Kicks & Grins

Luv Your Mum

2008-10-18T01:50:00.008+01:00

My home has been filled for the last several months with the pitter patter of little feet....to be more specific, the pitter patter of little bengal kitten feet. Our bengal girl had her first litter on September 6, 2008. It has been a great time, though they will be sold to their new owners in about 3-4 weeks.

Anyhow, these lovely kitten photos are not exactly spectacular. But it at a minimum they capture a great moment and a great expression of kitten mummy lovely. Or is that mummy kitten love... Something like that...

Another view of almost the same moment...

For about another 130 images of Buttercup's first litter of kittens, go here:
http://flickr.com/photos/captbunzo/sets/72157607771064014/

And to check out my short but simple bengal breeder page, go here: http://bengals.captbunzo.net

We got our lovely bengal cats Buttercup (the mum) and Wesley (poor neutered male, not the dad) from Owlsdene Bengals. In case you are wondering the going rate for a bengal breeding website is 2 bengal cats. :)

Check out the Owlsdene Bengal site for a show of my web developy handywork. This is a run of the mill Joomla site, with a couple of custom exceptions. In particular I am very proud of the work I did with the pedigree charts which are created by a custom Joomla extension that pulls normalised data from a google spreadsheet. Check out Buttercup's mum's page here for an example.

There are a couple of things I hope / plan to improve on the site in time, but for the most part it is pretty complete.

Last but not least, let me show our geeky little chart of kitten weights. We used to update our data (weigh the kittens) 2-3 times a day. Nowadays we keep that to more like once a day or once a week, as it doesn't matter much anymore...

And yes, I did name the kittens Frodo, Samwise, Meriadoc and Peregrin... Though their new owners will rename them as they choose.

Lensbaby Take on a Ricordea yuma

2008-09-21T23:54:00.002+01:00

Hmmnn... Over two months, time for another post I think. I really should do this at least weekly or so...

Here is a photo I took several years back. This combines a hobby of mine (reefkeeping) and a really cool lens that I have called the lensbaby. This lovely little coral is called a ricordea. Sadly, this coral was new in my tank and actually didn't survive very long. It was a Ricordea yuma, which I always had trouble keeping. On the other hand, I had fantastic success with Ricordea florida.

I really like the colors and contrast in this shot, as well as the lovely selective focus bit accomplished with the lensbaby.

Visions of Ice

2008-07-14T17:01:00.002+01:00

Ok, been a while, I really should update this more often. Anyhow....

For my next entry, here is a photo I took several years back during one of our winter ice storms in Ardmore, Oklahoma. For those unfamiliar with ice storms, the basic concept is rain falls and freezes to, um, everything and causes all sorts of trouble. However, these times are very beautiful as well.

Here is my favorite photo from the set.

Now, the question is, do you like it better in full color or sort of a black & white & red version?

Thanks for checking in...

The Amazing Bursting Mudpot Bubble

2008-05-20T15:19:00.005+01:00

Alrighty... As my LITTLE brother reminds me, it has been too long since I posted a photo here. So here's one for today.

I took this photograph during a summer 2006 vacation to Yellowstone National Park. It is not particularly amazing from a photography perspective. But it was a great moment to catch.

And if you haven't been to Yellowstone National Park before, go now. Not later, now.... :)

As a child, we visited Yellowstone in a somewhat OCD manner - about 8 times, 6-7 or so in the first 7-8 years of my life. As an adult I have attempted to carryon this obsession. Thus forth the wife & kids and I have only visited 3 times. However, we'll go again.

And I do have retirement plans which involve working my summers in Yellowstone with my wife while enjoying the lovely wilderness. :)

And some more linky goodness:

Yellowstone.net has an EXCELLENT set of forums for the park
Wikipedia is always useful - view the page here

And in celebration of how cool of a place YNP is, here is a cruddy video I shot during my last visit to the park. After quite a while of waiting in the drizzly rain with complete strangers, we thoroughly enjoyed watching Grand geyser erupt.

Rippling Lionfish

2008-04-28T21:13:00.003+01:00

For my next posting, here is probably the best photograph that I have ever taken.

A couple years back or so I participated in a behind the scenes tour of the Oklahoma City Zoo's aquatic area. It was a great tour. At one point we were viewing the lionfish tank from above and all the little begging puppies came up looking for food. I snapped a number of photos, one just happening to be this one.

This photo is also distinctive in that it is one of about 2 of I have taken in my life which have actually one something. This photo won a internet tropical fish photography contest here. Sadly, 10 weeks later, I am still waiting for my prize! Ah, patience is a virtue. :)

For those interested, the full set of pics from that tour can be found on flickr here.

Rainbow on the Rocks, Approaching Yellowstone

2008-04-24T16:48:00.006+01:00

This is a photoblog, perhaps I should post a picture?

I am going to start off my blog with the photograph that launched my hobby of photography. I took this photograph In June 2004 while approaching the east entrance of Yellowstone National Park. This lovely bit of terrain is located somewhere on the south side of the road between Cody, Wyoming and Yellowstone.

I was very pleased with how well this point & shoot photo turned out. There are many things that could be improved with this photo. However, the evident beauty of God's creation in this photo really captured my interest in photography.

So, without further ado, the pic. :)

As with all pictures I post in this blog, this photograph can be clicked upon to take you to the posting on flickr. There you can view it slightly larger, add your comment/critcism/remarks, etc.

Have a great day!

Introduction to Kicks & Grins - My New Photoblog

2008-04-24T16:13:00.007+01:00

Hi! My name is Paul Thompson. I have enjoyed photography as a hobby for about 5-6 years now. This started a number of years back when I returned from a week long summer vacation with about 2000 digital pictures. I realised after that trip that I really enjoyed photography and would like to learn how to capture better images.

So I snapped away for a couple of years with my current point & shoot 2 megapixel camera. And while this was fun, I really wanted to learn more specialized skills, which is tough without moving up to a SLR or DSLR camera.

So then a couple of years back I managed to score myself a Nikon D50. I was in heaven!

I snapped more and more pics and soon discovered that there is much to learn in the SLR world. I also found out that a 6 megapixel camera will rapidly fill a hard drive, but that's another story. :)

Many thousands of pictures later, I now consider myself to have learned a thing or two. I am by no means an expert and have plenty to learn. However, I am lucky enough to capture a nice one from time to time.

Well, last night I was catching up on some articles from the Digital Photography School website. DPS, if you are unfamiliar, is one of the best (if not THE best) photography websites and forums on the web. Anyhow, I particular read through a couple articles on photoblogging.

Blog Power - Why You Should Consider Setting Up a Photoblog
Building Your Blog: 10 things to consider when building your rockin’ photoblog

These articles inspired me to create my own photoblog specifically dedicated to sharing some of my photography work and improving my skills. In this blog, I will post photographs that I have taken hopefully at least on a weekly basis. I welcome feedback both public (blog/flickr comments) and private (emails).

If you would like to jump in early and see what I have produced up until now, please check out my flickr photos. On flickr I have posted many hundreds of pictures. In particular I try to organise some of my favorite shots into the first collection, My Favorites.

I look forward to posting some photographs. And I do hope that you enjoy the journey ahead as much as I will.