Hobby naturalist with a camera, documenting whatever I encounter. Avid birder, also bumbling in butterflies and odonata (dragonflies, damselflies). I love mountains although northeastern Illinois is clearly the wrong place to enjoy them.

My current primary camera is a Nikon Coolpix P950, an advanced somewhat light weight 16 Megapixel point-and-shoot with an 83x optical zoom. In 2023 it replaced a Nikon Coolpix P520 (18 Megapixel, 42x optical zoom), which had an unfortunate encounter with a concrete floor. I find this type of camera a nice compromise between image quality and portability. The P520 let me photograph insects from ca. 6 ft (1.8 m) away without disturbing them, and it gives me enough pixels that photos of even fairly distant birds still look presentable on screen after cropping. Unfortunately, the P950 requires a slightly longer distance even when only half-way zoomed in, thus losing some of the advantage with insects. But its longer zoom more than makes up in bird photography. I occasionally also shoot with my smartphone, including some takes through the spotting scope. From 2004 to 2013 I used a Kodak EasyShare DX6490, an older point-and-shoot with a 10x optical zoom and fewer megapixels than the Nikon. The site also includes a few old photos that were scanned from prints and slides.