Week 328-329 - Favorite Photos #1 - 12-02-2012

Favorite Photos #1

For December we are home at our house in Atascadero. Our renters have gone to Texas for Christmas and asked us if we would like to "house sit" our own house. But, of course! God has blessed us with fantastic renters who take good care of our house, pay on time and let us use the house for Christmas with our family. Thank you Lord.

While we are not traveling, we know that many are addicted to the weekly travelogues. So we will bring you some of our best photos. Although we have taken 63,614 photos in the last six years, we have to give credit to our wonderful camera, the Sony DSC-H5, a 7 megapixel "prosumer" camera. A prosumer camera is the best of the consumer cameras, just below a digital-SLR. DSLR cameras can create higher quality images but even large computer screens have limited pixels. The photos shown in this travelogue are only 1200 pixels width and 900 pixels high. That is just a one-megapixel presentation. As you can see you don't need a 20 megapixel DSLR camera when the web is your destination. We love our Sony camera and someday will upgrade to the most current model, the Sony DSC-HX200V.

This camera fits in a coat pocket and has a 30-times optical zoom so you don't have to carry extra lens like a DSLR camera. Okay, we've said enough about this great camera, now you say something nice! Enjoy our best "snapshots".

Fort Amarillo RV Resort

Black vultures at Lake Hugo, Oklahoma.

Outdoor Resorts in the Ozarks, Blue Eye, Arkansas

Sea World in San Antonio, Texas

Photo from boat ride at the San Antonio River Walk

Dust or moisture in the air leads to poor quality photos, so this might actually be "good" quality. Dust storm on US-54 between Wichita and Dodge City, Kansas.

Denver, Colorado

Also Denver.

Football game at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. And yes, they did stand for the entire game!

Sky divers and fly overs are part of the AFA pre-game.

The Air Force Academy chapel.

Outside the chapel.

Another view of the chapel.

Arches National Park.

Arches at the north end of the park, 20 miles from the entrance.

"Flipper" at Sea World San Diego, California.

Shamu comes over for a kiss.

This is an excellent example of a quality snapshot. While a professional photographer would have scouted out the best location for this photo, we simply pushed the button and voila we got a great photo of Shamu and her trainer perfectly centered in front of the stage backdrop. Thank you Sony!

The "sports" setting of the camera freezes the ball and let's Brad get a good look at it.

Weeping Rock in Zion National Park.

An artistic shot out of the Zion shuttle bus.

Ellen crosses the bridge marked "Keep Off", over the Virgin River.

The Alamo, San Antonio, Texas.

None of these photos have been enhanced or even cropped! You can see what brilliant cameras Sony makes. Well, we hope all y'all enjoyed the photos. If you ever see one you want to print, email us and we send the 2 megapixel original. Eventually, we started taking all photos at 7 megapixels just in case we wanted to crop out a small portion of it.

Travelogues for weeks 1 to 327 were all sent at a width of 1024 pixels. This travelogue was sent at 1280 pixels. We would love to hear from anyone whose monitor was too small to see the entire width of the photo. Web statistics say that only 13% of web users have less that 1280 pixel width and that number drops every month. Are you one of those?

Love, Pete, Ellen and the very wet Mandy ("It never rains in California, but girl, don't they warn ya? It pours, man, it pours" Lyrics by Albert Hammond)

This special edition travelogue was brought to you as there is nothing new in our travel.

Photos from Apr 2006 to Oct 2006