Back in action.

A Family of California Quail



An Aster in Bloom

I've been busy these past few months getting myself ready for gastric bypass surgery; it's been intense. The upshot is that I'm not going to be ready until I lose down to 500 pounds. But my mother, who's 69 and weighs around 310, WILL be going through gastric surgery either later THIS month or early in October. She's going for the sleeve gastrectomy where they narrow the stomach dramatically, but don't do any re-structuring of the intestines. I, of course, will do everything I can to support her in her efforts to adjust to life after gastric surgery as I'll be seeing what adjustments I have to make when I have it.

Along the way, I went ahead and purchased an Olympus Evolt E-300 back in January and I've been exploring digital photography using a digital SLR. Wow! Having RAW image format and the ability to change lenses makes quite a difference. However, I lust after a 10 megapixel camera instead of the 8 megapixels that the E-300 offers. And the Canon EOS 400D, also known as the Digital Rebel XTi, both offers 10MP, but it also has a wider variety of 3rd-party lenses available. So I'm going to switch.

In the meantime, I've decided to post two of the images I've taken with my E-300. I've formatted them in 1600x1000 pixel format which makes them suitable for widescreen monitors. Feel free to download them to use as wallpaper.

The first one shown at the top of the post is of a family of California Quail that comes through our back yard from time to time.

The second one is of an Aster that is planted outside the front door of our home. I loved the contrast between the color of the blossom and the dried base of a withered blossom.

More later.