Day 4 – Yosemite

I'm speechless. This place is incredible. I was hoping to compare it to Yellowstone, but there is no way to compare. I have seen more wildlife on my trips through Yellowstone, and there are some incredible views as well, but Yosemite has a much more dramatic landscape (to me anyway). Before today, I said to myself, this was a good trip even if I had to pack up and head for home today. Now I can say it was a GREAT trip even if I had to head home today.

Heading up the hill to Tioga Pass was a fun ride and I had to stop a few times for pictures and to just soak in the scenery. I saw what I am pretty sure was a Bald Eagle swooping in with his talons outstretched, but by the time I stopped and grabbed my camera, he was behind some trees. I waited awhile, but didn't see him take to the air and he was on the other side of a river, so I couldn't go searching.

Less than an hour later, I saw a brightly colored bird swoop in front of me and perch on a tree. From what I could see, he was mostly yellow with a stripe of red on his head. He was still there when I walked back there, but moving to quickly to get the camera a chance to focus so once again, I was left pictureless.

This is a great road to ride on the motorcycle. Lots of twisty sections that require active riding instead of just cruising. The downside is that you can't spend more than a second or so looking at the scenery so I found myself stopping several times an hour. Usually to take the camera out and take a few shots, but sometimes just to sit in awe of this place.

I think it was about 2pm or so when I finally made it to Glacier Point. Let me tell you that the view is worth the traffic and parking hassle once you get here. WOW! I will be posting more from this trip in my other galleries with higher resolution, but as a teaser this is one of the many times on road to Glacier Point that I had to stop.



I was going to do some hiking once I got here, but after I finished eating a sandwich, I decided the clouds were starting to look like the forecast 20% chance of thunderstorms was a greater chance of rain than when the Arizona forecasters say 20% chance of rain and decided to head for home. I figured I had enough good pictures from the day and I can always come back on Wednesday or Thursday if I felt like more (I hadn't made it into Yellowstone Valley yet) so I would keep the photo stops to a minimum.

That resolution changed when a couple cars stopped in the middle of the road and were all hanging out the passenger side of their cars with cameras. That reminded me of some advice: Look where the people are pointing their cameras, it is probably worth taking a picture of. Sure enough, there was a bear not 50 feet from the road just ambling along.



After that excitement and with the ever-darkening ominous clouds overhead, I redoubled my efforts to not stop for every picturesque view. Sure enough, partway back, I saw a few drops hit my visor so I quickly pulled over and threw my rain liner on under my jacket and proceeded, albeit a bit slower. Sprinkling rain turned into heavy rain and heavy rain turned into hail. I kept going for the lighter hail, but when it came down heavy enough to blanket the road like snow, I pulled over. There was nowhere to go, no trees for shelter or overhanging rocks, so I just killed the engine and sat there for a few minutes.

The sun had been bright enough, so the road was hot and quickly melted the worst of it and when a caravan passed me going pretty slowly (trike, motorcycle and a van), I pulled out behind them. They were taking it easy and it was nice to have someone to follow through the hills.

By the time we got to Tioga Pass, the rain had completely stopped and the wind was starting to dry some parts of my clothes. But my fingers were frozen stiff and I was happy to get some hot coffee before heading back to my campground for some dry clothes and a little fire.

Still not sure what I will do the rest of my time before I leave. There is a ghost town named Bodie I have been hearing about and the hot springs near Mammoth both sound nice. Stay tuned to find out.

p.s. I was too cold and tired to post this last night in case you were looking for this post yesterday and wondered what I was doing.

Soggy Triathlon Photos

It is not very often that an event in Arizona gets rained on. I had heard about a chance of rain for this weekend so I checked the forecast on Saturday to see if the race we were scheduled to shoot would be wet. Late on Saturday, the forecast was for 30% chance of showers overnight ending by 7 Sunday morning. I figured that was Arizona forecasters hoping for a bit more rain.

Well, it poured most of the night and was still drizzling pretty steadily when we left the house a bit before 6 in the morning. I kept expecting things to start drying out, but the windshield wipers kept on going all the way to the race.

