Auckland Sunrise

The sun broke through the clouds for sunrise one morning, so I was able to run out the end of the pier and grab a couple shots.  However as soon as I got out there, a small squall came up, almost blew me off the pier!  It did produce a nice rainbow however!

Weta Cave

I had a business trip to New Zealand recently and things have been a little hectic since, but I am now starting to go through my photos and resume posting.
While in Auckland I rented a car and drove down to Wellington for the weekend, beautiful country.  We stopped by Weta and the Weta Cave to take a look.  This guy is hanging out above the cash register!

Hippos!

DragonFly Close-ups

Looking at the last post, I noticed that the smaller Jpegs didn't really show the detail, so I did some smaller crops...

Dragon Flies

Into the Spillway

This photo is of one of the two Spillways at the Hoover Dam, it is an immense gaping hole that goes deep down into nothingness.  Even in the bright sunlight and 100 degree weather, you feel the heat getting sucked into this black hole...  This is an HDR exposure covering 8 stops made from 24 images, yeah a bit of overkill, but I didn't want to get home and realize I didn't have enough latitude, so I went on the safe side, next time I'll know better!!  The Spillway tunnel is about 50 feet across and drops 700 feet in elevation with a flow rate of about 200,000 cubic feet per second, that's a lot of water!

Abstract Water

Low Water Levels

Last year I went back to the Hoover Dam, and I was astonished at how low the water levels looked.  I had been there a few years before and thought it was low, you can see the differences below.

From deep inside the Hoover Dam

Urinals with a View!

The men's restroom in the soul tower had quite a view!

Time Lapse of the final launch of the day

Here is a quick time lapse of the final rocket launch of the day by the San Jose team as seen below.  This time lapse was at a frame a second as opposed to my other one that I am assembling which was a frame every 12 seconds (which unfortunately is not quick enough to capture an actual launch).
As you can see, it was a fairly calm day with little wind higher up, the clouds were fairly static

More Spiders Again!

This was a young Black Widow hanging out at the RRS in Mojave, hand held mid-day.

More Spiders!

Had a few more photos approved at the various sites, this one is of a young Black Widow spider, you can see that she is starting to turn black.  I believe that this is the dangerous age for them, when they are more aggressive and don't know how to control the venom so they usually inject the whole load...

New Spiders!

Found this guy in my Neighbor's tree, had a 2 foot web spun.  He didn't like the flash too much as he packed up and left the next morning, never to return....

Man up, this won't hurt a bit!

I can't take credit for this photo, it was taken by my wife. I have a feeling my nephew wants to grow up to be a dentist!