January
Part of my New Year’s resolution was to take more pictures and to post more frequently. As you can see, it’s the middle of February, and this is my first post of the year. I have been busy with work and not much free time. Besides my full time job, I am organizing my files and processing new pictures for my website.
The pictures in this post are from what little free time I have had this January.
I got a new cell phone (Motorola Droid) which has a 5 pixel camera built in. At first I was not too impressed with the shots, but when I actually down loaded them I was a little more impressed. If you have the sun to your back and a bright scene in front of you, you will get a pretty good picture. When the scene gets dark, it’s not worth a thing. So here are some pics so you can decide. Click on any image in this post to enlarge.
One of my contract jobs is taking pictures of used camera gear. Most of the gear I photograph is Leica equipment. Click <HERE> to read the write up of that post. One of the perks is to use some of the gear on weekends. I had a chance to use a Leica M8 with a 35mm f2 lens. What a sweet combination. Here are some shots that I took with that set up. The camera is small and light. Fun to use. Now if only I could afford one.
If you didn’t know, It’s time to take care of your Hini…lol
I did do an early morning hike out to the Everglades. The nature watching and weather were pretty calm. Saw the usual birds and gators. As you can see from my shots, the only action I saw was the vultures fighting. That was pretty interesting. The fish bones are left over from the otters. There was an elusive otter running around near us, but I didn’t get a chance to see him. There was a guy out there who is contracted with the state, and he was dropping off his swamp buggy. His job is to remove invasive trees. He also had cameras with infrared triggers set up to catch the panthers, bears and anything else walking or slithering about. The area we were in has active panthers roaming. They are very hard to spot. I have never seen one, but then, you never know who’s watching you.
For my full time job, I went to Orlando for training. To pass some of the time in the evening, some of us went out to Universal Studios City Walk. That is a great place to take neon sign photographs. I like to use my zoom with longer exposures to achieve the “zoooom” effect without having to use photoshop. It’s just more fun that way. 
Now this last part has a couple of videos for my birding people. This was early morning at Long Key Nature Center. It is a spectacular site watching all the birds leave their roost. The first video is all the birds when they are starting to get active. The second video is when they actually take off. The take-off is about a minute and a half into the video. The video was taken with my cell phone.
Hope all of you have enjoyed this post!