(Sitting in the back of the class while Kimberly's teaching and I'm cranking through my massive backlog of blog posts.)

  Inside a lave tube with light streaming through ceiling holes and through the dust.

After SQL Connections at the start of April in Las Vegas we drove across to San Diego for a friend's birthday party. We decided to bring all our camera gear along and drive through the Mojave National Preserve, renting a 4x4 so we could go off into the dirt roads where necessary.

It's a pretty cool place - vast, of course - and one of the few times I've stood and had tens of miles of flat ground around me in all directions with nothing except scrub bushes and a small road, and deep, deep blue sky overhead.

There's a good PDF map of the Preserve on the National Park Service website here and I recommend perusing their site before going.

We entered the Preserve just off I-15 west of Vegas at a place call Nipton and headed down to the information center at Hole-In-The-Wall. This was a 20 mile drive on a dirt road, great fun in the 4x4 with wheel ruts throwing the SUV around (I love driving off-road, and fast if possible :-). Lots of bird life around and some ground squirrels too. At Hole-In-The-Wall (named after the more famous bandit hide-out in Wyoming) there are cool rock formations and rock-climbing routes. We drove back up to the main road and headed along to Kelso Depot, which used to be a major locomotive depot for the Union Pacific Railroad during WWII. It provided extra locomotives for the ore trains heading east - now it's a really small town, but has a great little restaurant in the information center. Try the chili - it's excellent. We then headed back north to I-15 through the Cinder Cone Lava Beds - lots of giant lava flows and cinder cones from volcanic vents. Turning off onto a tiny road (Aiken Mine Road) we headed out into the lava to find a lava tube that you can get down into and explore - this was fabulous and the highlight of the day for sure. It's marked on the map I linked to above.

After the party, the next day we drove down to San Diego airport and stopped at the flying park north of the city. This is a flying club and launch area set on high sea cliffs over the Pacific with excellent thermals for hang-gliding and parascending. At one point I counted over 30 flyers in the air. If we'd had more time we'd have signed up for some tandem flights.

All in all a great road trip, albeit a little short. We're going to make a point of driving to more places in future - flying makes you miss so much!

All photos were taken with a Canon 5D Mark II with a 24-105mm f/4L lens shooting fully manual. It took me a while to figure out, but once you have the shutter speed/focal-length/'film' speed triangle worked out in your head, you'll never go back from fully manual control of your camera.

Click on the photos for a 1024x768 version. Full-size versions available on request.

Below: Preserve entrance sign with scrub to the horizon and then mountains; abandoned cabin in a small homestead in the hamlet of Cima.

Below: Kimberly in front of the rocks at Hole-In-The-Wall; a cactus about to flower - we were just a bit too early for the flowering to be in full swing.

Below: the main cavern inside the lave tube. The light was just incredible, with powerful sun rays coming through the dust inside the cavern. It kind of reminded me of the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy goes down into a chamber in the Egyptian city and a ray of light comes through a skylight, through a gem he's holding and lights up a location on a map of the city. The second photo is of a smaller skylight with a really intense beam of light. Just stunning.

Below: the blocked-up entrance to an old mineshaft - maybe part of the old abandoned Aiken Mine?

Below: flyers over the Pacific just north of San Diego. The second photo has 8 flyers in!

I have a day off today at SQL Connections while Kimberly and Jonathan educate the crowds about SQL Server 2012. I thought I'd mess around with my camera (we're driving through the Mojave Desert next weekend so have all our gear with us) and see what I could get. We're up on floor 38 of part of the MGM Grand and have a balcony (with a scarily flimsy barrier before a 450 ft drop!). Being this high opens up all kinds of opportunities for cool photos.

Here's a wild fisheye view looking out over the airport. 1/400s at f/16, ISO 320, shooting fully manual with Canon 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye at 10mm and Canon 5D Mark II. Click for a 1572x1048 version (800K).

I love the effects I can get with this lens - I think the contrails look really cool!

 

(A pair of Much-Desired Flabellinas mating.)

We spent most of January in Indonesia and as part of the trip we spent 11 days on the fabulous Paradise Dancer live-aboard dive boat diving in the most bio-diverse waters in the world. The reefs were really healthy and there was an overwhelming abundance of life under the waves. I can strongly recommend the Aggressor and Dancer live-aboard boats!

