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2013-05-23 03:22:04 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 7 +1s)

Everything you want in a space opera, only darker.

Ready for Prime Time Indie Book Review of:
Forging Zero
By +Sara King 

Joe Dobbs was big for his age and all he ever wanted to be was a soldier, like his dad. But not this way. When aliens annex the Earth and conscript every able-bodied child between the ages of 5 and 12 to serve in their Congressional Army, 14 year old Joe is accidentally swept up in the draft and forced to fight for people and politics he'd never even heard of before the aliens landed. As the oldest of the human "recruits," Joe quickly becomes big brother to an entire generation of frightened children, and must help them pull together to survive the brutal training regimen of a cold and calculating alien government.

Author Sara King paints a complex portrait of one boy's life and forced journey into manhood, set against... mehr »

2013-05-22 18:40:07 (16 comments, 6 reshares, 101 +1s)

WILDLIFE WEDNESDAY
Curated by +Morkel Erasmus and +Mike Spinak        

Here's a Rocky Mountain elk cow at sunset, in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. I hope you enjoy.

Remember that every Wednesday is Wildlife Wednesday. Post your pictures of wildlife. Do a search and look at other people's pictures of wildlife. Any wild creature will do. Big or small. From bugs to birds, snails to snakes. All you have to do is post a wildlife picture, and mark it with #WildlifeWednesday .

I hope to see a lot of your wildlife pictures. Show the wild animals you've encountered!

2013-05-22 03:10:24 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 8 +1s)

Introducing Snapsation

Amongst the greatest human needs is the need to tell stories, to record memories, and to share our moments with the people who matter the most to us.

When you need an awesome dating profile picture, a business portrait, photos of your family reunion or milestone events. You need an amazing local photographer to help you to capture all of  life’s moments.

As a local business you want to show off how amazing your restaurant is, the decor in your Bed and Breakfast, to show off your beautiful store or great new products, to record your industry happenings and events.

Finding a photographer is intimidating. And harder than it should be.

Photographers need customers. No matter how experienced a photographer is, there never seems to be enough time to focus on getting new customers. And for the many passionate andta... mehr »

2013-05-21 20:31:31 (11 comments, 0 reshares, 23 +1s)

Thank You

To everyone on G+ who has reviewed my book, Growing Up Humming, thank you for making it the #1 Top Rated Children's Nonfiction Animal book on Amazon.

:-)

2013-05-21 18:40:01 (16 comments, 5 reshares, 23 +1s)

"...today, with cameras as pervasive as they are, there is no such thing really as professional photographers...." +Marissa Mayer, C.E.O. Yahoo!, May 20, 2013
http://screen.yahoo.com/yahoo-event-155000760.html

"Today, with web services as pervasive as they are, there is no such thing really as a reason to ever spend any money on Yahoo!'s services." +Mike Spinak, C.E.O., Naturography, May 21, 2013

2013-05-21 03:48:24 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Austrian economics and online RPGs in one post? That's my kind of article!  :-)
This author makes the exact same analysis and critique I made to my brother and my dear friend Ms. J. about Dialo 3 months ago.

2013-05-17 20:06:30 (18 comments, 0 reshares, 49 +1s)

As a follow up to the photo I showed a couple hours ago of +Barry Blanchard photographing a seascape, here's another little glimpse of what seashore photography is like. Here's a phone snapshot showing Barry's feet buried in sand (wearing shoes!), and showing his legs and his tripod's legs wrapped in seaweed. 

2013-05-17 18:09:14 (19 comments, 14 reshares, 64 +1s)

I'm rummaging through my phone snaps, and I thought some of you might enjoy this behind-the-scene view of what it looks like when +Barry Blanchard makes a seascape photo.

+Paul Porter, +Francesco Gola,  +Luca Gerardi, +Patrick Smith, and +Jim Patterson also joined us out in the waves for some seascape fun, that evening. I hope we can all get together and shoot again, soon.

A lot of people make half-hearted efforts for their photos, because they don't want to get wet / dirty / tired / whatever. And it shows in their pictures. Here, Barry demonstrates admirable doggedness to get the best shot he can, regardless what's involved. 

