The Rays... are for REAL?!?!?

I used to be a regular at Devil Rays games but became disenchanted over the last two seasons. Today was the first game I've been to since July 2006. My wife had a couple of seats to tonights game versus the visiting White Sox. Keller Williams, where she works, had 240 seats and I got to hang out with a crazy bunch of realtors for a few hours.

The Rays played small ball and got a run across in the third inning, and a smoking hot Cliff Floyd belted a home run into the right field bleachers in the fourth inning. That's all the run support an equally hot Scott Kazmir needed as he went 7 strong innings to take his fifth win a row. The bullpen by committee mopped up the last two innings with "AAA" callup Grant Balfour getting the last out and the save.

So here we are on the last day of May with the Rays having a 34-22 record and a 1 game lead over the defending world champion Red Sox. More importantly, the fans showed up tonight - over 36,000 baseball starved patrons were at the Trop. When June 1st rolls around the hometown Tampa Rays will not only be in first place in their division, but they will have the best record in the American League. What?!? The local boys are playing inspired ball and have a boatload of talent. There's a lot of the season left so we'll find out if the Rays have something for the Red Sox and Yankees, but for now - let's just enjoy our winning ball team!

Panorama of Tropicana Field
(Click on photo to see full sized image on Flickr)

Fun with Food

The wife had to work today so I took the afternoon off and spent some time working with the new camera and lenses. Specifically, today was macro day!

It was too windy to try to get some flower shots so I opted to stay indoors and try my luck with some food items. First, I tried some sliced orange, lemon and lime. While they came out OK I really need to get some club soda to make the shot work. I tried putting the lemon on the cutting board with the knife used to cut it and that turned out OK as well.

Finally, I ended up trying a couple of pieces of bread. I really wish we had some bacon in the house because I would have made a full blown breakfast for this shot - but the bread worked as a handy stand-in (and a good ham&swiss sandwich afterwords!)

Each of these shots was taken right next to our front window - all natural light. For the bread shot, I also used a reflector to help fill in some of the shadows. I'm fairly pleased with the results but with the summer months upon us (and the obligatory life-sapping heat and humidity), I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities for me to work on my macro techniques over the next several months.

(Click on photo to see full sized image on Flickr)

Day at the Zoo

After breakfast this morning we headed over to Lowry Park Zoo. I was excited because this was the first real chance I was going to have with the new Nikon D300. I stand by my original assessment - wow!

This also was my first time back since Lucy has been on exhibit. Lucy is a rescued Florida Panther. What a cutey! You can see photos of Lucy in the fourth row.

All-in-all a fun day with the family and about 400 shots to edit. :)

(Click on photo to see full sized image on Flickr)

< ouch >

No, that photo isn't a mistake. That's exactly what the photos looked like coming out of my D80 this morning... You can see the osprey on that nest can't you? Read on.

I woke up early to go out and try out a couple of new lenses I got this past week - the Nikon 12-24mm wide-angle and the Nikon 105m micro. I started off in Dunedin to shoot the pier - it would be a great opportunity to put the wide angle through it's paces. Because it was 6:30AM, it was relatively dark out and I was getting slow shutter speeds - about 2 seconds or so. Everything was working fine (and I got a nice HDR image of the pier - below).

Next, I headed down to Clearwater Beach to try to get some early morning beach shots with the wide-angle. Still early, still relatively dark out, I was getting shutter speeds in the 1/2 to 1 second range. Everything was still working fine.

Having got some fairly decent wide-angle shots on my memory card, I was itching to try out the new macro lens. I decided to put it through it's paces at the butterfly garden at Largo Park. This was about 8AM or so. It was getting brighter out. I started noticing problems but I was in the shade and still getting relatively low shutter speeds - around 1/8 to 1/30 second. But even at 1/30s shutter speed, the colors just didn't look right. I figured it was just me being an idiot with the new macro lens.

Since I was already there, Largo Nature Park also has a very accessible Osprey nest (the photo above - can't you tell? ). I decided to put my 300mm on and see if I could get some shots of the juvenile osprey learning to fly. All hell broke loose. Every shot out of my camera looked like the above. Now I can take a bad picture just like everyone else, but I'm usually not THAT far off. I wasn't sure what exactly was wrong, but I knew something wasn't right.

So, I head home and decide to test the camera out in the back yard with multiple lenses. I put it in shutter priority and started at 1/8s. Great. 1/15s. Great. 1/30s. OK, Hmm - something isn't right here. 1/60s. Whoa. What's going on? 1/125s. We don't have snow in Florida - why is the picture nearly completely white. 1/250s - complete whiteout! This happened with three separate lenses. I reset the camera to factory defaults. Tried all three lenses again. Same results. !@(*&$@*&.

About that time, my wife called me and I explained what was happening. I have a photo shoot next weekend and I'm freaking out because my camera isn't working. She told me to go to the store and buy a new one. Excuse me? What was that? Wow. OK... call around and find out that Ritz Camera has the D300 in stock. Off I go.

