Vickie

at least you have a good sense of humour. sounds fun.

a couple more

Thanks guys. I wish it was good to be back but I miss it so much, its like a 2nd home & I never sleep better than in a tent, listening to the waves. We are already planning next year. I wondered about this too. The Little Tern is endangered. I did a google search & found this: http://www.cboc.org.au/terns.html We go to Manning Point on the mid north coast. a very beautiful spot.

I'm too scared to look at how many I took...but it was thousands :rolleyes: . Here are a few of my favourite non doggy pics. I think this is an Brahminy Kite A Little Tern chick. They fly from Alaska every year to breed. Tawny Frogmouth. It kept landing on top of our tarp at night. The rest are on my laptop so will have to load them across. I got some vey nice dragonfly shots, some superb fairy wrens & a few of the beach & lake that I like as well.

Thanks for the heads up Pete. I will be signing the petition too & will try to post a comment on the image. I agree it happens all the time, but you are right, the site seems to encourage it. The worst I have had is people selling my images on ebay. That really sucked.

:rolleyes: I left for 6 months once... no one even noticed

I think he has gone. Hopefully just taking a break. I don't want him to go . We need him here :rolleyes:

I'm happy to put any of mine up too. My computer is a bit overworked today & keeps crashing every time I bring up image folders :D but I will find some tomorrow. Are you looking for radical stuff or just minor tweaks?

Can you lock the mirror up? not sure what it is called on the Canon menu. Sounds similar to what happened to my D70s. I used to get an error message & the shutter would sound kind of tinny. The mirror lock seemed to help for a while, but I did eventually have to send it away. I got it back & had about another year out of it & it went again .

YAY!!!! Yes PLEASE (sorry to hijack everyone)

Agghhhhh!!! Stop teasing me . You have no idea how begrudgingly I let Ben & Chloe have one of these. I said no at first (since I had already had one & decided they were too good to share) but then felt really guilty & Chloe reminded me that she was told they were to share . They were SO delicious & I loved the little surprise but in the middle. Beautiful shot. Got any more

Hi Alyssa, China is lovely & looks & sounds very intelligent. I would probably be starting with teaching her to touch a target (like an icecream container lid). Not only will this get her operant, but it also forms the basis for a number of tricks. Have you/will you use a clicker? Also walking backwards is a good one for body awareness. Likewise spin & weave through your legs.

I went & bought another one today (as a pressie) , but didn't quite get as good a price as you Ruger. :D: I love it so much I am tempted to keep both of them :D Nice Shots Tokkie . I generally use about F4 if I want DOF & full face focus + I try to get down low so that the DOF really is further away. Ruger, yours are really cool too I love that natural saturation that you get just before a storm.

I think it's lovely too. I am always chopping the tops of heads off :rolleyes: . My only comment would be that I would prefer a little more contrast...but that is a personal thing.

What a good question. I am not sure I have one yet, but I am working on it. I think my goal is to capture the natural energy of life. I'm not sure I need a specific lense for this, each of my 3 lenses offer something different, but all should be able to achieve the style I am aiming for I think.

Very well done. I LOVE the 2nd one . I have had a bit of a play with it, I really like the extra collage functions.

They are fantastic Ruth, I love the light on them & very sharp too. Did you take them at Homebush?

I bought my 50mm from Ebay, with no problems for $120. I want to get my sister one for Christmas & my local camera store is selling them for $199. Personally I would only use Ebay if they were cheaper than what is in stores.

Nope not the only one. Trim is nearly 5 & has had 2 baths in her life. I don't think Shine has ever had one and the boys have probably averaged 1 a year over their 11 years. ETA...but we do have a rule about cow manure...anyone who rolls in it gets hosed, regardless of the temperature outside.

Just one more thought...and then I will stick to things I actually know something about .... how different is schutzhund training to what dogs in the armed services do in terms of demonstration? It just occurred to me that while one group is being persecuted, the other is invited as heroes to every major public picnic/event and respected & admired by the crowd (probably the same crowd in many cases who would support this persecution). If the parallels are appropriate, it would be interesting to see any media coverage supported by the army/police etc.

I wonder if some sort of media campaign could help to raise public awareness? One of those current affairs shows or something like that? A chance to tell the story and educate the public? Surely, it is quite a topical thing for them to be interested in covering at the moment. I only have 3 experiences of schutzhund trained dogs in my whole life. Without those experiences, I would have no reason to seek education & could possibly feel like the ignorant majority of people do. Those 3 dogs and their owners raised my awareness & earnt my respect. Saying that, my general impression has always been that it is kind of a secretive activity, I can't really explain why but it always seems cloak & dagger type of stuff. Don't flame me, I know very little about it, but I can certainly understand an uninformed public perception.

My dogs will & do all perform tricks & behaviours for praise alone, but I think a lot of that is their breed/(ing). I would not consider offering them anything external such as food or toys on sheep, they would laugh at me I am sure. For agility, I went through a period of 6 months a while ago where I only rewarded with praise & saw no decline in motivation nor any adverse effects. In fact the most motivated dogs in agility that I have ever seen, work solely for praise & will not take food or toys. Now I choose to use toys to reward what I am asking for, basically to make up for my lack of skills as a dog trainer. Sometimes the behaviours I am teaching are quite complex & by using toys to reward I can make a very clear distinction between "yes, that is exactly what I wanted, here is your toy" and "no, that is not what I asked for, try again". I find this is harder to make black and white if I only rely on my tone. As other have said, food or toys can also be very useful in teaching a behaviour that is independent of me. It also means that my dogs will do agility for literally anyone as the basis of what they have learnt is not reliant on my personal relationship with them.

WOW, they are really good!!! My favourites are the 2nd & the 5th & your PS work is good too as it is not obvious. I would probably crop a couple of them slightly, the first & the 5th. The 2nd is a beautiful composition, a couple of PS things to make it even more perfect would be to straighten the horizon (maybe 1 degree right?), add a little more contrast & slight USM...just my opinion. They are really good. You will have to let us know how the presentation goes . oh & where are the other 4 pics??? we wanna see them .

Don't forget...the best way to actually get depth of field and blur the background is to actually have depth of field, ie the background is not close to the subject. Take this photo as an example: settings were F8, 1/800 at 300mm. I have other shots I took on the day at the same setting where there was a branch right behind the lorikeet so there was not much depth or blur. But this one I chose because there was nothing behind the lorikeet, so the background was very deep & blurred b/c it was so far away. Make sense? The same logic will apply whichever lense you use...the further away the background, the more it will be blurred. I try to take into consideration the perspective as well. Let's say you have a dog sitting on the ground. If you stand up & take the shot, the background will not be very far away...b/c it will be the ground around the dog. But, it you get down on the ground yourself (other than getting licked ) the background will be further away & the blur will increase.

I'm not sure that's true. So far the only thing I am getting from my D300, that I didn't get from my D70s is more frames/second which is very useful in agility shots...otherwise, I don't see a huge difference in either quality or essential functionality.