Moody Gardens
Galveston Island, Texas
March 21, 2004 - Sunday

Lisa and I decided to take a trip down to Galveston Island which is about 60 miles or so south of Houston. The weather was actually very cloudy here in Houston but once we got about half way to Galveston it completely cleared up. Moody Gardens was on our agenda for the day, this particular facility has a true live Rainforest habitat which is home to many various plants and animals. 





Another attraction at Moody Gardens is The Aquarium, it houses many large and small aquatic displays for visitors to enjoy and learn about aquatic life. In one small display they had a bunch of small Sea Horses swimming around which looked very weird. The shape of these animals is very amazing to me because they do not resemble typical fish at all. 


 

Red Tailed Hawk
Bear Creek Park
March 20, 2004 - Saturday

We were on our way to a friends house for a good old fashioned crawfish boil when we decided to stop in at Bear Creek Park and take a look at their Wildlife Habitats. All of the Birds of prey that the park has enclosed in these outdoor habitats have all been injured and are not capable of surviving on their own in the wild. These animals have been deemed non-releasable by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission. I actually used my small Canon S400 for this shot. The lens on the camera was actually small enough to slip through the 1" gaps in the metal fencing without problems. There were a few other birds of prey in other habitats at this location but they all seemed to be a little bit camera shy. 




 

Thai Food
Somewhere off of Westheimer
March 19, 2004 - Friday

I had Thai food for the first time in my life tonight. We stopped off at this new Thai restaurant off of Westheimer on the west side of town and had dinner. We had decided to try something completely different than we were used to since variety is not necessarily a bad thing. I'm not sure what the dish was that we had but it did have noodles, chicken, bean spouts and ground up peanuts in it. We were very pleased with the meal and the service and plan to go back sometime next week.


 

Architectural Wonders
Rice University
March 18, 2004 - Thursday

I met a friend of mine out at Rice University and wandered around taking pictures of all of the different buildings and such. There was so much to see and photograph so I was like a kid in a candy store. I took about 130 pictures or so and these posted below are my final 5 favorites. I could have devoted an entire page to just the pictures I liked from this photo shoot but I went ahead and narrowed it down to 5 images.





This campus had some many very interesting subjects to photograph. This particular area was very interesting with the contrast of colors from the lighting in the walkways and the natural blue of the sky in the background. The statue shown in this picture was dedicated to the Engineers of tomorrow.



I was very amazed by the attention to detail throughout the entire campus. Every little nook and cranny had some form of detail work involved in it which really made me appreciate this campus more so than I had already did. We plan on making another trip out here to this location to shoot some more pics since we left a lot of missed opportunities behind.




 

Outdoor Fountain
Grisby Grill Restaurant
March 17, 2004 - Wednesday

We met some friends out at a restaurant for dinner and since the weather was so nice we decided to sit outside on the patio. One of my friends suggested that I take a pic of the fountain before we left and on our way out I ran over and snapped a single picture. I didn't want to spend too much time setting up the shot etc so I quickly set my shutter speed to 2 seconds, set the timer, put the camera on a rock by itself and let it snap the picture. Also, this was taken with my new S400 which I haven't had too much time to mess around with. I'm hoping to get some more experience with it tomorrow on my trip to Rice University. Hopefully I can remember to take some comparison pictures so I can see the difference between the two cameras.


 

First United Methodist Church of Brookshire
Brookshire, Texas
March 16, 2004 - Tuesday

This church located in Brookshire, Texas was built at this site in the early to mid 1900s even though its original roots date back to about 1844. I stopped off here during my lunch break to test out my new wide angle lens and I must say that it makes a huge difference and I definitely know that it will come in handy quite a bit in the future.



The original file of the image below has a little barrel distortion which means that since the lens was so wide, it mad the image seem a bit circular. I used a plug-in for Photoshop to help remove that distortion so that the image looks correct.



These walls have seen a lot in our countries history some of which include the Great Depression, both World Wars and the Vietnam War just to name a few. The etching right above the church's entry way reads "Enter To Worship" which I think makes for a very effective welcome sign. This is a location that I will return to in the future so that I spend some more time photographing this town's landmark.


 

Jurassic Park
Mary Jo Peckham Park
March 15, 2004 - Monday

Since the weather started to clear up a bit today I decided to go eat my lunch at the park. As soon as I sat down at a picnic table about 12 ducks waddled their way to my table in hopes of getting some people food. I went ahead and threw out some french fries here and there to feed the ducks a little bit and then all of a sudden this guy along with about 10 other ducks popped up out of nowhere. Talk about intimidating! I gave him a few fries as a peace offering since he looked like the trouble maker of the group. In fact at one point it looked as if I got him really upset because he started to gurgle very loudly and all of those little black feathers on top of his head stood straight up. I was expecting him to spit out some kind of deadly fluid like that small dinosaur did in the first Jurassic Park movie. Thankfully he did not... maybe it was just the McDonald's french fries that weren't sitting well with him or something.


 

My New Toy
Canon Wide Angle Lens
March 14, 2004 - Sunday

The church pictures I took last week really made me realize that I need a wide angle lens in my arsenal for instances like that. So with that in mind, I bought one which was delivered on Friday. I was very surprised to see how large the lens actually was. I originally had a Canon 58mm adapter but since they only came in grey plastic, I quickly swapped it out for a Lensmate black aluminum version. I can't wait to get out there and give this lens a try... now only if it would stop raining so that I can.