Everyone has made excellent points here. In my case, I shoot excusively in raw & use automation in Lightroom to spit out JPGs and contact sheets. I only work the RAW images I want to keep.

mindlessgeo, if I missed it I'm sorry, but what camera are you using?

Exactly, in fact, you should be able to go right on the manufacturers site for your camera and Dload their free RAW program, which will handle the conversion for you.

PhotoArtsLA, I really love that picture. Are you selling copies?

You have the lens stepped down pretty low, so your depth of field is probably having a major impact on your focus at that length. When I'm trying to catch something near the end of my lens reach, I usually bump up up my stop to around f16, maybe even a bit more. F16 will give you around 120 yards of depth, from front to back of your focal point @ 100 yards distance on your 200/300mm lense.

Also watch that your ISO isn't too high as it will not be your friend when you try to crop into a long shot. I try to stay under 400 during the day with my d7000, but I can do 800 easy on my d3x.

Nice shot though with the equipment, catching moving wildlife at distance is not easy, especially on water.

I use a Black Rapid double harness, sorry don't remember the model number off the top of my head. My friend, who does a lot of travel assignments, uses a Sun Snipers, both double and single.

He swears by that system ever since a trip to Italy a few years ago when a gang of very young gypsy kids swarmed him and tried to cut it off of him. He was lucky, as they sliced open all of his pockets but only got some walk around money, a credit card, his hotel key, and a photocopy of his passport. His strap had about 20 slices in it but they didn't get the camera. Apparently, this is a very common attack over there & he said it was all over in less than a minute.

Sunny 16 rule works on shots of the moon. As somebody earlier pointed out, the moon is always moving and will smear unless you use a fast shutter.

In my daughter's case, the distance the court used to determine that she was involved was 200 feet, that is the distance the ambulance driver testified to as to where my daughter's car was when she was getting in it to leave.

Don't know about elsewhere, but in New York, if you stop at the scene of an accident and become involved, ie, enter the close proximity, you are considered part of the scene and, if there is an injury or major property damage, are not supposed to leave until an officer specifically tells you that you can. Leaving the scene without that permisson, they can hit you for leaving the scene of an accident, and it can be a felony if there was a death.

To me, that sounds ridiculous, but my daughter was arrested, charged, and received a $250 fine, lots of points on her license, and six months of probation three years ago for leaving the scene where a couple was killed. She was the second person to stop at the scene and once she saw that the couple was dead, and the other guy involved was alright, she went on her way just as the ambulance was showing up. She was arrested at home about two hours later and originally charged with a felony for leaving. The lawyer pretty much told her that her mistake was in getting out of the car. Well intended laws, which bite the innocent.

Sorry, can't answer that, all of my releases include a non-disclosure clause. ;0)

mrbailey47, as my lawyer says, it does no harm to ask, and in fact, you may even be allowed much better access just for inquiring.

And my preparation and insurance vastly limits both my exposure as well as stress related to any such situation should it ever occur. Who wants to spend 4 years of your life trying to defend something, which we all believe is a right, as Chuck Gentile did?

I carry car insurance, house insurance, health insurance, liability insurance, business insurance, life insurance, and I consider the advice I receive from my attorney's to also be excelent insurance.

I'm sure you handle your affairs in a manner that works great for you, I have absolutely no problem with that.

Cheers.

Key word "editorial purposes," which is definitly one of the exceptions as you correctly point out. Keep in mind that the OP did not mention pictures for editorial uses, but did mention calenders, suggesting publishing the images, and that is what I was answering to.

Not until you are sued and find out how much it can cost. State court, just the retainer is usually $3-5K(it's roughly double that for Federal Court). Then depending on where you live, add $200-500/hour for every thing the attorney has to work on, not to mention the possibility of you having to settle(about 90% do), or worse, losing and getting hit with damages, not to mention all of your time this all eats up. Mean while, the person suing you is only out the filing fee since their attorney will probably be working on contingency.

With a release, your costs are basically held to drafting and submitting your answer along with a dispositive motion for summary judgement based on the signed release allowing you to use the image(s).

Obviously, there are exceptions and the biggest being that most people are not going to spin the lawsuit lottery, but there are those who will, and there are many hungry attorneys who agressively seek out those parties. There are a great deal of lawyers who make an excellent living dragging people to court with fairly dubious complaints knowing that they can collect a settlement from the defendant by merely offering to settle for less than it will cost to defend the claim in court.

My attorney is proactive and likes to protect her clients from those stormy waters. I like that because I have much better things to do with my time and money.

My IP Lawyer has given me this advice regarding shooting personal property and/or people; should somebody sue me for shooting them or their property, which anyone can, it is much easier for my attorney, thus much, much, much less expensive for her to have it thrown out in a simple pretrial motion to dismiss, and a signed release will accomplish that 99.9% of the time.