In this post I want to show you the creatures that I like seeing the most - nudibranchs (sea slugs) and flatworms. I photographed an incredible 61 separate species on 36 dives - a record that's going to be hard to beat! Here are my favorite 20 from more than 2000 shots.

Click each image for a 1024x768 version. Let me know if you'd like a full-size copy of any for a desktop background. Enjoy!

Left to right below: Thysanozoon nigropapillosum (Yellowspot Flatworm) and Acanthozoon sp. (Papillate Flatworm).

Left to right below: Long-Cirri Phyllodesmium and Black-Margined Glossodoris.

Left to right below: Tyron's Resbecia mating and Serena's Notodoris.

Left to right below: Giant Hypselodoris and Willan's Chromodoris.

Left to right below: Elegant Phyllidia and Giant Hypselodoris just about to mate.

Left to right below: Serpent Pteraeolidia and Thysanozoon nigropapillosum (Yellowspot Flatworm) free-swimming on a night dive.

Left to right below: Dusky Nembrotha and Pseudobiceros bedfordi (Elegant Flatworm).

Left to right below: Anne's Chromodoris and Loch's Chromodoris.

Left to right below: Celestial Phyllidia mating and Purple-Edged Ceratosoma.

Below: Scalloped Ceratosoma.

We decided to escape the wintery weather in Seattle this year by coming to Indonesia for January (our third trip here), including a long dive trip in the remote Raja Ampat region near Papua. Before heading out there we spent a few days in Bali and yesterday we hooked up with our good friend Ketut to drive around some of the places we haven't seen (we've been here a few times before). We decided to head out to the western portion of the island where Ketut's village is, and after visiting his family we headed up into the mountains to check out the rice fields and the incredibly lush and verdant foliage. Btw, the monkeys are Macaques and hang out by the side of the road on the way down the mountain.

All the photos were taken with a Canon EOS5D on aperture priority with an EF 24-105mm f/4.0L IS lens (except the one obvious fisheye shot which was using an 8-15mm f/4.0L fisheye).

Click each photo for a 1024x683 enlargement.

Enjoy!

(2-foot wide Octopus during a night dive off Turneffe Caye, Belize)

Kimberly and I headed to Belize in November for our first dive trip in well over a year (we're not letting that happen again!) and spent a week on the Belize Aggressor III liveaboard dive boat. Doing liveaboards is the only way to dive - eat, sleep, and dive for 7 days! I did a bunch of courses during the week, including my very-long-overdue Nitrox and Advanced Open Water certifications, and 26 dives to make it up to 122 total dives. I managed to tick something off my bucket-list - diving the famous Blue Hole (down to 140 feet!). I also took a lot of photos!

Here I present my favorites from the week. Click on a photo for a 1024x768 enlargement.

Left to right below: Lizardfish; 3-ft Grouper who liked to be stroked.

Left to right below: Kimberly with her new camera rig; 5-ft barrel sponges.

Left to right below: mated pair of Banded Coral Shrimp; very small (1-inch long) Secretary Blennie that Kimberly found.

Left to right below: juvenile File Fish (about 2 inches) during a night dive; Brittle Star during a night dive.

Left to right below: Basket Star during a night dive - these guys are fun to feed by holding a light just by them and all the little worms and critters in the water swim to the light and and the Basket Star catches them; Brittle Stars in a barrel sponge during a night dive.

Left to right below: Large (9-inch shell) hermit crab; White-Speckled Nudibranch (about two inches long) I was lucky enough to spot in a sea-grass and soft coral forest.

Left to right below: Swimming with 8-ft Black-Tipped Reef Sharks - we really were that close!; looking up at a big shark.

Left to right below: the same shark again; swimming with a school of Jacks.

Left to right below: Speckled Moray warning me off; large (8-ft) Green Moray.

Left to right below: Now the Green Moray has seen me - Morays have terrible eyesight; a Jawfish - these guys live in little burrows in the sand and are very shy - I spent 1/2 hour lying on the sand waiting for this shot.

Left to right below: Lobster during a night dive - with mood lighting; solitary Banded Coral Shrimp during a night dive.