When I got there, the rest of my photo team were there and although they wished it would be drier, were ready to take care of business. We took care of business by talking about the race plan and headed off to our jobs.

Right away, things changed. These races usually start with the kids race and after they finish, the adult race start. Today though, just before the start, I found out they were starting with the adult race and would have the kids races later in the morning after the adult race. That was a bit of a surprise as we usually regroup after the kids race and tweak our plan before the busier and longer adult race. This is especially handy when we are shooting at a new location (3rd time here for Flowing Desert) or when we are shooting with a new shooter (we had a new team member today).

Everyone adjusted fine to the new schedule and with the exception of the rain that never quite stopped, we all managed to carry on. Now the rest of the team has resumed their normal lives and I have started the fun, but sometimes long, process of reviewing the pictures and adding the keywords so that all today's racers can quickly and easily find their pictures.

I love pictures from the finish line and I usually start my review with those pictures. The smiles on many faces and the visible effort on others shows their pride at their accomplishments. I am most of the way through with the finish pictures and so far the "Flying Finisher" is my favorite photo of this race.

Talk about celebrating your finish!  So what do you think?  Have you tried the flying finish in a race or are you a "clock-watcher" at the finish line?

New Year, New Challenge

It is good to start the year with a new challenge.  Picacho Peak is a nice hike with some rolling hills to start with.  I have tried to make it all the way to the top a few times now.

That is about 3.1 miles according to the trail map.  It starts getting steep at about 2 miles and I have made it about that far several times.  They have steps in some places, but it is still quite a workout.

It was a great day for a hike and I was able to talk my youngest son and my Dad into joining me.  It was nice and sunny but with a breeze that kept it from getting too warm.  It is a bit bleak in the desert with little vegetation save some the cactus.   I can't wait to go back there again later in the spring after we have gotten some rain and there are some flowers blooming.

Well, we tried, but we only made it about 2.1 miles before we decided to turn back.  The altitude where we turned around was over 600 feet higher than where we parked, but there was a lot more up and down which left us pretty wiped out.   We decided to try it again in a couple months and get an earlier start to see if we can make it all the way to the top.

So how did you start out 2010?  Any New Years Resolutions? 

Ironman Arizona

Last year in April, I finished my first (and so far only) Ironman race.  I enjoyed the race more than most people can imagine.  Some people that can imagine were out in Tempe this weekend and I was out for a while with my camera to capture some of the excitement.

There seemed to be no end to the smiles.




Even the professional athletes that are racing for money seem to be having fun. Or maybe this one was simply "hamming it up" for the camera.


Some people are more intense than others.


Many spectators wear special shirts to cheer on their friends.  They range from shirts that look professionally done to hand-made shirts that show their creative side like Team Speedy Pants.



Anyway, I had fun out there and I sure missed being in the middle of the action but was happy to be there cheering on the racers. A huge CONGRATULATIONS to all my friends that are now IRONMAN!

Ohhh What a Feeling!

I have been having fun taking pictures of triathletes. It is fun to see the variety of expressions on different people's faces. Some intense, some relaxed and having fun. Still others celebrating as they cross the finish line.

Sharing the joy with family and friends is often a part of the finish line celebration. These heartwarming moments make shooting the finish line pictures very rewarding.


Every once in a while, one of the pictures just jumps off the screen. These are one in a million shots that make photography so much fun. I think this is my favorite triathlon picture since I started shooting triathlons.


What about you? What is your favorite sports picture?

South of the Border - Beach Edition

Finally got a chance to start going through pictures from our weekend getaway to Mexico earlier this month. The boys got to go on a banana boat ride and they had a lot of fun.

While it was nice having an almost private beach, it was sad to see the local economy hurting this much. This guy didn't seem to mind having the place to himself.

He wasn't alone and I got a fair number of bird pictures over the weekend. I played around with some settings on my camera and ended up shooting most of the weekend at ISO 400 which gives a bit grainier pictures than I usually like. I do like the grainy look for some shots, like this little worm creature we saw swimming around in the shallows. We were not sure what they were, but they looked bigger than the swine flu virus and smaller than a snake, so we didn't worry too much about them.

