Thanks for visiting. I am a retired former computer software architect and have been taking pictures most of my life - first on film, now digitally.

 

We live in Southwest Florida, so the winter months are dedicated to photographing Florida birds while we usually spend our summers traveling to the national parks in the western United States. During the last few years, however, we have been taking more "cultural" trips to Asia, South America, Europe and Australasia.

 

Well, this COVID-19 has thrown a net over our travel plans, (local, national and international). We would love to go back to Africa. There are still cheetahs to be photographed, but who knows when!

  

My ideas:

 

On Photographic Subjects - Even a quick review of my images will reveal that I specialize in wildlife (captive and non-captive as well as Florida birds) and travel photography. Full-face close-ups (portraits), in particular, attract me. On the other hand, human and inanimate subjects are not my thing. I further specialize on the eyes of my subjects. If I do not get an excellent to outstanding image of my subject's eyes, I usually will discard that image and I will almost always spend most of my edit time selecting from dozens of images the one with the best eyes. Once I have the eyes, I will next move on to the mouth and ears in that order.

 

On Picture Editing - I am a photographer, not a photo-journalist. I always shoot in RAW (NEF), always edit (some images more than others) and convert to JPEG for publishing. I am not one of those who think that the creative effort ends when the shutter is released and thus will do anything I can to deliver what I consider my best image to the viewer. On my side I have Ansel Adams, one of the best landscape photographers ever and who, during the printing process, burned and dodged his images until he got just the prints he wanted and Leonardo da Vinci who painted and re-painted the Mona Lisa's smile until it was perfect! If it's valid for them to "edit" their initial images, it is certainly valid for anyone else to do so.

 

On Awarding - I will do my best to "Award Back" those awards given to my latest posted picture on any group. But, I will almost never "Award Back" those who by-pass my latest picture in a group to award an earlier picture which has already qualified for promotion to the next stage.

 

On Blocking - There are two sure ways of getting blocked by me: 1- Using my photostream merely to advertise yours and 2- Having a picture within one page of mine and giving me a "Fav" and not an award. How can someone like my picture well enough to give it a "Fav", but not well enough to give it an award? It makes no sense to me, yet some do. If someone can explain it to me, I welcome that explanation.

 

My Gear:

 

  

  

  

  

  

Started on July 11, 2010