Flickr's down, OM*G!@#$!

Lol, ok, not the end of the world...

I worked today, and then went to Great Falls afterwards, for about my 24th or so visit since June 11th 2006. Not sure, but I think that's a bit more than every other day since I first went.

Going in the evening after work is more about the experience than the potential photographs. Sure there might be some nice sunset light, or even a nice sunset, but the main thing I go for is the eagles. The eagles are situated in evening shadow with the sun setting directly behind them. Possibly the worst conditions... I guess it could be pitch black, and that'd be worse.

I like to go to a newly discovered place up until the point where it doesn't keep offering new sights and experiences. With the DC Zoo that took about 25 visits from roughly Oct 23rd 2005 to March 2006. Since then I've still gone, maybe every other weekend or a bit less frequently. I think I've been about 35 times now as of mid-July 2006.

Anyway, back to Great Falls and going a lot.

So I've been now 20+ times, how can there be new stuff? Well, last weekend there was a Kayaking competition. I photographed some of the first run they had on Saturday through the main falls. Probably a couple hours worth of shooting. This was fun, and I ran in to someone I know from the DC Zoo's photoclub. We walked up to the area where you can spot the eagles, and did see one of the adults, but the adult stayed in a tree across the river... Later this day I had my first encounter with the Red Fox that lasted more than a half second. I've seen the fox twice before this day and each time for not even a split second... The fox encounter was really awesome. To see him in his natural environment, and either unaware or unconcerned with my presence was a gift. I later left rejuvinated from the experience...

Last night I went, and took a few photos, some eagle shots of the eagle in a tree, and the other adult in the river (drinking/cooling-off), and some sunset photos, but nothing came out that good. I need to learn to shoot photos better in lower light. Be it a tripod and much lower ISO, or flash and different areas in Great Falls, I don't know what will work. When I was there mid-day over the weekend the light was excellent.

Wow, looks like flickr is up, just checked and it is somewhat responding. They must be getting crushed right now.

I used the time to post this, and to start some much needed backups of the stuff I've shot since 7/1/2006. I almost never get this behind, and now I've got to burn about 7 DVDs worth of data (to make it fit right most of the disks have between 3 and 4GBs of data...)

Happy flickring now that it's back up.

-Jon/Nikographer ;)

p.s. it appears that almost none of the images are being served right. I'd guess that most of the recent photos are there and available, it's just that the servers are being overloaded at the moment......... so DON'T hit refresh a million times, you'll make it worse. Give it a bit and then check back :D

Flickr Outage Message Posted here for this one:
http://blog.flickr.com/flickrblog/2006/07/temporary_stora.html