Here are some more shots from Callaway Gardens. You can find larger versions of all of them in the forums.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

Discuss in forums

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.

(more…)

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:

(more…)