We continued our beach adventures this week with a trip to Cocoa Beach and Barefoot Bay Beach. The weather was perfect and Maverick enjoyed himself… that is until he got his feet wet. Yes our little Maverick does not like getting wet. Norwood and Maverick went to water and everytime the waves came in, he ran away.

I got several awesome photos of my boys in the water and you can see them here.

This giant bat was found in Disney’s Animal Kingdom “Maharajah Jungle Trek.” There were tons of the Giant Bats. Some very large and some just sort of large. This fellow was quite big and very close. I was taking pictures of some of his buddies further out and he dropped right in front of me to see what I was doing. He stayed very close for what seemed a long time just watching me. It was absolutely amazing!

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Tonight we saw a very cool thing that I am pretty sure we would not have seen in Colorado. This little guy decided to make our car his home… well his hang out for awhile. He hung around for a couple of shots… left a froggie treat on the car and then hopped away. It was really neat (well except for the froggie treat).

You can see some more froggie photos here.

One of my favorite things about Florida that we cannot get in Colorado are the beaches. This is Bradenton Beach located on the Gulf Coast. Like the guy in this picture I love to sit on the beach and read. My current book is “The Space Between Us” by Thrity Umrigar. It is a book about the relationship between two women, one who is an upper class middle class Parsi woman and her housekeeper. The book is set in modern day India and actually at times brings to light how class cannot always separate our human experiences. I will post more later about this book, I need just one more trip to the beach to finish it.

What are you reading?

Have a happy day!!

More of my Light Images can be found in my flickr set “Lights”

More of my Buddha images can be found in my “Buddha’s set

Now I know that I am not the only one who likes to take pictures of certain objects over and again, after all there are groups on flickr dedicated to images of Buddha and lights and their fixtures.

So let’s share…what do you like to take photos of?

What you need:
Blender, Carrots, Cream, Sugar, Frozen Blueberries, Frozen Strawberries and one Banana

Directions:
1. Fill the blender halfway with carrots
2. Add ½ cup of cream (or to taste)
3. Add 1 cup of frozen blueberries
4. Add 1 cup of frozen strawberries
5. Add one banana
6. Blend
7. Add ¼ cup of sugar (or to taste)
8. Blend again until you reach your desired consistency
9. Dispense and Enjoy!

My latest submission to JPG for their “On Stage” challenge. This is a photo from the Bjorn Again concert on July 1, 2008 at Disney’s Epcot. All through the concert this guy was totally into the music as you can probably tell…

If you like it you can vote for it by clicking on the picture or you can go to this link.

He is here! After a long trip across country finally Mr. Nikon arrived on July 1st. He and I have been have a fantastic time getting to know one another. Here is a little more about him…

Megapixels: 10.2 DX format

Lens I purchased for him: 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR and 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED IF AF-S DX VR Zoom Nikkor Lens

Neat things he can do: Shoot continuously 3 frames a second, active dust reduction control, 3D Matrix Metering II, Fast action 3 area Auto focus

Appearance: He has a wonderful handgrip, my Panasonic Lumnix DMC-LZ20 (not even close to the same camera I know) did not have as nice a hand grip. Really light! Although he is heavier than my Panasonic he is really light for a DSLR. He is a DSLR! I have wanted a DSLR for awhile now but I never got around to doing my research and buying one. I liked the Nikon D60 because he has great reviews all over the net and he can use the lens that the Nikon D300 can use which will be my next camera.

Tech Specs: For his tech specs visit Nikon website.

Images taken with the Nikon D60: Here are just a few of the 1400 images I have taken in the last 3 days with my Nikon D60…

To see more of my photos from both my Nikon and my Panasonic check out my Flickr Album

Besides the hundreds of books I left in our cabin we also left behind our solar system. Ah you thought I was going to be sentimental about possessions did you?! Yes I miss our solar power. Now I was not emotionally attached to the solar, it is hard to get too emotionally attached to any one thing, but I miss the solar because of its reliability.

Perhaps we are just lucky and it is not really this rainy in central Florida, but it seems like every day has the potential for hurricane like storms. Yesterday was no exception. We were all hanging out in the living room listening to the Saturday NPR programs when all of a sudden Maverick became really upset and jumps on the couch between Norwood and I. Cooing and petting him we could not understand why in the world he suddenly became so upset and then the storm rolled in. Such heavy rain the power was knocked out (just for a bit… to be fair it popped right back on). Not once in our five year Thoreauen experience did the power go out. Well I take that back when there was no sun, absolutely no sun and the batteries had absolutely no charge…none, zip, zero the power would go out. But looking back the solar seemed so stable compared to regular electric.

But in times like this where I romance our solar power I also have to remind myself that it was not perfect and this new fangled electric all the kids are using does have its perks. For one I can run my coffee pot and have my laptop charging at the same time! A beautiful thing. It really is!

Besides taking pictures of Disney World and Maverick I also like to experiment with Photoshop and come up with unique and inspirational compilations (some of which can be found here) and take landscape photos. Although it is down the road (I find myself incredibly busy lately) I will have a slideshow dedicated to my photo creations and landscape photos.

So as you can tell we are camera crazy here at Zen (myself, Norwood and Maverick too). If you find yourself so inclined take a peek every now and again at our slideshows and drop us a line, we love hearing from you and try to email everyone back.