I will be reviewing the rest of my bird pictures soon and will have a South of the Border - Bird Edition out soon. Stay tuned.

Why do race pictures cost so much?

I have heard this question and it is a fair one. I even asked it myself when looking at my own race pictures. You may also wonder why a 4x6 picture is being sold for upwards of $10 when you can take your own pictures into many retailers or upload them on your own and get the same size picture for way under a dollar.

There are many factors that impact the prices race photgraphers set an I thought I would share some of them here to help people understand the prices on race pictures.

One area that greatly impacts prices are the costs involved:

• photographers time. Typically 10 photographer hours shooting for even a short race with only a few hundred
• photographers equipment. High-end cameras and their lenses can run upwords of several thousand dollars
• indexing needs to be done so you can find your pictures. One recent race involved reviewing almost 3000 pictures to identify race numbers and select the best pictures for each competitor. Typically around 10 hours of work or more.
• other expenses like internet hosting company, business insurance, transportation, advertising and more

These costs mean that the last couple races we have shot has brought in an average hourly rate of under $10/hr. Remember, you get what you pay for.

If you compare race pictures taken by friends to ones taken by some professionals, you will often see a difference beyond the improvement in quality that comes with a more advanced camera. You will see that the professional shots will often have a background that highlights the best features of the race area (nice tree lined streets) where the friend snapshots are likely to have cars or crowds in the background. A professional photographer understands how to use the available lighting to maximize the quality of the photograph. Faces in dark shadows or washed out from over done flashes make a less memorable race picture. Furthermore, a professional can edit the final image and bring out the best possible image.

While many times a friends picture of a race will be a nice souvenir, a professional race photograph can be framed and displayed proudly for years to come to celebrate your achievement.

Flowing Desert Photography is proud to try and keep the prices as low as possible, while still being able to be profitable enough to keep professional photographers on the team.

Roses are not always red.

Most people know that red roses signify love and I have purchased more than a few red roses for my wife in the almost 19 years we have been married. A few weeks ago, I saw some roses in the store. I saw some red ones, but the ones that caught my eye were a different color.




I went with these and my wife loved them. They were a unique color and they really had a great shape. They stayed nice for almost a week too which is nice since sometimes the dry air kills flowers within a few days here in the desert.

This was a fun picture to take. I got my 50mm prime lens out of the camera bag and set the aperature to f/1.8 to get a nice shallow depth of field. You can see how the main flower in the picture is in focus and the one behind just kind of fades into the background.

So what do you think? Leaving a comment here is easy and does not require a login. You can also leave me a comment on Twitter. If you like my pictures, it would be great if you would become a fan of the Flowing Desert Fan page.

The Stars at Night...

Last week, the Perseid meteor shower hit its peak as it passed by earth and many stargzers went out to get a look at one of the shooting stars in the night sky. I like my sleep, but since there was supposed to be less, but more colorful "earthgrazers" before 10 or 11pm, I decided to head out with my camera and try my luck.

While I saw several brilliant shooting stars, the camera was aimed the wrong way each time. I did get some nice night pictures of the stars. I don't know a lot about astronomy, but I think this is the big dipper (or is it the little dipper?). I'm sure someone can confirm or correct me.

I think my favorite shot of the night is this one. I used a long exposure and then added a bit of light on the cactus with my LED flashlight. It seems a bit grainy when blown up too big, but as long as I don't blow it up too big, I like it.

My First Photowalk

A few weeks ago a friend reminded me that Scott Kelby's second annual worldwide photowalk was coming up. We decided to sign up for the one in Scottsdale.

It was still over 110*F when our walk stared that evening, but there was still good turnout as we gathered at the fountain. Our walk leader Kim gave some brief instructions for safety and then told us to look for different perspectives. I had aleady decided to start out with my wider-angle lens instead of my zoom. That was an intentional choice to try and experiment with a new perspective for me since I usually leave my 200mm zoom on most of the time.We started wandering along, taking pictures of flowers, walls, reflections in windows. All the things I had not paid much attention to even though I had worked in the area several years before. I took the oportunity to take a self-portrait using a store window reflection.