(One of the top five or so things I look for, in someone worth shooting with regularly, is is a willingness to do what it takes to get the shot.) 

2013-05-17 05:30:39 (30 comments, 0 reshares, 24 +1s)

Not to be all complaining about the Google+ redesign, but: I like to be lazy efficient. I want to accomplish tasks with a minimum number of steps and work. It seems like many aspects of the Google+ redesign increase the number of steps necessary to accomplish the same goals as before. Here are a few examples:

1) The stream of posts used to update automatically. Now, the ."stream" (put in quotes because it's no longer streaming, thus not a stream) requires clicking to update it.

2) It used to be that with a medium -length comment discussion on a post, you could see all the comments after you clicked to show the comments. Now you have to scroll through to get to the bottom of them after you click, even if it's just a handful of comments which wouldn't go off the edge of the page.

3) It used to be that you could hover your cursor over... mehr »

2013-05-16 05:24:50 (26 comments, 4 reshares, 141 +1s)

Here's Passiflora Tendril and Leaf Tip. I'm just posting this to see how my vertical photos look with the new changes to G+.

I hope you enjoy it.

2013-05-15 22:57:00 (19 comments, 0 reshares, 16 +1s)

So, with this new update, why are some picture posts shown really big and others shown fairly small? How do I set whether a picture should be a big post or a little post?

2013-05-15 20:45:42 (14 comments, 11 reshares, 84 +1s)

WILDLIFE WEDNESDAY
Curated by +Morkel Erasmus and +Mike Spinak       

Here's a black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) nest with a parent, a chick, and an egg. I photographed this at Point Lobos, a few years ago. Since Morkel posted a Black-crowned night heron, I thought I'd post BCNHs, too. I hope you enjoy.

Remember that every Wednesday is Wildlife Wednesday. Post your pictures of wildlife. Do a search and look at other people's pictures of wildlife. Any wild creature will do. Big or small. From bugs to birds, snails to snakes. All you have to do is post a wildlife picture, and mark it with #WildlifeWednesday .

I hope to see a lot of your wildlife pictures. Show the wild animals you've encountered!

2013-05-14 19:59:21 (7 comments, 2 reshares, 36 +1s)

It's National Children's Book Week. For those of you who don't know, I published a children's book (or perhaps I should say a children suitable book, because it's suitable for adults, too) called Growing Up Humming. Here's an excerpt from one of the five star reviews of my book, on Amazon:

"...the photos are absolutely gorgeous. The story itself is wondrous - Mike simply wrought words from inspiration that the hummingbirds gave him. Prose felt natural and the birds nearly fluttered off the screen... very informative, chock full of neat facts that I enjoyed learning and will enjoy passing on to my curious children... a resounding thumbs up."

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1480165220/


#NationalChildrensBookWeek #ChildrensBookWeek #ChildrensBook 

2013-05-12 22:50:48 (14 comments, 1 reshares, 53 +1s)

Happy Mother's Day!

In case you missed my earlier post: I hope you have a splendid day. Thanks for doing what you do.

2013-05-12 18:57:38 (13 comments, 1 reshares, 41 +1s)

Happy Mother's Day!

I hope all of you wonderful mothers have a great day. Thank you for doing what you do.

2013-05-08 22:20:25 (23 comments, 3 reshares, 77 +1s)

WILDLIFE WEDNESDAY
Curated by +Morkel Erasmus and +Mike Spinak      

Here's a crab spider and a hoverfly locked in a deadly embrace.

Remember that every Wednesday is Wildlife Wednesday. Post your pictures of wildlife. Do a search and look at other people's pictures of wildlife. Any wild creature will do. Big or small. From bugs to birds, snails to snakes. All you have to do is post a wildlife picture, and mark it with #WildlifeWednesday .

I hope to see a lot of your wildlife pictures. Show the wild animals you've encountered!

2013-05-08 19:40:11 (4 comments, 2 reshares, 11 +1s)

My latest blog post deals with the fact that some criticism is right and some criticism is wrong, and it can sometimes be hard to distinguish which is which. I suggest a starting point for determining when you should not abide by criticism. 

I hope you find it worthwhile.