Let me just say, I've only fired off about 100 shots, but the D300 is an amazing piece of equipment. Focusing and Metering are spot on (the pictures of the puppies below are with the new D300). I'm going to need to buy a battery grip for this at some point, but this was a great investment. I'm still a little (ok, a LOT) miffed about the happenings of this morning because I suspect that I actually damaged something about a week ago when I was cleaning the sensor (kicking self in own ass thank you very much). But, this was a purchase I was planning to make in August or September so it's not the end of the world. I'll get some more photos up this weekend as I'm going to the zoo Sunday morning and I'm sure I'll be out taking photos over the next couple of days.

(Click on photo to see full size image on Flickr)

So long buddy...

So, it's been a tough week in our house. Our brown dog (name Stanley) contracted cancer in his front right leg about 3 months ago. He had his good days and his bad days but by-in-large, he was still a pretty damn happy dog. Things took a turn for the worse last weekend and we had to put Stanny down Monday morning. Wow. Not a great way to start the week.

Tuesday, my wife and I started looking for a new puppy to compliment our beagle Sidney (age 8) and Maine coon cat Pepper (age 3). We stumbled across a wonderful no-kill pet rescue shelter in St Peteresburg called Pet Pal Animal Shelter. We particularly like that they are a no-kill shelter and they fill their kennels by going around to kill shelters and rescue dogs that are slated for euthanasia. Check out their site - really. They are doing excellent work.

Both my wife and I went to their site several times a day because they had a plethora of cute dogs and we were worried that there wouldn't be any left by Saturday. When Saturday arrived, it was hard to keep Tara from camping out in front of the shelter - she wanted to leave at 5AM to make sure we "got their first!". We arrived at a couple minutes before 10AM and luckily, we were the first as we both fell in love with a 4 month old Cocker Spaniel mix named Jayden. After letting Jayden and Sidney get acquainted, we decided to take the plunge. Special kudos to Scott, the nice volunteer at the shelter who helped us with all of our questions and needs.

On the way home from the shelter, we had to show off our new girl to my mom (since re-named Samantha - Sammy for short). Mom's cairn terriers didn't quite know what to expect when they saw this flying, flailing ball of fur. After a while, they just ignored Sammy (there were french fries that deserved their attention!)

The final step in the process was introducing Sammy to her new feline sister Pepper. That hasn't gone so well. Pepper has pretty much remained hidden the past two days. She'll come around, but she's used to two slow old dogs in the house, and now there is a maniacal bundle of energy and fur flying around the house - quite a change for her.

So, it's been a full week for us - very sad to see Stanley go, but happy to rescue a new puppy and everyone will end up getting along and loving each other once they get to know one another.

(Click on photo to see full sized image on Flickr)

Happy Mothers Day!

Despite the spotty weather, I headed over to Honeymoon Island this morning and the camera gods were smiling on me... sort of. I was walking the nature trail, looking up in the tree tops trying to see what birds I could find and out of the corner of my eye, about eight feet off the ground, I noticed something that didn't look right. I looked over and there was a juvenile Great Horned Owl sleeping on a branch! I quietly walked past the owl to get to a location where I would have a clean background and the noise of my tripod awoke the owl. It didn't seem too worried however and it let me fire off several shots before taking off to a nearby tree. The hunt was on!

I followed the owl around the park for about 30 minutes. I actually had the high quality problem of being TOO close at times and had to back up a couple of feet to frame a decent composition. But, because of the uncooperative weather, I didn't get that National Geographic cover shot - but I'll take what I got all the same!

I figured that I had annoyed the juvenile enough so I continued walking the nature trail. The sun was starting to peak out from behind the clouds more often and it was starting to get hot. I was just about ready to pack it in for the morning and I happened upon a group of Osprey's frolicking in the high winds. Luckily, because of the high winds I was able to get several nice in-flight shots of Osprey as the wind was impeding their forward progress, making them slower, easier to track.

Overall, a great morning of capturing bird shots and now, time to start getting ready for mother's day dinner! Yummy!

(Click on photo to see full sized image on Flickr)

Fan Appreciation Day

Today was the final live session for the 2007-2008 racing season at Tampa Bay Downs. To show their appreciation to the fans, the race track was offering free admission and $1 cokes, hot dogs and beers. Hrmm - let me think about this for a minute...

I cajoled my friends Fred and Daniel to meet me at the track and since my wife has a little gambling problem, I dragged her and my mom along as well. The gambling wasn't the greatest, I fought the harsh sun most of the day, but I was able to get some decent shots.

In a fitting tribute to the 2007-2008 season, a 35-1 long shot won the final race paying $77 on a $2 Win ticket - both my wife and mom cashed in on that lucky (er, I mean skillful) pick.

Panorama of Tampa Bay Downs

(Click on photo to see full sized image on Flickr)

Never a "dull" day

I headed over to Ybor City to meet my friends Amy and Damir. Damir needed some photos taken for a project he's working on. As is always the case with me and my Speedlights... it took me a little while to get into the groove - it's always a challenge to try to overpower the sun with a couple of battery powered lights.

In the end, I think I did *ok*. Hopefully they like the pics - it definitely was a fun time. Even a bit comical as Damir tried to look like a real bad ass (knife and all). Let me tell you in all sincerity, in a knife fight, the only person who Damir would inflict damage on would be himself! ;)

(Click on photo to see full sized image on Flickr)