Home on Long Island and the blog evolves…

Home again on Long Island! If only it wasn't so difficult to get here. This photo shows the traffic on the George Washington Bridge on Mother's Day Sunday at about 7 P.M. Not fun for anyone, but brutal in a motor home.

If you are visiting views through my lens… for the first time, welcome. Beginning with this post something new is being added to the blog. I will continue posting photos and brief text about the photos, but I am adding a "jump" to another page, where I will include digital photography links, tips and how to's. Please send me comments if you have any thoughts to share—I'd love to hear from you. If you want to be notified of blog updates, you will be able to subscribe to the blog with an RSS feed sometime next week. Or, send me an email and I will add you to the email update list.

This photo of the George Washington bridge was taken with a Nikon D70 DSLR (digital single lens reflex camera) and a Nikkor 70–300 VR zoom lens. The lens was set to 70mm and the camera was set to f/6.3 at 1/50 of second.

The VR lens (for vibration reduction) has an active mode for taking photos when the camera, as well as the subject, is moving. I took this photo while stuck in traffic, so movement was not much of a problem, but I do use the lens all the time to take photos from the RV and boats (well, maybe only a few times on boats). Vibration reductions, or image stabiliztion (same thing) really makes a difference when you are taking photos from a moving object, with a physically long lens, or in reduced light. The stabilization technology, whether is in the lens or built into a point & shoot camera, compensates for hand and body movement and reduces the chance of getting blurry photos. A must on your next camera or lens!

One more Disney topiary...

One more post of the Disney topiary photos, then a short hiatus while we drive home from the Life on Wheels Conference in Kentucky. By Wednesday I hope to be back to posting several times a week.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs are located at the water's edge in the World Showcase. As soon as I spied them they begged to become a panorama photo. The panorama is made up of five overlapping photos stitched together using Photoshop CS 3 — which does an amazing job of matching the pieces.

By the nature of a panorama, and the size requirements of my blog, the photo is small, but please click to see a larger version.

EPCOT in Green…

It has been a while since I posted photos. Life gets in the way — and so does being somewhere without an internet connection! How life, and "needs" have changed in the last decade.

Anyway, we spend last week at Ft. Wilderness Campground at Disney World. EPCOT is having a Garden & Flower Festival, and I had a great time shooting all over the park. One of the major features of the festival are topiary statues of Disney character. Pluto met us as we enter the park, and we encountered the other characters in the world showcase.

Native American Artisit

Thus far my photo blog has featured photos of inanimate objects and animals. On Easter Sunday I had the opportunity to take photos of a Native American artist who had a both at the Mission San Xavier del Bac in Tucson. I asked if I could take his photo while he worked, and then he took the time to explain what he was designing.

Get my deserts straight!

In my last post I mistakenly wrote that Tucson is in the Sonora Desert, when in fact it is the Sonoran Desert.

The Sonora Desert

We are in Tucson (see my travel blog at quinnrv.blogspot.com) and it is a very senic area. The city is surrounded by mountains, and is situated in the Sonora Desert, native habitat for the Saguaro Cactus. I been having a ball photographing cacti. These three photos are only the beginning — more to come!

Junction, Texas ducklings…

It is unusual to see so many ducks sticking so close together. The duck were the Long Island type, not wild ducks. We were told that the KOA owners raised the ducks in a pen, and just the day before they had taken them to the river, and they couldn't get them to come out. Later that evening we saw the ducks waddling through the campground, finally on their way back "home."