Photo of the Week: Parrot Fish with a Heart

         This week I just had to give credit to Photographer Shawn Miller for Photo of the Week.

He takes his Nikon D90 with a Tokina 11-16mm lens, a strobe and a camera case for underwater photography and finds things like this Parrot Fish ( Scarus prasiognathos ) with a yellow heart displayed on its side.  How deep does he dive to find these critters ?  How about 100 feet below sea level !

Visit Shawn Miller's OKINAWA NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY to see more excellent photos taken on and around the island of Okinawa, Japan. 

Wildlife Isn't Just Birds

Sometimes wildlife just happens right in your own home and you don't need to be lugging backpacks full of cameras and lenses up and down the hills and along the beaches.

This Okinawan Gecko was hanging from the ceiling of my utility room just wailing the moth he caught and smiling while he was at it ! He kept it up long enough for me to go grab my camera and pop the flash up.

Then, there was the day I walked all the way to the beach and the tide wasn't right, so no birds showed-up. After I drank all my coffee and ran out of smokes, there wasn't anything to do but head back home. That's when I spotted this humongous Banana Spider whose web would've gotten all over me if I didn't duck. Always looking for the right angle to get the sun where it lights up the subject the way I want it, I noticed if I positioned myself and camera just so, I could line the spider up with the cloud. You can't see the web, but who cares? In Japanese the word for Spider is "Kumo" and so is the word for Cloud ( Kumo).

Snails are wildlife, too and what's neat about them is you probably don't need to worry about them causing alot of blur in your photo if you want to use a slower shutter speed and you get plenty of time to move around them to get the best lighting. No need for a tripod, just set your camera on the ground.

Stay tuned, soon when the weather gets a bit warmer, I'll be taking the camera on a Wild Boar hunt ! That's all for today.

Butterflies in Your Stomach

Ever get Butterflies in your stomach ? It happens to me all the time when I get really, really nervous. It used to be when I was a youngster (About half a century ago) and the teacher asked you to get up in front of the class and recite the Declaration of Independence, or something.

Now, it usually only happens right before I get arrested or almost apprehended, like today. And it happened a few months ago, too, so soon I should develop a tolerance for it, just like I did for History teachers. Either that, or quit doing stupid things that might get an innocent looking fellow like me get apprehended !

The end of the month is coming around real soon ( I know because my wife says PAYDAY is just around the corner because FEB is a short month) and writers have to meet deadlines and need the photos they're writing about, like YESTERDAY ! Well, my favorite writer because she speaks better English and Japanese than me, needs some Cherry Blossoms by an Elementary School photographed this week. Friday would've been a good time for her but not for me. So, the sun looked right for shooting this morning and I decided I'd go shoot and surprise her with a "Mission Accomplished" before the day was done.

When all my morning chores were done I grabbed a camera bag and tripod and walked to the school. Not wanting to disturb the people in the office, I spotted a Gym teacher taking a class out to the soccer field and asked if it was OK to shoot pictures of the Cherry Tree and got a Thumbs-Up .

Well, when I do a shoot like this I'm all over the place playing with light and camera settings, taking shots at every imaginable angle, looking for the best background and most importantly being real careful to NOT GET ANY KIDS in my pictures !

About half an hour into my work HERE COMES SECURITY !!! " Hey, this is a school NO CAMERAS ALLOWED " the guard yells as he rushes me waving his arms like an Olympic Swimmer. When I explained , in my Japanese as a fifth language, that I was doing the shoot for a story on Cherry Blossoms for a the English Teacher at the School and that I had asked the Gym Teacher out on the field for permission beforehand, the guard backed-off and let me continue. But, I saw him walking towards the office when he left me and that's when the Butterflies started. My instincts, from being a wildlife photographer, told me what to do next: RUN FOR YOUR LIFE !!!

Instead, I did the wise thing; shot from a few more angles, slowly working my way towards the gate. I even saw one of my Grandsons out on the grounds for recess. He barely said "Hi" to me. Either he knew I was working because he saw the camera and tripod or noticed the guilty expression on my face, or he just got asked to recite the Gettysburg Address and had Butterflies in his stomach, too !

Anyway, once I cleared the school grounds, I hurried across the street, stopped in a store for a quick coffee and once I was sure nobody was going to come after me, climbed a tower and looked back at the school and when I was sure all the Butterflies were gone; RAN LIKE HELL all the way home!