The PenFan's PhotoBlog

We went to California, USA for holiday in mid Nov 1992.  Looking back that was exactly 25 years ago. We spent the last few days of our trip at my wife's classmate home in Los Angeles. In their house  They had a huge beautiful pet, a green Parrot called Ziggy that lived in their study. If my memories serve well I think parrot Ziggy was easily over 3 feet tall. Portrait of parrot Ziggy.  The mostly green plumage resembles a military parade uniform and earn this species of parrot the name military macaw.  This photo was taken in 1992 using Olympus OM-3 with  Olympus OM-Zuiko 35-105mm F3.5-F4.5 zoom lens on Fuji Velvia 35 mm slidefilm.        Parrot Ziggy belonged to the military macaw ( Ara militaris)  species of large beautiful Parrot.   Initially Ziggy was not comfortable with our presence but after two days it got accustomed to these two visitors from afar. I took some photos of this handsome big bird with my Olympus OM-...

Zhangjiajie Glass Bridge is the world's longest and highest pedestrian glass bridge located at Zhangjiajie National forest Park in northern Hunan, China, also referred as the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon Glass bridge. Zhangjiajie Glass bridge was officially opened to visitors on August 20, 2016. The Zhangjiajie Glass Bridge is 385 meters (1263 feet) long and 6 meters (20 feet) wide. The height of the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon Glass Bridge is 300 meters (984 feet) above the canyon floor. The Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon Glass bridge is designed by renowned architect and poet, Professor Haim Dotan. His design concept of the bridge is an Invisible Bridge that blends in with nature and harmonise with Zhangjiajie National Forest Park. Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon Glass bridge taken from the amphitheater in poor weather with rain and fog over the canyon. It lives up to the design concept of "Invisible Bridge" and the background blends in like a backdrop from a  Chinese painting.  --...

To take a perfectly sharp photo the tripod is the best tool for any photographer. However the tripod can only be as steady as the platform it is standing on. If you are standing on a hanging rope bridge or on a cruise boat the tripod is just as wobbly as the boat or the ropes. The solution is usually higher shutter speed or high ISO setting. High ISO will be a problem for smaller sensor cameras.  However we don't normally bring bulky and heavy cameras to dinner cruise or high hanging rope bridge. The answer is Image stabilization or IS. There are three types of IS  -  a lens base or Optical Image stabilization, the second one is sensor base image stabilization. These two are highly recommended and the results are equally good. The last one is called electronic image stabilization which is not as good as the other two but is better than none. The photographs below were taken by my better half when she was on a Zhujiang dinner cruise in Guangzhou,...