Good one.

If the album is so valuable that it cannot leave the library, and only two people on Planet Earth can handle it, maybe they should give serious thought to backing it up electronically and make some exceptions to their rules. These are pictures of dogs, right?

Hi, This is my first post on this site. I am a dog lover and have three Saluki show dogs; they are a very beautiful breed and great to photograph. I am a historian and visited the Kennel Club London UK to take photos of the pages of a 1920s album on the first Saluki Kennel to breed a champion Saluki dog. I spent all day in the Photo Library but the results were spasmodic in that several photos came out washed out by the artificial lighting in the ceiling. If I used flash, then this reflected in the photo, so my husband held up a piece of white paper to try to diffuse the light with a certain amount of success but not perfect. There was no natural light to be able to use. I have a Nikon D80 with Sigma DC17-70mm lens. I wish to spend another day hoping for better results in order that I can write an article for our Saluki Magazine with illustrations. Any advice please? Annette

I totally understand your point. Sometimes debating an issue is good for the mind and body. I'd like to debate with you a little and I'll pick a side. But please understand, I'm not trying to say you are wrong, I'm just throwing out some other ideas.

By entering a contest aren't you selfish because you want to win or place highly? If not, why can't you vote for yourself if you honestly feel your shot is worth the honor because of the quality. You worked hard learning the craft. You worked hard to earn the money to purchase your equipment. You worked hard getting the right shot and using all of your knowledge to do the best job you can so it would be worthy of entering the contest. Aren't you hoping to win or place? Is that selfish?

Well, then I'll throw a wrench in the fire and you may change your mind, but hope not. When I am competing I tend to not vote. But I did notice that if I had voted and put all my power into the one vote on my self, I would have gone from 3rd to 2nd and does it really matter if you feel your shot is pretty good?

Yes you can vote for your own photo. Should you? That's another story. You can also vote for more than one and if you do then your vote starts to get split. So if you vote for 3 photos each one gets .33 added to it instead of 1 full vote. So yes some people may be voting for only their photo and others may be voting for their photo and others as well and splitting their giving them less "points" I guess you would say.

I've got family (in-laws) in Calgary so I'm down there all the time. Vistek is usually my choice down there.

For pricing, it depends on the item. Some items just are much cheaper to ship cross boarder - especially with the dollar at par. I still don't understand why Canadian retailers are ripping us off so bad on some items. Yes, I do understand cost of business is a bit higher here (taxes), but when we can be competitive on so much else, it doesn't make sense.