Left to right below: 4-inch Large-Eye Shrimp burrowing into the sand during a night dive; Speckled Toadfish during a night dive - these are really weird looking fish - very flat and wide - and extremely rare!

Left to right below: Octopus (same one as the picture at the start of the post) during a night dive.

Back in May when we were out in Chicago teaching one of our classes we had a spare day so we drove an hour west into the Illinois countryside to the absolutely excellent Illinois Railway Museum.

I've always been a big train fan, stemming from the days back in the early '80s when I used to take the train back and forth to Glasgow every day on the way to school. I think many people are really little boys at heart when it comes to trains - trains never lose their excitement.

We spent about 1/2 a day wandering around their huge collection and chatting with some of the volunteers responsible for maintaining the rolling stock and engines. Of course I took a whole bunch of photos and I'm sure many of you will enjoy them.

Click on the photos for a 1024x768 enlargement.

Enjoy!

Earlier today I took my Mum and Dad to walk around the beautiful Japanese Garden at the Washington Park Arboretum (part of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens) and I took along my camera to play around with leaves and light.

Below are a selection of photos, all taken with a Canon 5D Mark II plus a Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens, mostly in Aperture Priority mode, some with manual focus.

Click the image for a 1600x1200 version - especially for the leaves - should make good desktop wallpaper :-)

Enjoy! Let me know if you like them.

Back in April Kimberly and I flew to Munich to present a 2.5 day SQL Server track at the 2011 Microsoft-internal conference for the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) Premier Field Engineers. We had a great time presenting and after recovering from nasty colds we went wandering about in Munich city center the day before we flew home. It's been almost six months since I posted any travel photos here (I have a bit of a backlog) so I thought I'd post some of these.

Click the images for larger versions - these are 20 images from a much large album I uploaded to Facebook (see here).

All photos were taken with a Canon 5d Mark II with a 24-105 f/4 L IS lens. It's remarkable how much light the full-frame CCD captures compared to a good point-and-shoot - especially noticeable in the dim interior of churches.

Although I've bounced in Frankfurt airport many times, this was the first real trip to Germany for me (country #24 for me - aiming for 100 before I die). We're heading back again in a couple of weeks for another conference and this time we'll be hiring a car and driving around to see some scenery and castles (and take more photos!).

As with most European countries, the things I like most are the history and the architecture. In the absence of castles and other strongholds in the place I'm visiting, these are usually best felt from visiting cathedrals and churches - so that's what we did.

I also like beer and sausages, which is handy because that's one of the best combinations to get in Munich. We're sitting in the Muschelsaal (Shell Hall) of the Augustiner Bräu, Munich's oldest brewery that was founded in 1328 by Augustinian monks. I'm drinking their Doppelbock (I think) and eating their Sausage Special with sauerkraut - yummy!

Left to right below are the interiors of the Frauenkirche (the largest gothic cathedral in southern Germany, built from 1468), Michaelskirche (built from 1585), and Peterskirche (Munich's oldest public building, built in the 12th Century).

Left to right below, details from the cathedral: two figures from the tomb of the Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV who died in 1347, plus a medieval tomb marker.

Left to right below are a carved wooden screen from the cathedral, and a cuckoo-clock shop. Yes, we bought some souvenirs, but not a cuckoo clock.

Left to right, another view of the fabulous interior of the Michaelskirche, and a 1000-yr old reliquary.

Below are shots from the crypt under the Michaelskirche, which reminded me very strongly of the Kaisergruft (Imperial Crypt) in Vienna. Kimberly's straight in front of me.

Below are an exterior shot of the Augustiner Bräu and the Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall, built from 1867). In the tower is a clock that re-enacts two 16th century stories every day at 11am.

Below are two reliquaries from the Peterskirche.

Below are two shots of the Marienplatz (St. Mary's Square), one of the central city squares since 1158. On the left is looking from the west, with the Neues Rathaus on the left, the Heiliggesitkirche (red spire), the Peterskirche (green spire) and the Mariensäule (column with a statue of the Virgin Mary). On the right is looking from the east, with the Neues Rathaus on the right with twin towers of the Frauenkirche behind it. 

Below is Kimberly at a flower market in the east end of the Marienplatz.