I even did some window-shopping and found a photographically-themed shirt:
I had noticed a sculpture driving by a few weeks before, but didn't think to ge closer until my friend mentioned there were mirrors on the inside. I think it looks like looking into a giant kaleidascope.

While the image Scottsdale likes to portray is one of affluence and glitter, there will always be those that choose to put their own stamp on things with graffiti.


Then the dust-sorm rolled in. It is hard to capture the mood of a storm like his, but I like how the white of the clock tower contrasts with the brown dust rolling in behind it.


After spending some time chatting with other photographers at the gelato store, we headed back to the car, but stopped to grab some pictures of the fountain where we started. I had to use my tripod otherwise I would have felt it was a waste of energy to carry it around for the whole walk. I like the way this one worked out and may submit this as one of my 2 entries for the contest.


What do you think? Leave me a comment here, shout at me on Twitter, or head over to Facebook and leave me a comment on my Fan Page there. Always looking for more people to become fans on FaceBook, so drop on by.

Technical Notes
These were all shot with my Nikon D60 in RAW/NEF with my little lens (as compared to my 200mm zoom that I usually use). As far as post processing, I did some cropping and straightening and a white balance adjustment on some of them. Otherwise, they are SOOC.

Sports Shooting - Triathlons

Triathlons are hard. I should know, I've done a few (check out my other blog for more) from short Sprint Triathlons all the way up to a full Ironman. When I attended my first race as a spectator with a camera instead of as a competitor, I had a great time cheering on my friends and taking lots of pictures. I got enough compliments on the pictures I took that I decided to do it again at another race. After a few races, I decided to try and get in with an official photographer to get more exposure.

I contacted a Race Director and after some discussion, I became his Race Photographer. This was a huge step for me since now instead of just trying to get pictures of a few friends, my goal was now to get good pictures of every competitor in 3 different disciplines. I knew I could not do it myself, so I proposed a partnership to a friend I had met a few months before at a photography workshop. Paul agreed and we planned our approach to the race. Paul has had kids in swimming, so we decided he would cover the swimming leg of the race and then move over to the finish line.

I would find a good spot to get the bikes and as soon as the last bike was past, I would get most of the runners before they got to the finish line.

Paul got a lot of great shots and I was able to find some pretty good angles for the bike and run portions. It was fun to see so many competitors with big smiles having a great time.

Now after 2 races, Paul and I have a good plan and really work well together. Sales are starting to roll in. Nothing I will be able to retire on, but at least it seems to be paying for the expenses of flyers and gas to get to the races. I am sure that the longer I do this, the more sales will take off.

Take a look at the race photos and let me know what you think. Do you race? What do you like to see in your pictures?

Fireworks Practice

Taking pictures of fireworks is a lot of fun, but can be challenging since there are not a lot of opportunities in most places. I was getting excited for tonight, but wanted a chance to practice some night shots. Mother Nature was kind enough to provide me with a firework show of her own last night. I grabbed my camera and tripod, double checked my settings and opened the patio door.

The lightning was fast and furious and I was able to get a lot of shots with lightning bolts. Here are some of my favorite shots.

In this one, I did a bit more post processing than usual and I kind of like how it turned out. I just played with the recovery slider and a touch of exposure control. The next two were pretty much straight out of the camera. I like the shots of blue branching off on the next one.

I really like the snaking motion on this one. I thought lightning took the shortest route to ground, but this one seems to have gotten a bit confused.

So what do you think? Does this bode well for firework pictures tonight?

Lessons Learned?

I thought I had learned my lesson when I left my camera at home one evening. I said "It's just a few miles to pick up my son." and "It's dark out, so it's not likely to see anything photo-worthy" and left the camera at home. Of course, I saw not one, but 2 Javelinas grazing on the plants and bushes in the neighborhood. And I said I learned my lesson: "You can't take a good picture without your camera."

I have been good about it, bringing my camera whether I am just going out to lunch, or heading up to the lake or looking for a sunset or just going to work. It has paid off. It paid off when I saw the wild horses on my way home from work one day. It paid off a couple times when I saw roadrunners on the way back from visiting my parents. It paid off when there was an accident and I was able to get a neat shot of a helicopter taking off with a line of traffic waiting for the road to clear. Suffice it to say that I have quite a number of pictures that I like that I would not have gotten if I only had my camera when I was "going shooting".

