Hummingbirds

Have seen some really good photographs of Hummingbirds taken by my classmates in the last few days.

That reminded me of my chance encounter with a pair of Hummingbirds at one of those picnic tables on top of a vista point at Palm Springs last year.

Now that yours truly has Photoshop, found that picture and edited it to my hearts content..

Here is my contribution to the Hummingbird collection.

It is a pity that we cut down the honeysuckle plant in our backyard as part of the construction. Need to go buy one and plant it just to get the birds to visit our house again...

or at least put a feeder in the backyard!

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Tahquitz Canyon - Videoblog

Was struggling to edit these HD movies from the 5D. Now that we have a new laptop (courtesy daddy's workplace) with Windows 7 and a new free Windows Movie Maker, editing videos and adding captions is simple again.

Photoblog is here..

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Tahquitz Canyon - connecting with the past

The last day of our Palm Springs trip was spent visiting various canyons.

We saw the Palm canyons (no waterfalls unfortunately but a great natural oasis and a pleasant walk through a canyon that goes for 12 + miles), Andreas Canyon and Tahquitz canyon. By the time we came to Tahquitz center it was almost 3 PM and they said we have to do a 1.8 mile round trip hike and be back before 5PM when the entrance closed! So only myself, Balaji and the oldest of the four kids made it on the hike. The rest of the group said "pass". We did make it through (with photo time) in almost an hour and a half.

The canyon and the sights were amazing. You get to see Palm Springs between the mountains as you go up and the streams are on one side all along the walkway.

The Indians had figured out that there was a waterfall which fell into a flat rock and made a natural swimming pool out of this place. Truly breathtaking falls and pool. The water was 2 to 5 feet deep and ice cold but extremely refreshing. We saw little kids swimming in this pool of fresh melt ice water! They had come prepared in swimming gear with the adults.

This place is strongly recommended provided your kids can handle it. Older adults will have a tough time in this hike because you go up rock steps, some of which are almost 18 to 24 inches tall. You have to lift your knees pretty high to get on the steps one at a time. You also need to pick the right weather do to this hike as it can get pretty hot up there.

Overall, strongly recommended if you hit the palm springs area.

Thanks to Balaji for snapping a few pics with me in them! We now have at least a few pictures with me in them. It was also suggested that yours truly was camera shy before because of extended-tummy-itis and now have changed. Well, time will tell..

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Palm Springs - Long weekend trip

We went to Cabazon to see the life size stone dinosaurs and followed it up with a trip to Palm Springs over the Memorial day weekend.

There are over 800 photographs to check and edit and after an almost non stop drive back yesterday was too tired to even wake up and go do Yoga this morning.

Did a quick glance through all the photographs for one good snap to share for this post and here it is..

There were 4 hummingbirds outside the kiosk on top of the Palm Canyon parking lot. Two of them were doing aerial acrobatics and Kissing? Was lucky enough to get this shot.

and yes, finally got the 70-200mm f2.8 L to close out the camera bag! This picture was taken with that lens set to 200mm.

There are some really cute pictures of our own two hummingbirds, which will be posted later!

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