busy weekend!

got to see part of the jamboree here at home before the rains came down.. big rains… that gallery is HERE

THen Saturday at the Museum for a great time. Between Danny and Jen visiting, Connie getting all four engines started, and the
pictures we did of Larry and Dick in the cockpit being presented, we had a grand time at the AHMs Salute To Avation.

and then we played tourist. Union Station is always a favorite stop for Danny and I, and we went to Kaufmann Gardens, and downtown Excelsior Springs for the tail end of the bar-b-que celebration. All in all, a memorable weekend!

Enjoy the galleries!

Attended the Powell Gardens Butterfly Festival again on Thursday.
Having been there 7 yrs in a row, now, I had a short list of things to see and do – I wanted a blue morpho with it’s wings open –

and the best picture I could of the checkerboard eyes of a Julia Heliconian:

The rest of the exotic animals were a bit scarce. The galery is here

Terrie and I then went to the Perseid watch at Martha Lafite Thompson Nature Sanctuary.
I set up the cameras, but actually got the best pictures when I got home!
I”m going to put them in a movie, and see how it comes out…

a rare day in front of the computer.
list as long as my arm – things to do.

Got the MMN portraits done last night.. I have to process them and get them where the Admins can get to them;

I got a ‘card reader’ yesterday.. one into which you can plug any SATA drive. I have a 1.5Tb drive for photo backups. I have three drives to backup, one for sports, which needs to be clean before the school year starts next week, one for aviation, and one for WickedFlea. Having them all backed up and sitting in the closet will be a comfort;

I did a time lapse video at Crepes on the Square in Liberty and I need to get that processed and put to music and onto DVD;

I need to get my hours set out for MMN, and the paperwork for one of my Capstone projects; when I go to PG tomorrow I’ll take the butterfly book I did with Linda Williams and Betsy Bitros help and get Mr Branhagan to sign off on it.

Always in the background is improving the PP presentation for the Creative Photography Classes for Naturalists. Stacy mentioned last night that it might even be good enough to be done at the Discovery Center downtown!

and – joy b joy! – a Cardinal game at 115!

…. is the sound when I jumped into the facebook pond. Danny has been after me for two years and I finally went all in.
I hope it means more connection with people to see our photos, but right now it just seems like one more chore!!

The MkIII is off to the shop, the FEL kept flashing the flash with only touching the button in autofocus or manual, either one,
and that wont work.

Busy week coming up, including shooting the Master Naturalists class portraits for the yearbook, Tuesday night at Anita Gorman Discovery center.
Tuesday morning, weather permitting, will be Master Gardener time at Watkins Mill Demo Gardens. That is a great bunch of people with whom to while away a couple of hours in the dirt!

Thursday is the annual Photographers Day at Powell Gardens. I’ve been there the last 7 yrs in a row.. which either makes me a committed shooter of butterflys, or someone trying to get it right for the first time –
you can decide after you see the pictures !!

I love living here. My wife has turned our home and gardens into a showplace, a lovely, living place of beauty.

I spent an hour outside this morning, before the awful heat descended on us, and shot the blue dasher, the althea, the mandevilla, wildlife around the pond…

I put a gallery up at the WickedFlea galleries. The lessons Jeff has taught makes this kind of work awfully easy, compared to the hard stuff of shooting and culling ball games.

I was excited to see this:

… an eastern tiger swallowtail, on one of the butterfly bushes Terrie put by the pond for exactly that reason.

It also attracted this:

an inappropriately named Common Buckeye. Beauty like this is not common at all.

Tuesday, July 13. I got up early and left home to drive to Omaha (about 3 hours) and took the family to zoo. I have loved that facility for years, and it had been too long since I had been there. Got there about 9 and we took the kids to b’fast, and headed out to the zoo.

We knew it was gonna be hot day, humid, and I made sure we all stayed watered up.
One of the first things you note about that zoo (as opposed to the zoo here in KC) is the large number of donors named on various facilities: Hubbard Gorilla, Scott Aquarium, Kiewit, etc. The Lied Jungle, the Desert Dome, the IMAX. It was a grand day, heat notwithstanding.
The gallery I put up at WickedFlea is here, but even my MkIII could not capture all the fun we had.
We rode the skylift over the elephant and rhino enclosures. One of those lucky chances put Alexander and I over the RR track just as the UP manned steam engine came by. The Aviary is larger than the one at the STL zoo, believe it or not and shooting flying birds was pretty easy there.
There are avocets, flamingoes, roseate spoonbills, snowy egrets. I was particularly happy with this one:

Birds that size with legs that long and spindly do not look right in trees. But there they are.