One day last week, I decided to ride the motorcycle to work. I decided that between that and the work bowling party in the afternoon, I would leave the camera at home. The bumpier ride on the motorcycle is probably not the best for the camera and keeping an eye on my DSLR at the bowling alley would be tricky. Since I was also bowling, I would have to juggle bowling and taking pictures and I just decided to take a day off from the camera.

What do you think happened? Yup, on the way in to work, there was about 10 wild horses closer to the road than I have ever seen them. Even worse (for me without my camera) there were at least two cute little colts in the herd. Very frustrating, but wait, it gets worse (or better if you are getting some kind of satisfaction from my pain).

Several miles later I see an airplane in the desert. Not flying as they sometimes do here, but on the ground with at least one person walking around it. I suspect the pilot had to make an emergency landing as this was not a cleared-off area of the desert and they were stopped very close to a tall saguaro cactus (would have a bad thing if they had hit it).

So now I am thinking that I should get a mid-to-high end point and shoot camera. I liked my Canon A95 PowerShot, but it was a bit bulky for all-the-time carry. I might have to look around at some of the littler Nikons like the CoolPics and see if I have been good enough of a Dad this year to deserve a Father's Day present.

Do you have a compacy point-and-shoot camera? If so, which one and how do you like it? Leave me a comment here or yell at me on Twitter or post a comment on my Flowing Desert FanPage on FaceBook.

Get a little bit closer

One thing I like to do with cameras is to always "get a little closer". Some photographers love the wide-angle lens, but unless I need to take a large group picture or a landscape shot, I will usually have my biggest zoom lens mounted on my camera.

Since some of my favorite subjects are wild animals and often a little camera-shy, that usually works out well for me. Sometimes though, a subject captures my attention and I want to get a bit closer, like inches away instead of feet away. My beloved zoom does not handle that request very well. Instead, I will sometimes switch to either my short zoom or my 50mm prime lens. Sometimes that does the trick, but other times, I need to reach into my camera bag for something special. In the case of these tiny flowers, I wanted to capture them on a different scale than I could with just my lenses.


I dug into my bag and came out with a kit of macro filters I had picked up a while ago. I didn't have a lot of time and the breeze was making things a bit challenging since every breath of wind would move the flowers just enough to lose their focus. Still though, I feel like I came away with a few nice shots. I especially like the sharpness in the middle blue flower below. Click on it and let me know what you think here in the comments.


Are you an experienced macro photographer? Please feel free to leave comments with suggestions or resources.

New week, new "Name That Bird"

I will admit that I have been lazy this week. I didn't even reach for the Bird Encyclopedia or even give WhatBird.com a shot yet. Crazy busy weekend. Besides, it is fun to hear what you guys have to say on all these birds I see.

This guy was all over the place, but loud, so he was easy to spot. I think at least one of these might be of a different gender. I liked the yellow color on these birds and how small they were. They were about the size of a hummingbird or slightly larger.

If you pay close attention to such things, you may notice that these are not stored at my usual SmugMug site. I am not real happy with the quality of these, so I am just storing them on my PicasaWeb site for now. There are several other shots there, so please feel free to visit the animal photo album if you want to see some different angles.

So help me out here. What is he? (she?) Comment here or over on Twitter (or both for that matter).

Lessons of a flash

A while ago, I was finally able to buy an external flash for my Nikon D60. If you are not sure why an external flash is a big deal, I'll explain a bit why my new SB-900 flash is an improvement over the built in pop-up flash.

The pop-up flash on my D60 has a few limitations. One is the limited range, subjects that are too far away from the camera will not be lit up enough for a proper exposure.

Another limitation of the built-in flash is the proximity to the lens. This is a major contributor to the "red eye" seen in many pictures.

The last of the major limitations covered here is that the pop-up flash is uni-directional. That is to say it is not able to point in any direction other than straight ahead.

In spite of these limitations, the built-in flash has it's uses. For one, the fact that it is always with you, which is incredibly useful if you need to take pictures in dark or low light conditions.

