California Burning

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/09/wildfires_in_southern_californ.html

Liquidity

This photographer does some nice work capturing fluid motion:

http://shinichimaruyama.com/

4th of July part 2

4th of July part 1

From the fireworks show in Hawaii Kai...

Answer to Mystery Photo 3

Oddly, one bird was on top of the other. Not sure what they were doing.

Mystery Photo 3?

Maybe not so mysterious to some, but I thought this looked pretty cool. Do you know what this is?

dai oni

Time passes and still no great images from me, but just wanted to say that this guy takes really awesome photos in Japan. As an Aussie, his English descriptions give an idea of what you're looking at, which helps.

Honolulu Festival 2009

Ok great I was able to try out the new lens at the grand parade of the Honolulu Festival in Waikiki. I've decided that I may not be a great photographer, but my caption-writing skills are bar none. I wonder if I can get paid to write snarky captions? Anyway, taking pictures is still a lot of fun:

http://picasaweb.google.com/woompood/HonoluluFestival#

Some Gearhead Stuff

Any good hobby provides numerous opportunities to spend lots of money on "stuff", and lots of time researching said "stuff". In that respect, photography is an excellent hobby.

Since getting into photog it took me six months to invest in a new lens. I'm pretty slow at buying stuff. I finally decided to get the Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS. In case you don't know what all that means, you can go look it up the next time you have trouble sleeping.

Actually, photofolk enjoy talking gear once they learn the language. It's not so bad. Having an exclusive lexicon is another fine quality of hobbies. Keeps the looky-loos away.

Anyway, back to business.

I chose this lens because:

• Range - my kit lens is 18-55mm, so this one conveniently picks up where the kit leaves off.
• Diameter - it's 58mm so it will take the same filters as my kit lens.
  
• Amateur - in reading reviews, it seems like this lens is a logical next step for XSI/XTI owners. If I start getting hard-core about photography I may need to do some upgrading. Until then...
• Price - this is a very affordable lens at around $250 brand new!

and I got it in spite of the fact that:

• It's EF-S, meaning that if I should upgrade to a full-frame camera body, this lens won't be compatible :(
• It's driven by a DC motor, not an Ultrasonic (USM) one. It's noisier and slower to focus. Since I don't plan on doing any funeral photography, noise is not a problem for me. The dead won't mind either.
  
• The construction is plastic not metal, although that may come in handy when getting that once-in-a-lifetime paparazzi shot of Magneto:

but on the other hand:

• It's still made by Canon, so it's a high quality product, and
• It's cheap! :)
  

Oh, and did I mention that the price is right?

With the money I saved I also picked up a UV filter, circular polarizer, and lens hood (Canon ET-60). I have to admit, it felt pretty good attaching all this expensive plastic gear to my camera. Similar to the feeling of attaching a silencer to the muzzle of a sniper rifle, I'd imagine.

Guess all I need to do now is take some pictures.

For specs on all Canon lenses, feast your eyes on this PDF, you spec freak.

The Usual Suspects

Good pictures of kids are very hard to come by. The difficulty level is inversely proportional to age, and rises exponentially with the number of kids in the photo and the number of cupcakes they've eaten. So this was the best I could do given these factors. Identities have been concealed to protect the innocent.

Yann

Every day my Firefox browser serves up these two pages, and every day they blow my mind:

http://www.yannarthusbertrand.org/v2/yab_us.htm
http://www.yannarthusbertrand2.org/

Mystery Photo 2 Answer

Okay, that one wasn't so great...

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/esEAvLWs7rYBh65X2IRkAg?feat=directlink

Mystery Photo 2

What is this?