Robbed

Today is apparently a holiday of sorts, or at least one of those days that seems to merit special attention solely because of the numbers that represent it: May 4th, or, “May the fourth be with you.” Star Wars Day. Granted, there isn’t much that goes on, save for social media and the occasional post (ahem,) but you know, even that would have been read more

Improving autofocus

Earlier I mentioned having pretty egregious autofocus issues with the Canon 7D and the Tamron 150-600 lens, and sat down to see if I could improve things. My efforts were quite successful, so I’m going to go over what I did in the hopes that someone else may benefit from this. Virtually all of these will apply to any DSLR camera, with perhaps minor variations.

Clean the contacts. read more

Tripod holes 18


N 34°51’19.93″ W 76°19’6.58″ Google Earth Location

This one’s a little fun in that, if you go to the location, it’s not technically there anymore. Well, it is, but storms between the time this was taken and now have radically reshaped the islands, and what was once inlet is now mid-island. Not only that, but reaching it takes a lot more effort.

This came from read more

April? I thought you left already

April is now toddling off into the past, never to be seen again or at least not for another eleven months depending on your interpretation (or remaining perpetually according to yet another,) and so we arrive at the end of the month abstract. Which looks amazingly like thus:


The sunset didn’t perform all that well this day, but the double-crested cormorant (Nannopterum read more

That’s a bit better

I was out on two photo excursions earlier this week, and the first made me distinctly aware that something was wrong with my autofocus. Well, mine was all right, but the camera’s was off noticeably, for damn near every frame. I provide some examples:


This is full-frame, and while it’s taken at 600mm, the osprey (Pandion haliaetus) wasn’t that far away – read more

Can’t be assed

Seriously? Another holiday? But yes, as I look at the calendar, I see there’s something else to celebrate today, though I simply don’t have the inclination to pursue it in detail. Today is Token Appearance Day, possessing a rich history and some very specific ways of recognizing it, which I would enthusiastically tackle if I could tackle anything enthusiastically right read more

Dittyday 8: They Might Be Giants

Oh my, oh my my my, this one’s liable to be polarizing, or it might be if I had readers anyway. This band is notorious for, if nothing else, earworms, songs that stay with you for a very long time, but I’ll readily admit this might be a bad thing if they’re really not your thing – I think they accomplish the ‘catchy’ part without necessarily getting to the ‘likeable’ read more

Hubble comes of age

That’s right, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was launched 33 years ago today, which makes it now a functioning adult if you’re into Tolkien – ‘course, I don’t think you can be seriously into Tolkien and a functioning adult simultaneously, which is simply an invitation to a flame war, to which I reply, Bring it,you Lazy Lobs

All that aside, we check out a couple read more

Tripod holes 17


N 35°17’45.63″ W 82°46’9.89″ Google Earth Location

This one was slightly tricky to pin down, not because I wasn’t quite sure where it was – I could almost certainly take you to within four meters of this exact spot – but because the location is so shrouded in trees and shadow that it’s extremely hard to pinpoint from aerial photos. It did not help read more

Not from Earth Day

I have not been staying on top of the various April holidays, and today (which is indeed Earth Day) is rainy and blergh out there, so we’ll have a variety of photos obtained earlier that I finally got around to editing. Let’s see, let’s see, what have I been taking recently?


Over at the neighborhood pond, a trio of yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta) read more

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