Another benefit of the pop-up flash is that it can be used to trigger certain remote flashes like the SB-900. This allows you to get better lighting arrangements then you could with the built-in flash alone. With some cameras, that is a simple camera setting to tell the camera's built-in flash that it is a "master" for other "slave" flashes.

The Nikon D60 does not have this setting in the camera which means that the flash needs to understand that it needs to flash when it sees a flash. Sadly this is not a readily apparent setting in the flash. It is there, but it takes some digging to get to it. I will create a blog post (and maybe an Instructable entry) for this as I know there are probably some other D60 owners with an SB-900 flash and are trying to figure out how to do this.

Now is the time for your opinion. Leave a comment here with your thoughts on what topic I should tackle next:
- Step-by-step enabling SB-900 to work with flash control from D60
- Why off-camera flash matters (with samples)
- Enough with the tech talk, show me more animal pictures
- Something else

Customer Service & Workshop Review

Workshop Review

I recently attended a photography workshop, David Ziser's "Digital WakeUp Call Tour 2009: A New Dawn". It was easy to sign-up and find with their great web page. I almost missed it because there was not a sign-up for an email reminder, but fortunately had put a reminder on my Google Calendar with a reminder email a few days before.

They were in Phoenix on Monday and Tucson on Tuesday. Since I had another engagement on Monday evening, I signed-up for Tucson. It was a bit longer of a drive, but I don't mind driving through the desert. I took of a bit early from work on Tuesday and headed down to Tucson.

The workshop doors opened at 5pm and there was a mini-expo with information and samples from sponsors. David had a bunch of photo books of his work and it was really impressive to browse though his work.

The workshop was scheduled to run from 6-10pm and David was on stage at 6 sharp. He was full of information from the very start. He was like the energizer bunny and didn't let up for over two and half hours when he gave us a short 15 minute break. During the break he was available for questions and discussion. After of the break, David picked right back up and kept going till about 10:45.

This workshop was incredible and completely exceeded the promises made on the web page. Not only photography lessons, but business and marketing tips to help photographers maximize there revenue and profit. That is a great way to have satisfied customers.

Customer service for this workshot was outstanding. About the only suggestion I have is that it would be nice if there were a small snack or beverage service other than water. The snack shop on site was even closed by the time we got to a break. Fortunately for me, I had a snack and drink in my car, so I didn't need to drive over to a convenience store and was able to spend part of the break talking with other photographers from the area.

I had a 2 hour drive to get home, so I had plenty of time to start digesting everything I had heard. It will take another month or two to digest much of what I learned, for me it was like trying to take a drink from a firehose. There was just so much for me to learn, so I am grateful for the included DVD for me to continue to to add to my knowledge at my own pace.

Aftershocks

I know that anytime I use my email address to register for an event or enter a drawing, I will likely get email marketing. If the event or drawing is something that interests me, there is a chance that the email they will send also interests me. If not, then I can hope that the business is ethical and will honor my request to stop sending me email.

Given that, I was not surprised to get an email after the workshop form one of the sponsors. What did surprise me was that my email address was on the TO: line with about 8 other email addresses. Most people may not care, but I would usually prefer to not spread my email address to people I do not know. Many (if not most) businesses use programs to send bulk email to individual addresses or at least put the addresses in the BCC: field so that no one sees everyone elses name and email address. This also makes the email cleaner for some programs when reading so you do not need to scroll down to find where the address list ends and the email message begins.

I handled this like I do anytime I see this particular breach of email etiquette. A polite explanation of the common practice and why it is important will usually resolve the problem as this is most often done by someone who is new to email marketing and maybe has not received any training or guidance on this matter. In cases where the source of my email address is clear (like the recent workshop in this case), I will try to include a copy to the organizer so they can help to educate their partners and sponsors.

I received a couple polite replies via email from the vendor apologizing and then letting me know they had figured out their email program a bit better and would be using the BCC: field in the future and thanking me for pointing out the process. That made me glad I had taken the time to educate instead of simply asking to be removed from the mailing list.

