Anole By Samsung SIII

You don't usually see anoles in any color but solid green or solid brown. Rarely you'll catch one in transition as they warm up to operating temp.
Seeing as how this one let me shove my phone 3 inches from his face I have to conclude he was feeling poorly.

Kinda looks like he has some teeth marks on him, too.


Here's a crop at 100%:

Pretty sharp!

The camera on our new Galaxy S3 phones is quite the upgrade.
Flash exposures are way better, there's a macro focusing option, 8 megapickles, you can pull your favorite four adjustments out of the menus and onto the screen as shortcuts--for stills I have the timer, flash control, white balance, and exposure compensation. The video shortcuts can be the same or different--nice feature!
Full HD video.

The panorama mode works well enough, and for catching action you can do a burst of frames that's faster than anything I've ever seen.
There's GPS tagging, an HDR mode, and anti-shake, too. A fairly rich set of features I have to say.


I'm actually considering getting one of those gimmicky telephoto lenses for it just to see if they're worth a crap.

Only negative I have so far is that you can't silence the fake shutter sound when taking a picture.
I blame the perverts.


In other news, my old country band (now called The Natalie Rose Band) won "Best Country Group" at the San Antonio Music Association's award show tonight.



Wonder if they remembered me in the acceptance speech, since I had more than a lot to do with their success.
Most local country bands sound like crap, but through the end of 2012 I had them sounding better than many of the big stars. And my photos of them were on an entirely different level if I do say so myself.
Should have gone to the awards show to take my final bow with them, along with the former bassist who started the group in the first place.

The Mother's Day Lizard(s)

After having so much fun with the Easter Lizard I went looking for him on Mother's Day.

It made a nice test of the depth of focus with my new lens at F1.8.
Very shallow!

In this crop you can see that he is again flaring his dewlap.
Too bad someone got part of his tail.

It's not easy getting a shot of a prairie racerunner.
This one kept running away from me until it got on the other side of the fence.
Do small lizards even understand fences?
He seemed to know that I was no longer a danger.

Wished I had my 55-200mm lens right then, but I'm not taking my new 50mm off the camera until there is a compelling reason.
Still haven't used manual focus or stopped it down for more sharpness.

The Easter Lizard

We were at Syl's parent's house (near Security Hill) for a wonderful Easter dinner of burgers, dogs, 'tater salad and whatnot.
While out on the patio listening to the Spurs whup the Lakers and discussing the state of our lawns after the drought, I spotted a green anole hiding behind the chiltepin plant by the AC unit.
"Must really be Spring" I thought, then went in search of more.
There's usually one on the side of the house by the boat, and sure enough there was.
And hey!--here's a tiny one on the back wall hiding behind that plant.
3 is about average, but I was hoping to spot a big one.

During the next time-out I walked the back fence and spotted a Prairie Racerunner, which is a first for me in this part of town.
They are in the whiptail family which are the fastest lizards in the USA at 18mph, which is astonishing considering how short their legs are and how much drag those long tails must cause.

Anyway, during the next commercial break I went back to where the smallest Anole was, and found King Daddy Alpha Male himself instead.
He was on the wall, head pointing down, ambush hunting--waiting for a bug to wander by so he could swoop down from above and score some Easter Dinner.

I went inside for my camera, and changed lenses to my 55-200mm.
When I returned, Mr. Lizard had moved to a perch on top of a concrete mushroom (as seen above) which suited me just fine! Much more interesting pose than on the wall.
At this time I noticed not only the tiny one from before, but a fifth anole of medium size not too far away.
And so did my subject!

As I started shooting pictures and slowly creeping forward, the signs of agitated territorialism started to show themselves--first he turned broadside to the smaller lizard, then puffed-up his body to look bigger and more dangerous.
Then the push-ups started and I took a chance on getting just the last bit closer hoping he would be so busy with his ritual as to ignore me, because I knew what was next.
After 5+ years I finally got a photo of a male green anole with his throat-fan in full extension, and with backlight from the sun giving it some glow for bonus points!
What a treat!

I mean, family and good food are more than enough to make it a great day.
Add the Easter Sunday aspect, and it just gets so much better.
The Spurs CRUSHING the mighty Lakers was almost too much for me to handle in such a short time.
But throw in a photo I've been trying to get for years and I was in a state of grace that lasted far longer than the stomach ache I got from eating too much.

An incredible day.


When he turned around like this I knew the show was almost over--the other lizard had run away.

This was a complete surprise I found after uploading the CF card to my computer.
It only works as part of a series of photos with text, but I love it.

Drought

The record lack of rain, the unending march of 100+ degree days, the brown grass, the utter death around us...it makes me sad and tired and crushes my spirit.



The "new" camera has made it's first foray into the Texas heat, and brought back a photo I was positive would never get made just days earlier.
I wanted to shoot this dead tree in IR, nothing else would do.

Even with four filters on the end of the lens there still was more vignetting (mostly cropped out) than I expected, but oh yeah this lens goes to 28mm-e versus 38mm. That explains, and it's not a problem at all.
Neither is purple fringing. IR doesn't see colors, so I'm immune to it.

My other mission for this camera is flash macros of small critters.
This is another big part of my photography that the DSLR fails at, and I tried many times. I'm not buying a macro lens anytime soon, and the DSLR's inability to use a fast shutter synch makes these other cameras a better choice anyway.

I knocked this out in two minutes using my old techniques, and couldn't be happier with the results.
And with that, my photographic drought is over and I can now do everything I could do before my F717 died, and then some!
I feel complete for the first time in a year.

I'm very excited to be able to plug these holes in my repertoire.
And the size, grip, weight, and black finish make me feel like I'm holding a real camera--this thing is a tank compared to the F717!
Looks enough like a DSLR that I won't have to take any crap from camera snobs.

Rose-Bellied Lizards

We walked down a dirt trail into Salado Creek to look at a more natural version of nature.
Walker Ranch Park is great, but joggers, rollerbladers, kids and dogs tend to scare the critters away.

Before too long I was rewarded by several sightings of the Rose-Bellied Lizard.
They are plentiful, so I always see this tiny reptile skittering around whenever I'm in it's preferred habitat. But I've never managed to score any pictures, and in fact have found that photos are somewhat rare. A website that I use to ID various animals didn't have any pics until I submitted these.

Both of these females are showing their 'breeding colors'. The bright red splotches signal to the males that they are looking for some action.

This male is interested.