Mishaps

One of the disadvantages to photographing storms is wind. When you use a wooden camera with a bellows, that's particularly dangerous... this weekend, while racing to pack up the camera before the storm hit, a gust of wind blew it over, shattering the ground glass and jamming the focussing rail. The body took a beating also, but I suppose it's a testament to the strength of the construction that it held up as well as it did.

Fortunately, Ebony is known for doing as good a job on repairs as they do in building the cameras in the first place, but unfortunately, they're in Japan, so it's going to be a while before I get it back. And it will probably be a fairly expensive repair, unfortunately.

Getting Competitive

This image won third place in the North Bethesda Camera Club open competition in May. For a larger version, follow the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/Tamerlin/SpringSmokies/photo#5001921687866376210

Birds Not in Flight

And sometimes it seems like they know that they're being photographed; this guy kept moving around every time we got a lock on him. Of course, since I was stuck with a shutter speed that ranged between half a second and several seconds, his (her?) constant motion lead to some blur no matter how carefully I focussed.

Oh well... he (or she) was a very elegant bird, even if I didn't get a particularly good photograph that night.