Portraits of Dogs as They Shake Off Water

Great dog portraits in the link! Funny pictures. But there's no dignity left for a dog. Well, they'd better become cats anyway when it comes to maintaining dignity.

Portraits of Dogs as They Shake Off Water

Picasa back in favour

Picasa is back on my list of popular (and free!) photo web services, now that I (finally?) discovered that they have done away with the 5-pictures-at-a-time limit for uploading. My pictures of the archery 3D-tournament of last weekend found a happy home there.

Traces of thirst

The picture is not great at all, but I find the story irresistible: a carrier pigeon crash landed on our terrace. Hearing its wings thump and scrape on the stones was the first thing I noticed. The pigeon got on it's feet and tried to drink from the pond that borders the terrace. But with the drought, the water level was too low and try as it might, the pigeon could not bend deep enough to get it's beak into the water. After a few tries it made a desperate decision and dived right into the pond. Its head was drowned completely, wings spread out made sure it swam. After five long seconds of gulping water to quench its thirst, the pigeon got its head out of the water, flapped it's wings a few times and flew off again, on its way--no doubt--to race home. Only the traces of the dust of its feathers was left on the water. And that's when I finally got my phone's camera out to document this story of a dry spring.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Lightroom 3.4

A minor update, it seems, of Lightroom. As the Adobe website says it:

"The Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® 3.4 update includes these enhancements:

• Additional camera support for several new camera models including the Canon Rebel T3i, Nikon D5100 and Fuji FinePix X100
• Corrections for issues introduced in previous versions of Lightroom 3 "

While it's downloading, I thought some of my web-friend might like to know...

New spring, new lens

Treated myself to a new telezoom, a 2.8/70-200, especially because I wanted the large aperture. And boy, does it make a difference in the viewfinder! With such a clear view, you can use manual focus much better. However, this is also my first lens with HSM focusing and that is impressive too: smooth, silent and fast; so you don't really need manual focus.

But the main reason for wanting the 2.8 opening is that it reduces the depth-of-field so you can have very selective focus. Hope to make use of that in the coming days--and coming years!

The disadvantage of a big opening is that it is a big and heavy lens. Yet even here I was pleasantly surprised: the 1.3 kg have a very good handling, nice balance with the camera and you can use it very well 'shooting from the hand', without a monopod/tripod.

For the moment then, just a little example of what may be done with such a lens: a random insect on a random flower in a random place (the backyard of my house). The lens has a good bokeh, I think. I am pleased with this new toy!