This is Synder. I have three cats, all of whom have different attitudes toward photography. Jackie will do anything to get his nose in front of the camera. When he sees me taking pictures of flowers, he'll run in front of the camera, and sometimes even trample the flowers. He's always looking especially cute or doing some kind of stunt for the camera.

Moosh (Jackie's brother) strikes a regal pose when he sees the camera lens pointed at him. He's like a spoiled supermodel or a member of the royal family out on parade.

Synder is the most difficult cat to photograph. First of all, his coat is shiny black with a reddish sheen. It's hard to capture the shininess and true color of his coat. The camera always wants to overexpose him, so the settings need to be adjusted for each photo. Then there's the fact that Synder doesn't care to have his picture taken. He doesn't sit still... and even when he does, his head and ears are swivelling all around. Synder is the self-appointed tough-cat - protector of the territory that is our yard, especially the hotly-contested honeysuckle bush. He doesn't have time for being cute or acting like a primadonna.

This is probably the best picture of Synder I've taken so far. I converted it to monochrome because there was a distracting bright orange object in the background. I wish I could have left his eyes green... I'll have to figure out selective coloring later on.

I may post a picture or two tomorrow (or later today - I notice the sun is fully up in the sky even though I haven't been to bed yet). If not, it will likely be a few days as we'll be driving to Ontario and will need to get the internet set up in the new place.

As luck would have it, my hard drive issues are sorted out just as it's time for me to move across the country. Most of my photos have been transferred over to the 1TB drive (where I'm not entirely sure I have access to them). At least this frees up lots of room on the 250GB drive for more photos.

I finally managed to get up close to a butterfly! All of my previous butterfly shots were taken from quite a distance, most with the point-and-shoot. I'm happy with this one, but a bit annoyed that I cut off most of the wings and the antenna tips. I always see insect macro photos and wonder how the photographer manages to get the whole insect in the frame, the eye (at least) in focus, and some sort of pleasing composition with distracting dirt and foliage out of the way... all in the fraction of a second before the insect flies away. I guess they probably do what I do -- take several shots and maybe one turns out.

Hopefully I'll see more butterflies this summer.

Every time I've seen heliconia before, they have looked something like this. In Costa Rica, I saw a type of heliconia that was soft and fuzzy! The first time I noticed it was right after it rained. There were water droplets clinging to the fuzz. It should have made for good pictures, but the light was very bad that day. The next morning, I got some better photos of the fuzzy (but dry) heliconia illuminated by bright sunlight.

I took some photos today, and I hope they turned out. I had good subject matter, at least... I hope to post them when my hard-drive issues are sorted out, whenever that may be!

These mosses and lichens were growing on a tree right on the beach near where we stayed in Costa Rica. I didn't actually notice the lichens until our second-last day there. I have other lichen photos that are more colorful, but I like this one because you can also see the texture in the wood.

I'm still lacking hard drive space to upload my new photos. I went back through my archives and pulled out a couple from Costa Rica.

This beetle stayed with us in our beach house for a couple of days. I took over 100 photos of him, but unfortunately none turned out. This is probably one of the better ones. The beetle hated light and would immediately scuttle toward the nearest dark corner. It's hard to take a 1/20 second exposure of a moving creature, so I opened up the aperture to shorten the exposure time. The consequence of this was shallow depth of field... meaning I never really got all of the beetle in focus at once.

The beetle had so many interesting parts to focus on - the hooks on his legs, his anter-like antennae, and his fuzzy underside just for starters. I was eager to search the net when I got home to try to find out exactly what kind of beetle this was. The result was kind of anticlimactic: "Dung Beetle".

This picture didn't last long on Red Bubble. I'm not sure why. Graem played with the colors on this one, and he tends to increase the color saturation more than I would. In the Red Bubble thumbnail, the water in this picture looked very green. Maybe that prevented people from viewing it. Maybe Red Bubble just gets flooded with Canada goose pictures in the spring, and people get sick of them. I don't know.

I really enjoyed photographing the geese. They are all such characters, and I was able to get quite close to them, despite not having a very long lens. There's also the added bonus that when the geese arrive, you know it is officially spring!

This photo was titled "Second Date" on Red Bubble. I have always liked the symmetry of this photo -- the geese are nearly mirror images of each other. They are together, though looking in opposite directions. Maybe they're worried that their relationship is starting to stifle their individuality. Maybe they're just geese, doing what geese do.

Every spring, these caterpillars take over my yard and eat all of the leaves. They are literally everywhere. You can't go outside without getting caterpillars on your clothing and in your hair. Despite being ubiquitous, they're quite hard to photograph. They move quickly and are so small that you have to get in very close to get a meaningful picture. The closer you get, the shallower the depth of field, and the less tolerance for motion. I took a few photos of this one, expecting to have a few good ones. I didn't really get any good photos, and only a handful that were in focus.

In years past, I've gotten upset about the caterpillars eating my plants. Since I'm moving this year, I'm fairly apathetic. It's not that I don't care about the plants anymore -- I'll actually miss them more than anything else in Saskatoon! I've just developed a fatalistic sort of attitude. They're not my plants anymore, and I have no control over their destiny. Whoever buys this place might choose to tear up the whole yard and turn it into a parking lot or swimming pool... I sincerely hope they wouldn't, but they might. It's a depressing way of looking at things, but it helps me to better tolerate the caterpillars.

I have about a week free between finishing work here and moving to Ontario. I hope to take a lot of photos in that time. Before I can post them, I'll need to find a place to store them! In a little more than a year of serious photography, I've filled up a 250G drive with photos. I bought a 1TB drive, but it is not on cordial terms with Digikam (my photo management program). I'm going to try to keep posting things, but if I can't for a while, that's the reason.

I've experimented with black and white on most of my recent photos, but always end up preferring the color. This is a possible exception. There could very well be a B&W version of this photo appearing soon, either on Red Bubble or here.

Another Red Bubble reject taken in winter 2009. Everyone takes pictures of abandoned farm houses from the front. Often they form part of a larger prairie landscape shot. I crept behind this house, and for some reason found the "backyard" view of the house and its dilapidated shed quite compelling. I took a few pictures while standing in waist-high snow.

I adjusted the luminosity curve a bit before posting the picture here. The version that was on Red Bubble was a bit underexposed. It was hard to bring out the detail in the walls and window of the shed without blowing out the highlights in the lightest part of the sky. Back then, I knew even less about photography and my camera settings than I do now!

The only person to comment on this photo on Red Bubble said, "It looks very cold in your part of the world". I checked out his/her profile and found it filled with sandy beaches, and flora and fauna I have only seen in pictures. I don't think (s)he can even begin to imagine how cold it gets in my part of the world.

I'm not sure what these flowers are, but Google image search tells me they are probably alliums. I didn't think they were going to bloom this year, as I came home from vacation on June 5 last year and had missed their blooms altogether. They didn't even look like they were planning to produce buds on June 5 this year, but they're making up for lost time now.

This picture reminds me of a crumbling castle wall holding back a hoarde of angry peasants whilst the bourgeoise cower inside, aware that the end is nigh.