Clear water, blue sky, Silver Gull

Silver Gull, Tasmania

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Gloomy Kookaburra

August '08 photos re-uploaded! To mark the occasion here's a Kookaburra. It isn't laughing, 'cause it has just realized how long it takes to track, move, re-upload and swap 500 (five hundred) images. It's a lot of work for someone who has already worked hard all day :(

Laughing Kookaburra, Tasmania

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Re-uploading and updating :(

I'm starting to re-upload and update old posts to resolve the compression/image quality issue. It will take me a while.

Quality of uploaded photos

I have noticed that about a month ago the quality of blogger thumbnails degraded drastically. It wasn't until today that I realized they were re-compressing and ruining our photos during upload. That must have happened around the time when Blogger albums became Picassa albums. This is a real shame and a very frustrating discovery for a photo blogger.

I did a test, uploading the file directly to Picasa and then linking here. You can see the difference:

above: Uploaded directly to Picassa, this is the file I intended to publish. This is how I wanted it to look like. (294k)

above: Uploaded to Blogger, this is the soft crap that the new upload algorithm produces (142k)

My question: Is Google running out of disk space? Are they trying in despair to save 100k per image? My usage meter shows that I have used less than 10% of my storage quota, but my photos have been ruined for over a month!
Has anyone else noticed this?

The solution at this point seems obvious and easy, yet fiddly. I will identify when the genius of jpeg 'optimization' got his job with Google. Then will re-upload all those destroyed photos and update the old posts. How exciting! #@&*$!!!

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Just hovering

It may as well be a kite. I just can't see the string :)

Silver Gull, Tasmania

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Social life II

Some photos easily and with no hesitation qualify for the 'selected' label. I get one of these out of 1500 or 2000. That makes them quite special and me -- quite happy!

Silver Gull, Tasmania
[edit: I swapped the photo with the one from the post above]

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This time of the year

There is a lot going on in Seagull-land. It must be this very special time of the year when there is more to life than just finding food.

Silver Gulls, Hobart

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Kelp at lunch

Well... I know that most people wouldn't waste their film on seagulls, but I enjoy watching them at my lunch time. And I'm not wasting film as my camera is digital. Yeah, I know shutter's life is not endless. But I find Pacific and Kelp Gulls (and even Silver) amazing. Later I'd sit and watch for minutes such a photo admiring the detail and structure of the wings.

Immature Kelp Gull, Tasmania

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There's nothing on these photos... or is there?

In June I spent a couple of weeks in Sydney. Unfortunately, the weather was pretty bad, so I couldn't do any of the planned walks and had to stay indoors most of the time. What I could do however was to go and see if my old friends - the Tawny Frogmouth family that used to live in a small park in St Leonards - was still there. Nearly four years had passed since I last saw them and I was a bit anxious. Went to the park and in five minutes I'd spotted one, then the other. How happy and excited I felt! It was a good day and even the sun broke through the dense clouds to make the photos I took more colorful. Later I went there once more on an even gloomier day and saw three of them - they had a grown-up kid. Will post more Tawnies later...

Tawny Frogmouth, Sydney

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John K on "Artistic Graphic Shading in Cartoons VS Cold CG"

A recent post on Jon K's blog which I wish I had written :) I agree with every single word there and would invite anyone who loves cartoons to read it.
below is the link:
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2008/08/artistic-graphic-shading-in-cartoons-vs.html

Fox in the sky

Flying Fox, Sydney

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Bill with a hook

Grey Butcherbird, Sydney

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Ibis in flight

Australian White Ibis, Sydney

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Portrait with a mask

Masked Lapwing, Sydney

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Come closer, have a better look

This is one of those photos that lose much when scaled down to screen res. Still the 1024 pixel version is not that bad.

Mallard bathing, Tasmania

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edit: at the time of posting I was unaware how right I was, talking of losing quality. [updated 28/08/2008]

Small, smaller, smallest

above: Grey Fantail, Tasmania

above: Silvereye, Tasmania

above: Scarlet Robin, Tasmania

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Musk Lorikeets

Eucalypts are in blossom and flocks of beautiful noisy Musk Lorikeets are feeding in the branches.

Musk Lorikeets, Tasmania

Yes, you're right. This guy is a bit different. Rainbow Lorikeet, Tasmania

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Design and functionality update

As I've been doing some research, preparing to completely rebuild my animation site and the first anniversary of this blog was getting closer, I decided to give it a bit of a new look to mark the occasion. It was also a chance to practice some website Flash integration. Well... it's just a new header with some buttons for the moment, but they should be a visual and functionality improvement. Now 'important' sections such as ACTION shots, Favorites or Slide Show have their very own bouncing and glowing-in-the-dark buttons. I must admit that making those buttons was probably more fun than using them :D But you can click as many times as you like. There's no danger of breaking them if you press harder.

Nearly midnight - time for some Bats!

Flying Foxes, Sydney

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If Mum was a grumpy old Seagull I would squeak too :)

Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!

Silver Gull and young, Tasmania

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One more 'Duck'

Pacific Gull, Tasmania

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Happy Duck Day!

Mallard, Tasmania

Pacific Black Duck in flight, Tasmania

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An "Animation" :)

Well... I played with the sequence a bit today. Click here to see the hi-res version of this loop.

Pacific Gull, Tasmania

Comic Strip

I haven't posted 'comic strips' for a while, but this one is pretty exciting. You must click and see the hi-res version to get an idea what I'm talking about. The shutter speed for this sequence was 1/1600 of the second. The Gull caught a little fish after this plunge. [updated 28/08/2008]

Pacific Gull, Tasmania

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