Garden at the end of December

At the end of December I saw the humming birds out at the feeder again. I thought they were missing for a few days. I did get a couple of photos of them, but nothing memorable or any better than ones I have uploaded in the past. While out trying to get a good photo of the little birds, I took this shot of my best mossy rock in the moss garden. I see this little area of the little Japanese garden just over the railing of the deck. The moss is coming along quite nicely. It is growing well on the waterfall also. The garden is looking pretty good. I do need to clean up more leaves. The lichens in the photo are a favourite subject of mine in the wintertime. I get such good bokeh shooting at them. There are several kinds on the plum tree. These are zoomed photos.

I spent some time researching the Canon 7d today and have seen nothing but good reports on it. At one point in time I thought I might want a full frame Canon and L lenses. But for my needs, I think the 7d and S lenses will be just great. In fact, I was reading one review that said the S lenses were sharper. Plus less costly. So I have a few notes and now need to do some pricing. There was a 15 mm f/2.8 fish eye lens mentioned that would be fun to play with. I should be able to get a Lensbaby that works with the 7 d also. It will be a while yet before I order. I think I will keep my S3 IS for travel photos, as it is so easy to use and I never have time when travelling to play with lens changes anyway. The S3 does tolerable super macro photos for those inspired moments.

I have been spending some time on the new Megashot site. We are almost ready to go public with it. There are soooo many cool features. We will have the ability to make our own home page, private or public galleries from our photos, a presentation slideshow with audio, a 'store' of our own for ecommerce, and many more features. We can build and participate in communities of any topic we are interested in. We can rate photos on the site to choose the best, anonymously. There are contests to participate in. We can also derive some ad revenue from a community or on our home page. Most of the features are optional and fully customizable. Any member is going to be very busy on their site, just to begin. Megashot's main focus is photography, but it is also a networking site and a way to get your art work or even club activities advertised and seen. Hope to have more news on this in a week or two. I really quite excited about it all. Cyrus has designed and has had the whole site built. He has been working on this for long hours (not to mention long expenses) over the past 2 years. It has come together beautifully. There is, of course, more things he wants to do but hopefully we can get this much of the site on line soon. Start making your own banner for your site on Megashot. :-}}