In Rememberence

Good evening,

Well it's Sunday night and well I haven't blogged in a while but the motivation struck me when I saw a post from Meg over on Zack Arias's blog.

I tend to keep up on his posts and well it seems as though he is enduring some tough times and well I can relate.

Today is my first day off in 5 nights and well I must say this has been hands down the toughest time of my life.

Unfortunately, on December 30th my Grandmother
Maria Munoz Cartagena passed away and for the last few days I have been up night and day unable to get time off from work and well the holidays I missed those this year.

Nonetheless, I have endured and weathered the storm but I will never forget the tears that have been shed for a wonderful mother of 10. Yeah that's right 10 babies.

I was able to experience one of the most touching experiences on Monday when I was next to all of my aunts and uncles watching my grandma take her last breath of air, it was to say the least heartfelt.

I will say to you Zack stay strong and this to shall pass. Keep the faith my friend.

Please check out my Photography documentation of my experience at Remembering Maria.
Enjoy,

Ho HO Time...

Happy holidays....
Well Santa came early and guess what he brought!!!!! no not a lump of coal that's for my stocking.
It was my wonderful wife, she got me a new 5D Mark II (Canon silly) for Christmas.
I must say that it was like pulling teeth without anything for pain.
My wife was great, she said here and handed me a credit card and said "body only" Gee bummer lol.
So off I go, not too excited because everywhere you look they say "now in stock" until you start to process your order and then they say "shipping soon" what the hecky. So, finally I found the right place who said they have it and now shipping for real hahahahahah yeah right. To make a long story short yes I did get a great price and yes I got screwed royally, but it will only hurt for a little while right,right???
This will be a good Chritmas. Pleasure and pain.
Enjoy,

Time Flies

Hola,

Well, much like some of our fellow photographer's lately, I have also been traveling and well, I wasn't going to brag too much but I could not help but share a couple of my images from my very busy last couple of weeks.
Let me just take a second here to say how amazing my trip to Puerto Rico was, I had a blast doing little to nothing well except for exploring and capturing lots of life long memories.
I went to the El Morro again, how can you not and toured the island with an amazing dear friend I can now say, thank you Ernest for taking us to wonderful spots that most tourist never get to see.





As I said time flies, so once I got home I was off to a photoshoot and again, I had an amazing time.









Let's not forget my photoshop training coming up. I am very excited but I must say, with over 3,000 images to edit I will have lots of late nights.
With that said,
Enjoy,

Nikon Huh

Ok it's true I just borrowed this content from another blogger.
I am sure he would not mind, but then again who cares.... My point here is that there are 24, that's right 24 fixes to Nikon's new camera.

My question is was it really worth it???

Does Nikon really fear that they had to get crap material on the market before the competition that bad....

Guess so.

Enjoy

…and a couple of bug fixes, too! Here’s a list (from Nikon’s support site) of what’s included in this free downloadable update, which was released on Friday:

1. The Highlights playback option has been moved from Display Mode > Basic photo info > Highlights in tthe playback menu to Display mode > Detailed photo info > Highlights.
2. The size and color of “Demo” displayed in the monitor with playback when No memory card? in the Custom Settings has been set to Enable Release have been modified.
3. The range of settings available for ISO sensitivity settings > ISO sensitivity auto control > Minimum shutter speed in the shooting menu has been increased from 1/250 - 1s to 1/4000 - 1s.
4. When shooting in hand-held live view mode and the frame is magnified prior to autofocusing, operation has been modified so that display returns to the magnified display rather then the full frame display.
5. Images captured with Rotate tall, in the playback menu, set to On, are not automatically rotated for display immediately after capture (image review).
6. A Copyright information has been added to the setup menu. When Copyright information is enabled, the copyright symbol ( © ) is shown on the LCD display, Shooting info menu.
7. Recent settings can now be displayed in the place of My Menu.
8. Custom Setting e3 Flash cntrl for built in flash ( e3 Optional flash when an optional Speedlight is mounted on the camera) can now be added to My Menu using the Add items > Custom setting menu > Bracketing/ flash.
9. The degree of the High ISO NR setting can now be confirmed in the shooting info display while the High ISO NR setting item, in the shooting menu, is being applied.
10. Ankara, Riyadh, Kuwait, and Manama have been added to the Time zone options for the World time item in the setup menu.
11. When a GPS device is used and no heading information is available, –.–° is now displayed for the Position / Heading option in the GPS item in the setup menu.
12. When shooting in live view mode using Camera Control Pro 2 (ver. 2.2.0 or later) with a PC-E lens, the aperture setting can now be adjusted from the computer.
13. Focus acquisition performance in dynamic-area AF mode has been improved.
14. Focus acquisition performance with contrast-detect AF has been improved.
15. Auto white balance performance has been improved.
16. The fourth digit in seconds display for GPS latitude and longitude information is now rounded off rather than omitted.
17. The current MB-D10 battery type setting can now be confirmed in the shooting menu display when R6/AA- size batteries are used with the Multi-Power Battery pack MB-D10.
18. An issue that caused an increase in noise when shooting in [M] exposure mode at a shutter speed setting of bulb with the shutter held open for less than 8 seconds and Long exp. NR enabled has been resolved.
19. An issue that prevented shutter release at the specified shutter speed when no operations were performed for 30 seconds in mirror up mode has been resolved.
20. An issue that caused abnormal image display when Image review was set to On and the playback zoom in button was pressed immediately after shooting at the following settings has been resolved.
21. Image quality: NEF (RAW) + JPEG
22. NEF (RAW) recording: Lossless compressed or Compressed
23. Image size: S or M
24. When the Speedlight SB-800 was mounted on the camera with flash mode set to distance-priority manual (GN) mode, and the camera recovered from standby mode triggered by the auto meter off function, the distance information in the SB-800 changed. This issue has been resolved.

Bald Eagle

Canon
70-200mm lens
180mm f/3.5 1/250


Recently, I had an urge to revisit some previous wonderful experiences that I encountered many years ago.

On a trip to Alaska back in the late 90's I had encountered one of the most breath taking experiences of my life.

From all of the beautiful green trees and landscapes to pure white snow covered peeks and valleys, there was something I was totally amazed by, it was a bald eagle soaring in the wild, now I know typically you would hope to see this while in that region, but until you are right there just taking in the wonderful natural surroundings and then it happens, this feeling is amazing and for me it only got better once I knew what to look for and where.

There was whale watching and moose running free but nothing compares to seeing this enormous bird soaring in the wild. The bright white head and enormous wingspan it is truly amazing.

So, needles to say I have snapshots but do you remember the days before digital???
Yeah that's right there was this little thing called film... You know those rolls of negatives that you may have lost or never took in to have printed on 4x6 paper! Do you know what I'm talking about.

Recently I took a trip to a zoo and I was able to have a little photo shoot with several of the animals, but my favorite were the snaps I got of the birds and monkeys, mostly because of the glass(Lens) I was using.

I had to shoot through plexiglass and net mesh in order to expose these wonderful creatures.
I had a lot of fun.

Well I hope you enjoy my Eagle and please click on Absolute Elegance Viewing in order to see or purchase some of my finest work.

Enjoy,