2008 October 8, from Santa Cruz CA

Hello, Everybody,

I usually don't photograph garden flowers, but the new slideshow
starts with a couple from Portland which I thought were especially
pretty and interesting. Fortunately my friend Cheri Tuttle-Callis near
Santa Cruz is a helpful expert when I can't find flowers in my books. 

Portland is also very good for birding, with many nearby marshy and
woodsy areas with birding paths. On what was probably my sixth visit
to Ridgefield NWR, just north of Portland in Washington, I was lucky to
be focused on a Red-tailed Hawk perched on a snag just when it
launched I was able to track it.

After 3 years of lugging around my 22-pound rig of 500mm lens,
tripod and gimbal head, which does take terrific pictures but which
is a real chore logistically, I decided to see if I could find a better
balance between picture quality and ease of use. I bought the
300mm version of that lens, still the same premium lens quality and
image stabilized, but which weighs only 3 pounds and which is
reasonable to carry on just a padded neck strap. I love it! I'm not
missing the greater 'reach' of the 500mm much, and it is so great to
carry the camera with mounted lens in the truck ready for
immediate use and to hike with it so much more easily. I suspect I'll
find myself using the 'big glass' so seldom that maybe the time has
come to put in on eBay.

I returned to the blind at Cabin Lake for the fourth time, and found
the swarms of Pinyon Jays which EV and I had seen a few weeks
earlier. Something new was the Golden-crowned Sparrow, quite
common in the far west, but only the second time I've seen it.

Near the border between Oregon and California I visited part of the
Klamath Marsh NWR, and felt lucky to get some nice pictures of the
very reclusive Marsh Wren, often heard, seldom seen, and hard to
photograph - - but this one posed very nicely. When I arrived at the
Marsh access point, I noticed a huge black bull across the ditch
alongside the road, not something you expect to see in a NWR; soon
a pickup truck stopped with the rancher and his wife who owned
the bull, not happy to see that it had somehow crossed the river
from its pasturage into the NWR. They sent their two border collies
out to try to harry it back, but the bull was having none of it, and I
never did find out how they rescued their bull.

Farther south, in the Great Central Valley of California, I seemed to
see more up-close Turkey Vultures in a few days than I have seen in
the past seven years; it does take a bit of getting used to their bald
pink heads and necks before getting by the initial impression of
'ugh, how ugly'.

A tip from a pro photographer on the internet suggested that I could
increase the jpeg compression in my camera and halve the file sizes
with only a 1% loss of quality, and I've found this to be true. And I am
now further shrinking the file sizes by more aggressive jpeg
compression but in two batches, with less compression for pictures
with nearly uniform backgrounds (usually sky) to avoid color
banding. So I hope you may notice a little quicker downloads.

The server address is still:

http://www.meetmarsha.com/john 

The new slideshow is:  

08 09 Sep OR CA

Each browser is a little different, but generally you can either choose
OPEN to view the show once, or choose SAVE TO DISK and then
OPEN if you want to have it your hard drive for future re-viewing. I
have used my up-to-date Zone Alarm to be sure the .exe files are
virus free, so you can safely ignore Windows's warning about
'dangerous <.exe> files'. 

Right-Arrow or Right-Click or SpaceBar will advance to the next
picture.
Left-Arrow or Left-Click will return to the previous picture.
Esc will end the show at any time; use Esc if the show ever seems
stuck.

If you don't have a high-speed Internet connection it's not realistic
to download these large files on a phone line   please let me know,
as it is very easy for me to send them to you on a CD. And if you
would like any of the individual images, perhaps to print, just let me
know. I have limited space on the server, so must periodically
remove older slideshows to put up new ones; let me know if you
want me to send you a CD of any of the 'back issues', or of all of
them from 2004-2008 along with their accompanying emails, on CDs.
And if you don't want to get any more emails like this one in the
future, just let me know. If you have friends who might be interested,
I'll be happy to add them to my email list and they can download
the slideshows if they have a Windows computer. None of this is
commercial or copyrighted, the more who enjoy the pictures, the
better.   

Regards, John Armitage
1-970-250-9809