Deleting Photos

I've been avoiding a problem for a long time.  I have tons of photos on my computer (over 250 GB) and haven't taken the time to delete many/any of them.  My backup drive was starting to get full, so I figured it was time for me to start cleaning up my photo folders (after all, who needs 100 photos of the same sunset?).  I also read this article about deleting ruthlessly.  Fabulous article, and I think it will help me appear to be a better photographer, because instead of going through all my photos when I am showing someone my work, I will be going through the best 10% (or so).  I have been deleting photos from the past year or so, and have reduced most folders from ~800 photos to less than 100.  I feel like I'm doing a good job of still keeping the memories, but not taking over all my hard drive space.

Edmonds Sunset

I got out to the sunset tonight just a little after the sun went down and the color was pretty amazing. Here are 2 shots from tonight, hope you enjoy.

Some more flowers

My grandma has some very beautiful flowers in her garden.  The dahlia's are so stunning (the first one).  They make for such a good picture.

San Juan Boat Trip (With Killer Whales)

This weekend we went on a boat trip with my dad up to the San Juan Islands.  It was a great trip.  I took my old camera as I know we often run into rough waves and didn't want my SLR getting rocked and tossed about the boat (not so good on mechanical parts).  So these pictures are quite as good as normal.  Also, I found it to be quite difficult to get a good picture with the boat constantly rocking.

You got the GPS right? And the Map?  

Too Late to turn around

Pirates!!! We had to fight them off, but we succeeded

Hey I think we can buy that place. 

Looking at Dececption Pass we saw even more fog, so we decided to go up through La Conner

Mount Baker

Cattle Point Lighthouse, San Juan Island

We saw killer whales off Lime Kiln, San Juan Island.  

They Got really close

We saw three full breaches, this was the best, its a little blurry full size, but it is so hard to get a good one. 

Splash

By this point, I had camera overload, I didn't know which way to look or point the camera.  Too much was going on.

They got the salmon corralled against the shore and were having a great feast. 

Deception pass on our way home, Amazing how the fog clears.

Ferry at dusk

It seems like forever since I saw the Olympic Mountains. We have had a lot of not so nice weather around here. But finally we got to see a glimpse of them the other night. It was so nice to see them again.

Beautiful Flowers

Deb and I walked down through the Edmonds waterfront and marina area, lots of pretty flowers to take pictures of.

Twilight Pictures (not the books)

The other night Deb and I went down and took some twilight pictures after the sunset. I really like how the blue sky turned out in these.

Flowers with Bokah

Bokah is one of my favorite photo terms and I love to see it in pictures, it is the blurry background that is all (hopefully) nice and smooth and helps the main element pop out of the picture.  We were able to get some pretty cool flower pictures with lots of Bokah (I heard it pronounced bouquet the other day, I think that must be it). Deb took all of these photos.

More Zoo Pictures

Thought I shared all my zoo pictures, but I didn't, just those really great three. So here are a few more.

Kimono Dragon

Meercat

Emu

Toucan - I shall always associate this bird with breakfast from Fruit loops (not eating the bird)

Penguin

Some more Eagle Photos

Deb and I were walking down to the beach to watch the sunset when we heard a lot of crows, and we looked up and it looked like they were trying to attack something. Then we looked down and sure enough there were a bunch of people with cameras looking up into the tree the crows were attacking. So we hurried up and got to where we could see the eagle sitting in the tree. It's amazing how close the eagle lets everyone get.  As the sun was almost setting it was fabulous light for taking portraits.

More Fireworks

Here are some of the best firework shots I got from the fourth of July.  I hope you enjoy them.

Eagle Swoops

My friend put a turkey leg on the beach with the hopes that an eagle or other big bird would swoop down and grab it up and we could get some pictures of it.  After watching it for 20 minutes are so we were starting to get board and walked a little ways away, and almost instantly the eagle started down for the turkey leg.  I got some great shots of the eagle in its decent.

Fly by, to scout out the location

Attack mode, the poor turkey leg doesn't stand a chance

Landing gear down, time to grab and go

That's what I call a fast food.  (click to view larger)

Time to fly home like nothing just happened

It was just so amazing to watch, I only wish that my camera could take pictures faster, so I could have gotten more in between shots.

Fourth of July

Lots to post in the coming days. I took tons of pictures this weekend and quite a few turned out really well.  Here is the first one, more to come.

Macro Photography

A good friend of mine let me barrow his reverse mount lens.  So on my camera I have the kit lens with the 50mm on backwards at the end of it.  It looks really funny, but it takes some pretty awesome photos.  Here is a quick sample, I will post more later this week.  Doing macro this way, leaves a black circle around the actually photo, but it is still amazing the quality of the in focus part.