It's been a while so I thought I'd check with "Hog Nation" to see if anyone has suggestions of "favorite, don't miss" Locations for a mostly Front Range driving tour around Colorado during the second half of October. The "plan" is for 3 nights in Estes Park, 3 nights in Aspen, 2 nights in Grand Junction, a couple nights in Gunnison, and a couple nights in Colorado Springs. Did a similar trip a bit over a decade ago so any caveats, tips, flat-out warnings, etc would be greatly appreciated. I expect to miss the Aspens-on-show but a family wedding has pushed my plans later than I had hoped.

Hi all,

We’re heading back to Florida this Spring for some bird photography, and I’d really like to be able to get some up close and personal shots of Snail Kites. Last year I was speaking to 2 women who had just been out a few days prior and they had some fabulous shots of Snail Kites catching snails. They had hired a boat and went out just with the two of them and the boat owner. This conversation took place at the Circle B Bar Reserve, and if memory serves, the location of the Snail Kites was close to Lake Kissimmee. Unfortunately I did not make any notes for future reference, and I’m not coming up with anything helpful when I ask “Mr. Google”.

Snail Kites are on my MUST SHOOT list for this spring’s trip. Could someone please give me some guidance and possibly a contact or two that would provide such a service? I am NOT interested in going out on a regular airboat tour with several other people. I’m looking specifically for someone who can take me to where the kites are, and will work with me to get some good images. The individual does NOT need to be a serious photographer, but MUST have knowledge of where to find the Snail Kites and a means to get me to the birds.

Many thanks, and please feel free to PM me,

Mike

I guess I should have seen this coming, but it annoys me nevertheless.

Back in April, online photo resource Smugmug acquired from Verizon, Flickr, another similar such web site. Don't worry, we were told, nothing's going away. We're just going to make it better.

Now, something is going away. That something is Flickr's free, unlimited photo storage capability. Free accounts will be limited to 1,000 photos. If you want more, you'll have to pay $50 a year.

That might make sense, except it bothers me because:

I pay for a Smugmug "power" account ($72 year). Many of my photos are duplicated across the sites because it's easier sometimes to utilize one over the other. I currently have 3,491 photos on Flickr. I do not wish to nearly double my yearly payment, so now I will need to prune my Flickr account.

Does Flickr make this easy to do? No. I must use their "Organizr" utility and load and delete photos in batches. I can't simply download them to my computer and delete them en masse.

So now I will have to spend hours going through the photos on my Flickr account to choose and delete those I don't wish to keep there, just so I can stay under the 1,000 photo limit. In fact, there is now no reason for me to have two accounts, so I'd prefer to download all my photos and delete my Flickr account.

Who says technology makes things easier?

ETA: I found a freeware program called flickrdownloadr and am giving it a try. I anticipate it taking most of the day to download everything, and usually programs of this type go belly up somewhere in the middle of the process. Crossing my fingers...