Wow, looks at those smiles! 

(If you have Piclens, click the bottom left hand corner to jump to the virtual gallery.) It was tough choosing under 100 pictures from nearly 4,000 that Curtis and I took on our trip. Click the photo above to jump to an album with of a few of our favorites shots. In case you missed it….you can read more about the trip starting here.

My neighbor is in the Navy and brought over some passes for Seafair again this year and asked if I would get some pictures of their boat. The Navy sponsored a boat and painted it like the Blue Angels…cool idea! I’ve posted a few shots (taken Sunday) in this post and added them to my Seafair gallery. I didn’t get a shot of the Hoss boat flipping, dangit. It was on the other side of the track. I need to make friends with somebody on the east end of the lake to get the best shots of the Blue Angels…or somebody with a boat. With all the smoke and water vapor, the pictures really come out hazy from clear across the lake.

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The cost to print photos on your own printer is higher than you probably realize. The money spent on a new printer is peanuts compared to the money that will flow out of your bank account for ink. A set of ink cartridges for an Epson R1900 printer will set you back $125. You’ll get about 40 8×10 prints, or $3 each. Add the cost of premium paper (often $1 per sheet) and you are spending what a professional printing service charges (Shutterfly.com charges $4 for an 8×10). When you consider paper jams, clogged ink heads, color tone mismatches, several hundred dollars for a printer, and the hassle of dealing with another computer peripheral… it makes more sense to use Shutterfly.

If you are not technical and not printing several pages of pictures weekly, I suggest you bypass a photo printer. You’ll save money, frustration, get better results, and you can stop reading right now and go do something more enjoyable. Did you know a simple cleaning cycle on your printer can drain 1/10^th of the ink in your tanks? The truth is, once you add up the costs, photo printing companies are cheaper and easier.

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(Click the Orca to go to my wildlife photo album)

For three years now we have spent Memorial weekend camping at the San Juan County park on the San Juan Island. These islands are a short ferry ride out of Anacortes, WA and are excellent for whale watching. The first two years, several pods of whales swam right past the beach 2-3 times each day. I started to think that it was normal and expected the same thing this year but it didn’t happen. Luckily I had booked us a whale watching trip (we had never done this before) and on our 3 hour boat ride we saw plenty of Orcas and I was able to get pictures that were much better than I had in previous years.

If you want to camp on the islands, you have to make reservations early. Every year I call the day the reservation line opens (usually around St. Patrick’s day). This year I had 2 phones on redial and I sat for an hour and a half dialing constantly before I finally got through (and the camp was already half filled for Memorial Weekend). I know one of these years I won’t end up so lucky and the family will be disappointed.

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(Click to go to the the Gallery where you can see the full sized images)

Kim got a new kitten and the kids brought her over for a day of kitty-sitting. It was tiny and cute…and since I put off taking pictures of Elphie too long (our cat is no longer a kitten), I decided I better shoot now or never. Her name is Bella and she loved napping in Sandi’s purse. She lives with a German Shepherd 50X her size. From what I understand, they get along well. A picture of the two of them together would be interesting.

If you have the Piclens plugin you can walk through a virtual gallery of all of my pictures by clicking the play button that shows up on the bottom left hand corner when you hover your pointer over the ram on the left. Click right on the play button, not just the picture, and you will find yourself in a massive virtual gallery. But if you haven’t installed the plugin, you’ll need do that first. Note: this is the best way to browse my photos. If you don’t have the plug in, it’s fast, easy, and way cool. Many sites (Google and Flickr are two of many) support it. Follow the this link and click “download” to install it (you may need to answer “yes” to a prompt asking if you are sure you want to run it). You’ll need to close explorer and restart it it and you’ll be on board! Come back to my site and follow the ram inside! Once you are there, roll your mouse wheel to zoom in and out, click a picture to focus on it, and click and drag to move through the wall of photos.

I took this pictures several years ago in our backyard. Last year I hung it in cubicle at work (along with many others). A week or so later it was gone. I reprinted it, a little bit larger this time, and put it back. Within days somebody had once again taken it down. I printed an 8×10 and hung it further back in my cube, thinking it would be safer further from the hallway. No such luck. Once again, somebody stole it.

I don’t know if somebody is freaked out by it or what, but it irrigates me that someone at my office thinks they can just take my stuff. If they have a problem with the picture, they should ask me to remove it. If they would like a copy, I’d be more than happy to print them one. My buddy at work says I should set up a webcam and us a motion sensor program to find out who it is. I think I might do it. Haha, then I should post the video here!

I took this shot a few years ago. Any guesses?