We took a short road trip up to Sonoma today and visited a few wineries. Cline Cellars in Sonoma, CA has many Chinese Pheasants. I was quite fascinated with these beautiful birds. I wish I had taken the time to photograph their descriptions so I could provide more information here.
This pheasant was a rather shy fellow, preferring to hide in his cloak of lovely feathers. I did manage to get one shot of him walking.
After visiting the birds we stopped at the wine shop and were greeted by this nice fellow.
After a few minutes of pleasantries, I realized that I was talking to a wax statue. 
I’m rather disappointed in my recent attempts at photography. I don’t know why I have all but given up a hobby that makes me happy. I obviously need to get back out there and use my camera more.
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The poppies continue to bloom in the yard.
Updated 5/25/07
New Resources:
Photographic Cheat Sheet Resources
FotoSharp - Laminated photography guides that will easily fit in your camera bag.
Photographic Cheat Sheet - PDF File
Photo Bert Cheat Sheets - Many useful laminated cheat sheets for photographers.
PhotoBert’s Online Photo Course
50 Tips for Better Photographs
Camera Guides Photography Tutorials - Numerous photography tutorials.
Camera Town Photography Guides
There are a few new photography articles you may be interested in:
Camera Basics: shutter-speed, aperture, and ISO - A nice introduction to some basic camera features.
Digital Photography School - This site has some really great photography articles and it’s updated on a regular basis. Some recent topics include: How to photograph people when traveling, fill flash, and photographing smaller things.
Photographing Flowers Tips - A short article with tips for floral photographers.
Making Photographs - Tips on light, lens, film, exposure, and cameras.
Macro Photography - Tips for working with close-up and macro lens. Good information on how to take close-up pictures of very small things.
I thought that I would post some links to sites with great articles and tips that I have found really useful over the years.
photography, resources, howto
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Lexie graduated from PetSmart Puppy Kindergarten this afternoon. I have very mixed feelings about the class, mainly because I discovered that one of the pups in class was not properly vaccinated. We considered dropping out, but since she was fully vaccinated by the time we found out and the routine and learning under very distracting circumstances was good for her we decided to keep her enrolled. Besides, we didn’t want her to be a kindergarten drop-out. I did decide to enroll her concurrently in Sirius Puppy Training, which I’m really pleased with.
I just learned last week that we would be tested on all that we learned in the eight week class. I wasn’t too worried (ha!), she went into the class already knowing many of the commands, but her staying skills leave something to be desired and when she’s in pet stores the leash isn’t very loose.
We got to PetSmart a bit earlier and we practiced walking around the store and she was doing great. When it came time for her to actually test, she did great! She even did a sit stay and a down stay for me. She only broke the stay when I turned around…that was really my fault because I’ve been encouraging her to come to me by turning around. She is much more reliable on visual cues than verbal, so she did what she thought she was supposed to do.
I tried to get some graduation pictures, but she was too tired. We went to the beach yesterday and I took her to the dog park this afternoon, so when we got home all she wanted to do was sleep.
She got up when I went to go to the kitchen, but she basically just positioned herself in front of the door.
I tried to add some distractions that usually get her excited like fuzz and my other furkid George, but she still wasn’t up for a photo shoot.
I finally gave up and let my baby sleep.
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