Hope you enjoyed these!

This is the last (and longest)  post of my bald eagle shots from last week in Haines, Alaska. I'm calling this one "the many faces of bald eagles". When you spend a lot of time watching them close up, you realize just how varied their expressions can be and there's a temptation to anthropomorphize them.

All photos were taken in RAW at 5184x3456 with my Canon 7D, additional details given with each photo. The photos shown here are as taken, no zooming or cropping, with slight black/white setting in Lightroom. You can see in the shot of Kimberly below just how close we could get. You don't need camoflauge clothing and lens wraps to get good wildlife shots (I think that stuff looks daft), you just need patience and an understanding of the wildlife behavior. We sat in the same small area for 6 hours a day and waited for the eagles to come to us.

Click on all photos for a 1024x768 enlargement. Full size images available on request. Be warned if you're squeamish - a few of the shots have half-eaten fish in.

Above: 1/2000sec at f/4.0, ISO 200. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod.

Left to right below: 1/4000sec at f/4.0, ISO 400. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod; 1/5000sec at f/4.0, ISO 400. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod; 1/2000sec at f/4.0, ISO 400. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod.

Left to right below: 1/640sec at f/4.0, ISO 400. EF300mm f/2.8L IS lens, handheld; 1/400sec at f/4.0, ISO 400. EF400mm f/4 DO IS lens, handheld; 1/1000sec at f/4.0, ISO 800. EF400mm f/4 DO IS lens, handheld.

Left to right below: 1/60sec at f/16, ISO 200. EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens at 70mm, handheld; 1/320sec at f/4.0, ISO 800. EF400mm f/4 DO IS lens, handheld; 1/250sec at f/4.0, ISO 200. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod.

Left to right below: 1/320sec at f/4.0, ISO 200. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod; 1/1250sec at f/4.0, ISO 200. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod;  1/1250sec at f/4.0, ISO 200. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod.

Left to right below: 1/1250sec at f/4.0, ISO 200. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod; 1/1600sec at f/4.0, ISO 200. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod; 1/500sec at f/4.0, ISO 800. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod.

Left to right below: 1/6400sec at f/4.0, ISO 800. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod; 1/4000sec at f/4.0, ISO 400. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod; 1/4000sec at f/4.0, ISO 400. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod.

Left to right below: 1/2500sec at f/4.0, ISO 400. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod; 1/1600sec at f/4.0, ISO 400. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod; 1/1600sec at f/2.8, ISO 800. EF300mm f/2.8L IS lens, handheld.

And that's the end of the phot blog posts from last week. Hope you've enjoyed the shots as much as I enjoyed taking them and reviewing them.

And thanks for all the kinds words in your comments!

Two more blog posts to go - this one has my favorite flight shots from the week.

All photos were taken in RAW at 5184x3456 with my Canon 7D, additional details given with each photo. The photos shown here are as taken, no zooming or cropping, with slight black/white setting in Lightroom.

Click on all photos for a 1024x768 enlargement. Full size images available on request.

Above: 1/1600sec at f/2.8, ISO 800. EF300mm f/2.8L IS lens, handheld. My favorite flight shot of the entire week.

Left to right below: 1/1600sec at f/4.0, ISO 400. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod; 1/640sec at f/4.0, ISO 800. EF400mm f/4 DO IS lens, on tripod; 1/640sec at f/4.0, ISO 800. EF400mm f/4 DO IS lens, on tripod.

Left to right below: 1/800sec at f/4.0, ISO 800. EF400mm f/4 DO IS lens, handheld; 1/3200sec at f/4.0, ISO 400. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod; 1/1600sec at f/4.0, ISO 400. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod.

Left to right below: 1/1000sec at f/4.0, ISO 400. EF500mm f/4L IS lens, on tripod; 1/1250sec at f/2.8, ISO 800. EF300mm f/2.8L IS lens, handheld; 1/1600sec at f/2.8, ISO 800. EF300mm f/2.8L IS lens, handheld.

Left to right below: 1/1600sec at f/2.8, ISO 800. EF300mm f/2.8L IS lens, handheld; 1/1600sec at f/2.8, ISO 800. EF300mm f/2.8L IS lens, handheld; 1/2000sec at f/2.8, ISO 800. EF300mm f/2.8L IS lens, handheld.

