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I was inspired by the sunshine and this little chirping cardinal to get outside and shoot me some birds.  I crept down the driveway with my 300mm to nab the shot below then remembered a little thing called "trap focus".

Trap focus is when you set up your camera in such a way that you trick it into becoming a motion sensor.  There's a different combination of settings for every camera but most DSLRs should be able to do it (google it), all you need is a tripod, a cable release, and patience. Set your focus on a branch that a bird is likely to land on (two words: peanut butter) then move that focus point into the (out of focus) area where your bird will be.  Set your shutter to rapid fire, lock your cable release, vacate the area and make a mojito (ohh, I can't wait for summer).  When a bird decides to land in the focus area the autofocus recognizes the in focus bird and fires away.  Shazam!

It becomes harder when you have only a single bird in your yard and you scared him away when you set up your camera.  Alas, no captures to prove this technique works but trust me, I've done it before.  An active nest in late afternoon is almost a sure thing or you could just get a birdfeeder.

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This is a 14 frame stitch panoramic of the ravine from yesterday. The stitching is flawless with no distortion so my homemade pan head worked but the exposure sucks.  It's hard enough to get one exposure perfect but to expose 14 images evenly and seamlessly stitch them together into one good exposure is, well, not easy.  Here it is anyway.

The UPS man brought me my Vivitar 285HV flash today and will be taking it back with him tomorrow.  I played with it for a while this evening and only got frustrated.  It's fully manual and I've never done any real flash photography so the learning curve is very steep.  I'll be exchanging it for a dedicated  iTTL flash, so it will actually "talk" to my camera and learn flash from there.

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I walked back into the woods across the street to photograph an old broken bridge that has been rotting there since the prison was a college.  Theres a nice ravine along the way so, big surprise, I decided to give a panorama a go. These files will take a long time for my old computer to stitch so they may be loaded another day if it can handle it.  Here's a single frame of it.

I finally arrived at the bridge and it was gone!  It had been ancient and unwalkable even when I was a kid.  It had taken a few blows from fallen trees and the middle had collapsed but there was something there to photograph before.  Now it's an unrecognizable pile of wood.  This really bums me out.  I grew up playing in these woods and the bridge was always there, daring us to cross though none of us ever got very far before we chickened out.  Here's a couple shots I took of it in October '08.

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I took a drive back to that farm I shot yesterday.  Took more of the same shots during pre-sunset, I'd really like to go into the pasture but I don't know the property owner.  It's outside of  Troyer's Antiques outside of Meadville.  I'll have to stop when they're open to ask around.

I officially tried out my homemade panoramic tripod attachment.  Tada, it works!
Here's some interesting 3 frame HDR panoramas (or verti-rama).

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Last night, the highschool-style formal dance of my wife's medical school ,aka: "LEPROM", was a surprisingly fun, albeit long, night.  Not without much personal protest we ended the night at some chump-filled dance club called Boardwalk.  Not really my scene and now I have to dry clean my suit.

Overall I enjoyed watching my wife have a great time with all the awesome people she has gotten so close to since starting school 9ish months ago.  It was nice to be part of the crew for a change instead of just hearing about all of her friends.

And the wife looked smokin' hot. (yeah, I know, the dreaded "pop up" flash shadow ruins this awesome portrait.   My new flash will arrive this week)

I spent the majority of the day building this panoramic tripod head.  It is a complicated technique but simple design.   I won't go way into it but it just means my large scale landscapes should definitely improve.

Plus I found a new HDR program that looks promising for more realistic images.  I haven't done any HDR lately beacause it seems like it's way overdone now and sticks out like a sore thumb.  This program seems to do it the right way.  Here's my first try with it. It's not a scene that necessarily needed HDR but I just randomly pulled over and shot it when I was on my way back from the Home Depot.