I managed to become “King of the Bubble” by taking this happy snap at Christmas as we blew bubbles in the yard for my niece. You can just make me out in the bubble’s reflection, in my crown.

Merry Christmas folks.

Another image from the storms 3/12/08… It was quite a storm! Shook the windows in the house with each peal of thunder as it traveled overhead….

Another image from the storm 3/12/08… While the lightening isn’t so impressive, I found the dark, ominous clouds spectacular!

A shot taken of the thunder storm that rolled over my yard last night. Have more to come..

A bright and happy image, albeit poorly focussed of a Monarch butterfly I took in the backyard at some stage last year. It’s been sitting in the “to work on” folder for some time and I figured that given the recent spate of sombre foggy images on the site, that this was the perfect time to bring a little sunshine back. Especially so, given that there are some more sombre images coming up

As always, my fascination with things you don’t normally pick up with the naked eye (the only naked thing that is crap) has got me in a firm squirrel grip and forced me to bypass beautiful beach panorama’s and cute Koala bears to present to you some flutterby tongue.

Imagine how handy it would be to go around life with a licker like this one…. No more wasted droplets at the bottom of the tinny!!

No, in all seriousness, it is serious flutterby season here at the moment… I was walking down the beach last weekend and there were thousands streaming in from the ocean to the shrubs blooming away in the dunes… one of those stereotypical “if only I remembered the camera” moments!! Instead, I present a fairly normal fluttsie from my backyard. Only “fairly normal” because he could probably do with a back-wax.

This is a photo I took literally minutes ago as a massive electrical storm passed over the top of my home here on the Sunshine Coast, Australia. I am pretty blown away by this shot and I expect people to think this is jazzed up in photoshop, so I will explain how I took the shot and what has been done to it since:
I used my usual device: my Canon IXUS 55. I switched the shot-type to “fireworks” and changed the shot frequency to “continuous”. Then I squatted at the edge of my patio, in the pouring rain, somehow trying to get the roof out of shot (failed) and half protect the lens without getting my grubby paw in shot (succeeded), while taking 150 photographs, one after the other, of the night sky. 2 shots almost caught a lightening strike, 1 shot got a glowing cloud, 146 shots were of pure blackness and 1 shot qualified for posting.
I imported the photos to my mac with iPhoto trashed most of them, exported this one to photoshop, enhanced the contrast by 0.10, decreased the exposure by 0.33, inserted my watermark, cropped half the roof of my house out of it and exported it to upload at these dimensions. So, yes, tweaked – but minimally. I hope you get something out of it. All I can say is that I wish I had of been able to record the clap(s) of thunder that came after it!!

Unfortunately, I recently lost the stolenpixel.com website including all photographs and comments. This was one of a few images that I was able to find and restore to the site.

A photo of a wasp in the garage lighting at night. Unfortunately the over-exposure has effected the detail in his eyes, which is the main detail I like here.

Unfortunately, I recently lost the stolenpixel.com website including all photographs and comments. This was one of a few images that I was able to find and restore to the site.

I have no idea what this photo is of.. but it was on the garage wall and looked kinda like a relation of E.T.’s – so, trigger-happy-dan got to it!

Unfortunately, I recently lost the stolenpixel.com website including all photographs and comments. This was one of a few images that I was able to find and restore to the site.

The same sunset as the previous shot – just a few minutes later.. the sky bled that night. Eye of Sauron anyone?