Is this shot at all interesting?

We awoke to a pretty layer of snow this morning, and I'm now going through the 249 shots I took on a short outing with Anthony. I was about to add this shot to the reject pile when I had second thoughts. I converted it to grayscale, futzed with the grayscale mix in Lightroom, and now it has some appeal to me, although I can't put my finger on exactly what.

Maybe the grayscale makes it interesting? I had a grayscale shot on my Artsy-Fartsy in Kyoto af f/1.2 post, which was met with [...]

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(This post's title is one of the "cute" titles that, as I wrote yesterday, I normally try to avoid; now you know why I try to avoid them.)

As I wrote last week, Anthony has learned to ride a bike. Today we went out for a ride on the sidewalks around town, and he rode for extended periods without my direct help. I wanted to be right there, so I trotted/ran alongside him like a Secret Service agent running alongside the President's car. It was quite a workout.

Nearing home, we stopped by a park with a big oval walkway, [...]

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11 months after being announced, Sigma's 200-500mm f/2.8, 35-pound monster is finally available for purchase. When it was announced almost a year ago, I naïvely speculated that it might run $6,000, so it was a shock when I found it at a retailer in Japan for about 2.6 million yen (US $25,000). I haven't seen it in a US retailer yet, but I doubt it'll be substantially less.

I wouldn't have gotten one at $6,000, but at $25,000, all I can say is "wow", and note that my birthday is coming up....

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I'm occasionally asked about my photo and blog-writing workflow, and having just been asked twice in as many days, I thought I'd just go ahead and post about it.

Unlike this post, most of my non-technical posts have a lot of photos, either to tell a story (like this) or to just share pretty photos (like this). In either case, I start with the photos.

Photo Workflow

My photo workflow is pretty much the same whether it's a subject I intend to blog about or not...

I download the tracklog from my GPS unit to my PC.

I transfer [...]

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On the last day of our New Year's trip to the Amami Islands in southern Japan (all Amami posts), we went for a canoe ride among the Mangroves that grow in one spot, on the mid-eastern coast of the main Amami Ooshima island, where fresh water from a river mixes with the salt water of the East China Sea.

Fumie took on the role of Guest Services, and I was Propulsion and Documentation. (That is, she held Anthony while I paddled and occasionally tried to take a picture with one hand while trying to not drop the oar with the [...]

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