Happy Holidays!

New pictures are now available on my web site, including a couple of new ones from Grand Canyon. I'm still going through pictures, editing, and building web pages, so look for updates over the next couple of weeks. Well, probably sometime in early/mid-January. I'm back on a 6-day work week for the next couple of weeks while the hotels are sold out through the holidays, but I expect things to slow down considerably after New Year's.

Hope everyone has a very happy holiday!

Fotogal is in Grand Canyon National Park

So, after a lengthy lay-off from the blogging world, I'm back. Spending the winter in "sunny, warm Arizona". So, why did I put that statement in quotes? Check out this picture:



Yes, snow. About a foot of the stuff fell over night on December 15th. And it is snowing heavily as I write this, and has been for several hours already.

So much for going someplace warm for the winter. My only consolation is that it is, at least, warmer than Yellowstone last winter.

I'm going to try very hard to maintain this better this winter. My internet access is fairly intermittent. Well, it's fine if I feel like traipsing up to the rec center or to one of the hotels everyday. Which I don't. Oh well.

I've been working on new pictures of the canyon to post on my web site. Stay tuned for those. It is beautiful here. Well worth coming down for. I'm putting in my time working in housekeeping. I knew those folks worked hard, but I had no idea! No, it's not my favorite job in the world, and I'd probably like it better if I were getting my hours, but at least I'm working.

Visual Scavenger Hunt

It's taking longer than expected, but I'm slowly getting through the old pictures. I've just uploaded new old pictures to my web site, most from 2005/2006. Not as old as some of what I have, but it's still been a while since I last looked at them. Check out "Marine Life" for a couple of shots from June, 2006, whale watching. And there are a few new pictures in the other categories, but I'm not going to tell you where they are. You can find them for yourself; think of it as a visual scavenger hunt.

What the Duck

I don't really remember where I first read about this on-line comic, but it's kind of fun for all of us photo geeks. It's called "What the Duck", and it's about a duck who just happens to be a photographer (or is it a photographer who just happens to be a duck?). If you're curious about the strip (or just looking for one more thing to occupy your time rather than actual work stuff), you'll find it at http://www.whattheduck.net/. Enjoy.

I've been home from Yellowstone for a couple of weeks now, and believe it or not I have been working on pictures for the web. I've upgraded a few of my Olympic National Park shots with larger images and I also finally managed to load my wolf pictures from Yellowstone. Don't get too excited--there aren't any winter pictures of them. I never made it to Lamar Valley. I have hope for some early spring pictures, though. Stay tuned.

Oh, I've also found various CDs and DVD-Rs containing more pictures, including my disk of pictures from my 2006 whale watching expedition in the San Juan Islands. I've been going through them and expect to start posting some of those pictures by the end of the week.

I return to Yellowstone in early April for two weeks of management training, then home again for a short time before returning yet again on May 1st for the summer season. This summer, however, I will be working at Grant Village as assistant front office manager. It will be an experience, to say the least. Watch this space for my thoughts on THAT little adventure throughout the summer.

Web Site Updates!

Betcha thought I wasn't going to ever update the website, didn't ya?

I've actually been working on rebuilding the pages. I was never really happy with the design that I used all of last summer, but it was much faster to let my editing program create the web pages for me than it was to edit and size pictures then make pages for them. If I'd done it the way I wanted to, I probably would never have posted much last summer.

So, now that I've had some time, I've been doing just that. When you go to my website now, you'll find its a litte more streamlined, and hopefully, it won't take as long to load. The slideshow format, while kind of neat and maybe something I'll go back to eventually, is gone. Well, I'm just gonna let you go look at for yourself.

It's not complete yet. I'm still working on pictures, doing all of that editing and resizing that I didn't want to do last summer, and putting the new pages together. But, there are a few new pictures out there (check out the "bison" and "bird" galleries for new images). I've also included a few pictures from Olympic National Park and Mount Rainier. Sometime after I get home, I'll be adding some of my pictures from whale watching in Washington, and hopefully some shots from my trip to Gettysburg and Shennandoah National Park a few years ago (the ones that I never got around to actually posting).

Enjoy!