I considered the matter closed when Friday afternoon, my phone rang with a phone number I did not recognize. Heck, I wasn't even sure where the area code was from. I answered and was surprised to hear David Ziser on the line. He wanted to apologize for the email issue with his workshop sponsor and thank me for pointing the issue out. That just goes to show that David not only over-delivers on his workshop, but on all aspects of his business including that of his partner. Quite a refreshing change from all too many businesses these days.

If you are in business, you would be well-served to read his daily blog. Even if your business has nothing to do with photography or weddings, the business pointers he gives out can be applied to any business that is interested in their customers. To state a point that should be obvious (but is not), EVERY business should be interested if their customers. David's blog is one of the first I read every chance I get which is almost every day. Google Reader is a great way to keep track of blogs that interest you and save you time by not visiting all the blogs that only update once a week or a couple times a week (like mine) but not missing them when they do update.

A Book Review

A while ago, I saw an offer on Twitter from AdoramaPix to try out their photo books. I had been thinking about making a photo book to show off some of my pictures anyway, so I took them up on their offer.

I first had to decide on which pictures I wanted to show off. Then I had to decide how to organize them. Finally, I had to decide what sizes and page layouts I wanted to use.

I created an account with AdoramaPix. It was very quick and easy and so far no spam from them. It has been about a month since I created the account, so I expect that will hold.

After choosing the pictures I wanted to include, I uploaded them to the Adorama site and organized them in an album that I called "Photo Book" for convenience.

I started a photo album book and started the wizard to get started by picking size of book and number of pages. I don't know how hard it is to change to a bigger or smaller size or to add or subtract pages.

I had a bit of trouble working with the text boxes, but it seems like it was my problem since it started working. The cover spine text was the most challenging, but once I got that figured out, the cover came together nicely.

I used a variety of layouts, some with but most without text. I decided to do some full page pictures and some pages with a couple of smaller pictures as well as some medium-sized pictures. I used a black background for all pages that were not full-page and I really like the way that turned out.

I also made a few pages as full-sized pictures to see how they looked. I like it, but I think for most pictures, I like the black background better.

There are a few things I would like to see to improve this process:

• Layout guides to help line up pictures throughout the book
• Tools to make editing text easier (popup text editor)
• Quicker email support (took 2 days to get a response) but live chat support was quicker once I found it

I am very happy with the way this book turned out and I would highly recommend AdoramaPix to anyone looking to design a photo book. A photo book is a great way to organize pictures to commemorate a special birthday, trip or just to show off some of your favorite pictures.

Have you used a photobook to show off something? Do you want to try it? It is not that expensive and it is a pretty easy way to share pictures from a trip or wedding.

A New Week, A New Bird

Time again for my weekly Twitter icon change. This episode features a bird from outside my parents house a few weeks ago when we had a family picnic. There were a couple of them and it sure seemed like they were a couple. One had some red and the other was more tan or brown.



I walked through the WhatBird wizard for the one without red and it narrowed the list down to three:

• Lark Sparrow (more white underbelly that the ones I saw)
• Cassin's Finch (red crown and forehead, unlike one of the 2 I saw)
• Botteri's Sparrow (belly pattern solid, unlike the streaked patterns I saw)

I went through the WhatBird wizzard and picked a few colors that were close for a primary color. I got more possibles that way, but they were almost all some type of sparrow. These may in fact be some kind of sparrow, but the ones WhatBird was showing me all seemed wrong for one reason or another.

I am unsure how to identify these guys, so I am turning it over to you folks. I have gotten many good suggestions and pointers from many experienced birders and hope I can keep counting on you for help. Comments here are appreaciated (and easy, no logon needed), but if you want to shoot me a note on Twitter, feel free to give me a shout over there.

Photo Book

I received an offer from AdoramaPix to give their photo books a try. I had been thinking about making a photobook "Best of" collection so I gave it a shot.

I received my book late last week and have been busy showing it off to anyone that will look at it. I have received lots of compliments, and will be taking some pictures and finishing up my review very shortly. I hope to have that finished sometime this weekend, so stay tuned.

Tonight, I am off to Tucson to attend Digital Wakeup Call Tour 2009: A New Dawn workshop that David Ziser is putting on. There still seems to be a few slots open, so feel free to sign up and join me.