerwear colors. We are thinking about going for the Moosejaw angle with silly pages and quotes, but with customer service that more accurately reflects our 100% positive ebay feedback. One thing that we really want to do is have a page where people send in photos of them and their dogs outside. Sadly, it might be a while until we have a glossy catalog full of ski babes.
Anyway, we will have several specials running at all times, and everything will always be on sale. If we have to keep an item at full price due to a vendor agreement, then we will throw in some free crap to MAKE it on sale.
I’ll let you guys know when it is actually ready to go. We don’t have a ton of stuff in the website inventory right now, but it is all nice (Patagonia, Timbuk2, Nalgene, Wigwam, TNF, Mammut, etc.) and below retail. Expect the inventory to grow at an exponential rate in the next few months. I am really excited about the site’s potential, so you’ll probably hear about it a lot from me.
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Thanks to Cat’s deal hunting, I am now the proud owner of a fancy new camera bag, the LowePro Slingshot 200. This is definitely a step up from my previous at home storage solution (the floor) and could also be considered better than my trip storage solution (a ziplock bag).
My first impression was that this thing has a ton of room. Here is my Pentax K10D with kit lens attached and zoom lens in the main compartment:
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Marmot goodness went up last night. I had no idea, but there was Gore Pro Shell, Performance Shell, and Soft Shell stuff in there. It was all I could do to keep from claiming some of it for myself. We have about 30 bins full of Marmot that we received today that will be going up over the next couple of weeks. There are some great items, as well as some truly hideous Precips. I mean, these have never been a good idea, at any point in time. You’ll see what I mean when they get listed. We are hoping that someone will want them just as a joke.
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I get a lot of questions from you guys and other people about what The Gear Revival is or will be auctioning, so I am going to do a weekly post about what is up there and will be up there for the coming weeks.
Sunday and Monday night saw the entire Fall 2007 line of Cloudveil go live. I pimp them a lot, but that is because the Cloudveil stuff is awesome. I am converting into a big fan of their designs, and they use some great fabrics (I love anyone who uses the Schoeller stuff). Their workmanship is top-notch too. OK, OK, the entire line except what I took for myself went live. 
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