Left to right below: 1/1600sec at f/2.8, ISO 800. EF300mm f/2.8L IS lens, handheld; 1/2000sec at f/2.8, ISO 800. EF300mm f/2.8L IS lens, handheld; 1/1600sec at f/2.8, ISO 800. EF300mm f/2.8L IS lens, handheld.

Hope you enjoy these!

Today we got really up-close-and-personal with the bald eagles up here in Haines, AK. It was a toasty 22F out on the river delta but the light was stunning, coming directly from behind us over the mountains, but without being too glaring.

Click on all photos for 1024x768 enlargements. 

This was taken with my Canon EOS 5D Mark II using a Canon EF500mm f/4.0L IS lens, 1/2000sec at f/4.0, ISO 400.

This morning before we left there was a pretty spectacular sunrise, as these two shots below show, taken from the front porch of the B&B we're staying at. Both were taken on the 5D using a Canon EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II lens, 1/400sec at f/2.8, ISO 200 at 200mm.

In the morning I was trying for some portrait shots (like the one at the top of this post). I have far too many to post as the eagles have a huge variety of facial expressions, but the two below are pretty indicative - grumpy and aggressive! These two shots are both with my 7D and the 500mm f/4L IS lens, with 1/320sec and 1/400sec at f/4.0, ISO 400, respectively. If you go to the higher resolution image of the screaming bird, you can see a puff of breath just above the right-hand of the bird's head - it was *cold*!

In the afternoon I was messing around with reflections on the river, trying to be artistic, which involved hand-holding the camera and wading into the river to get close to the birds... these three were taken with the 5D and an EF300mm f/2.8L IS lens. From left to right the exposures are 1/1000sec, 1/2500sec, 1//800sec at f/4.0, ISO 400, respectively.

I just love the middle shot above as the eagle swooped over the river.

More shots to come tomorrow hopefully - another great day in the weather forecast!

This week Kimberly and I are in Haines, AK honing our photography skills using the numerous bald eagles as subjects. We're up here with photo-pro and friend Jon Cornforth, getting excellent advice. This week we've been taking the best photos of our lives thanks to Jon's tips and tricks!

A bunch of you at the conferences over the last few weeks asked for us to post photos so this is the first short post with some cool images. The eagles up here are amazing! There's a late run of coho salmon in the Chilkat River and the eagles gorge on them, congregating about 20 miles north of Haines on Highway 7, not far from the Canadian border into the Yukon Territory. They're so lazy - they wait for a raven or seagull to pull the dying salmon out of the river and then displace them to feed.

All these were shot with my Canon EOS 7D. Although it has a 1.6x crop-factor compared to my full-frame 5D Mark II, it can shoot 7 frames per second compared to the 5D's 5 frames per second, which makes it better for stopping the action when shooting wildlife. For all these shots I used a Canon EF 400mm f/4.0 IS USM lens, giving an effective focal length of 640mm (with the 1.6 multiplier from using the 7D). I'll post some other shots from later in the week using super-sharp 500mm f/4.0L IS and 300 mm f/2.8L IS lenses. I was shooting in aperture-priority and playing with the ISO setting as the light changed to get a fast enough shutter speed to stop the action, and we'd also micro-adjusted the auto-focus of each lens with each camera body for optimal image sharpness. We had to stop by around 2.30pm as the higher ISO setting to compensate for the low light makes the images too grainy.

Click on each photo below to get a 1024x768 version.

The photo on the left below is a classic portrait shot. This was taken almost at the end of the usable-light portion of the day and was 1/400sec at ISO 800. The photo on the right is of two eagles fighting while one is displacing another at a salmon. Check out how one of them is lying on its back with its claws in the air so it doesn't get attacked. The shot was 1/1600sec at ISO 800, with good light early in the morning.

The sequence below is of a juvenile coming in to land on a log. These were again taken towards the end of the day when the light was fading. They're all 1/400sec at ISO 1600, which is why they look a tiny bit grainy. These were shot without using a tripod so I couldd more easily follow the birds flying into the area. I'm particularly pleased that I captured this sequence!

Let me know if you enjoy these - I'll post some more later in the week!