The OME lift goes on tomorrow, hopefully I can still get in and out. ;-) Then I can see what kind of drop bar I'll need on the hitch receiver to tow the trailer level. I also need to flush and fill the trailer water tank and fill the gas cans; wish gas prices would start back down instead of up

Noticed a flaw in the bubble of my RRS PCL-1 panning clamp and had to send it back for repair. They got it today and will get it fixed and shipped back by tomorrow, so even if it is shipped ground (which I expect it is) it still should be here in plenty of time before I leave.

Checked the DesertUSA wildflower forecast for DEVA and things look great for when I'll be there. Still cold with snow at a lot of the places I'm going in southern Utah, but hopefully it will warm up and dry out some before I get there. I'd hate for all the back country roads to be closed due to mud, and I'd like the overnight lows to at least be above freezing for camping. I have good sleeping bags and thermal underwear, though, so I should be OK.

Decided to get a 2.5" lift for my FJ Cruiser before heading out west this year. The OME lift is supposed to actually give better on road handling as well as off road, and there is plenty of on road between here and there. :) New Goodyear MTR's with Kevlar sidewalls will give some piece of mind in the back country. New battery in the Chaser trailer, too, so I think I'm about set.

The trip will also be my first real test of the 70-200mm VR II on my D700 and I'm looking forward to trying out that combination and get some 'tighter' landscape shots than I've been able to in the past. Would like to have gotten a 105mm VR macro, too, but the budget wouldn't allow it, but I still have my 60mm macro which is a great lens, I'll just have to get closer to things. Just hope I can afford the gas out and back.

As much moisture as they've had in Death Valley and southern Utah there should be some great flowers by the time I get there - assuming the snow melts where I'll be. Should be able to get some good mountain backgrounds with all the snow pack too. Getting more amped about the trip by the day.

I'm in the process of changing my URL from chocphoto.com to stalkinglight.com. Both URL's point to the same place and will continue to for some time as it will take a while for the change to percolate through the search engine jungle. The main reason I made the change was to eliminate the confusion for folks looking for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory information, or shocking photos since choc is 'shock' in French. None of either on my site. 

Another reason is that I wanted to find a more descriptive term for what I do, and stalking light fit the bill, plus most of the other descriptive URLs I thought up were already taken. A large part of photography is capturing the right light so you can present the image to others the way you 'saw' it and evoke the feeling you want to convey without them having to have been there with you. That, to me, is the difference between just taking pictures and photography.

Snow in Atlanta gave me an excuse to try out my new 70-200mm VR II lens on the D700 by taking a few shots of the snow in the backyard. I also decided to play with a few different options, hardly a scientific experiment in that I changed too many variables at a time, but interesting anyway. Two of the shots are the same exact scene, one is a 5 shot HDR,  at -2, -1, 0, 1 2 EV and the other is a single shot with some highlights and shadow editing in ACR. The others were shot using Active D-Lighting in the D700 and then processed in NX2.

I need to take a harder look at ADL, but for now I don't see a compelling reason to use it since I shoot only raw and to take advantage of the ADL changes I'd have to preprocess the raw files in NX2 before I brought them into Lightroom to add to a web gallery. I think if I shot all or mostly jpeg ADL would be a nice feature, but I like the flexibility I have in post processing with the raw files.

Cabin fever combined with sciatica is a real 'pain'. It's gotten so bad I've been redoing parts of my web site (chocphoto.com) and have been adding some Flash to it. It's kind of annoying the way Adobe caches the Flash content, and it makes it awkward to see changes when your browser keeps loading up the cached content. I'm trying to avoid using Flash for the actual galleries, since a lot of people block Flash in their browsers since it can be slow to load.

It's also a challenge getting anything to render correctly in IE, what a piece of junk. I actually have to have a blank space at the top of each page to get the tables and Flash content to center properly - of course Firefox, Chrome and Safari work fine as expected. I'll never be an HTML expert, but I know more now than when I started even though everything is still pretty much a work in progress.

Ah well, playing is fun, but I really need to get out and take some pictures. :)

Cabin fever has set in and I am busy planning (mostly daydreaming, actually) about this year's trips. My fist big trip will be back to the southwest, camping in Death Valley and southern Utah. I go to southern Utah at least once a year, but this will be the earliest and also my first visit to Death Valley. Son Ted will be meeting me in Death Valley for a couple of days, which will be great. He's off in Peru doing the Inca Trail now, I expect Death Valley will be drier.

Got myself a new 70-200mm f/2.8 VR II lens to fill out my landscape range along with my 17-35mm and 28-70mm, so I should be set for focal lengths and have no excuses in that regard..

Right now I'm debating whether or not to drive straight through to Death Valley or stop and camp a day or two along the way.

I'm also planning on a visit to the greater Yellowstone area this summer. I usually go in spring and/or fall, but this trip I plan on mixing in a lot of fly fishing and hope to hit the salmon fly hatch on the Madison - that is a blast.

I'll probably manage to squeeze in some trips to the Smokies again this year too, it's an area that I have neglected for too long - especially since it is so close to home.

I can hardly wait to hit the road again, where I can start to get homesick.  :)

The Atlanta Nikonians December get together was at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Our primary focus was the Orchid House and it gave me a chance to take some macro shots and experiment with my extensions tubes, neither of which I use often enough. I clearly need a lot more practice, but it was a good outing and I expect I'll be back there to visit.