2013-05-08 05:23:04 (17 comments, 1 reshares, 17 +1s)

Not that I'd ever thought about buying clothes from Abercrombie and Fitch before, but now that I've read this, I'll be sure to avoid them. The fit wouldn't be a problem, but I wouldn't want any "beautiful people" to mistake me for being "cool and popular". ;-)

2013-05-07 00:12:29 (35 comments, 1 reshares, 8 +1s)

Several months ago, someone on G+ predicted this, and I disagreed. I'm not sure I'm remembering correctly, but I think it was +Mike Wiacek who predicted this.

Anyway, I was wrong.

My initial reaction to this Adobe plan is negative, but perhaps I'll change my mind after I think about it further.

2013-05-04 08:08:15 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 19 +1s)

To celebrate that today is Star Wars Day, I'm dictating this post into my Galaxy phone from far, far away. May the fourth be with you.

2013-05-02 04:15:31 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 35 +1s)

Somewhat Sabrina

From earlier today. Really digging the sun hitting the east-west streets in downtown

#streetphotography #streettogs #peoplearoundus #sf #sanfrancisco #omdem5

2013-05-02 01:01:33 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

Yesterday, I spent all day on some things, and nothing I was working on worked at all. Today, a couple of things I've been working on for weeks just magically came together - one of them from just random luck.

2013-05-01 21:39:42 (21 comments, 3 reshares, 86 +1s)

WILDLIFE WEDNESDAY
Curated by +Morkel Erasmus and +Mike Spinak     

Here's Sleep Cycle, from my Sleeping Sea Lions series. I hope you enjoy.

Remember that every Wednesday is Wildlife Wednesday. Post your pictures of wildlife. Do a search and look at other people's pictures of wildlife. Any wild creature will do. Big or small. From bugs to birds, snails to snakes. All you have to do is post a wildlife picture, and mark it with #WildlifeWednesday .

I hope to see a lot of your wildlife pictures. Show the wild animals you've encountered!

2013-04-30 20:00:28 (24 comments, 2 reshares, 102 +1s)

Here's a portrait of a common raven (with a tiny portrait of me in this raven's eye). I hope you enjoy.

2013-04-30 07:04:47 (4 comments, 2 reshares, 12 +1s)

This is neat.

I remember first hearing about successful experiments to combine firefly genes into tobacco plants, to make glow in the dark tobacco plants, when I was around 17. I've wanted bioluminescent plants ever since. 

Though this Kickstarter project, you can get bioluminescent plants relatively affordably.

2013-04-28 16:48:23 (9 comments, 4 reshares, 85 +1s)

Here's The View East from Tioga Pass. I hope you enjoy it.

I need to get back to this area in a month or two, for a project I have in mind. 

2013-04-26 17:40:20 (11 comments, 0 reshares, 44 +1s)

Here's The Artist at Work. I hope you enjoy it.

This is an old shot of my dear friend's daughter, Miss B.

She makes me happy.

She has chicken pox, so I'm spending the day with her.

2013-04-26 03:49:34 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 21 +1s)

This is the same way I ended up in the U.S. ;-)

I hear it's happened to +Luc Asbury and +Justin Spelbrink so many times they've lost count.

2013-04-26 00:57:40 (5 comments, 2 reshares, 14 +1s)

Here's my latest post, about a double standard some artist harbor, which can hold them back.

Cheers.

2013-04-24 21:18:55 (16 comments, 2 reshares, 76 +1s)

WILDLIFE WEDNESDAY
Curated by +Morkel Erasmus and +Mike Spinak     

Here's a photo of a brown pelican banking into the wind. Sometimes people ask me how one gets a picture like this. The answer is simple, really. You ask +Barry Blanchard to dress up like a giant fish, then you stand next to him when the pelicans come. ;-)

Remember that every Wednesday is Wildlife Wednesday. Post your pictures of wildlife. Do a search and look at other people's pictures of wildlife. Any wild creature will do. Big or small. From bugs to birds, snails to snakes. All you have to do is post a wildlife picture, and mark it with #WildlifeWednesday .

I hope to see a lot of your wildlife pictures. Show the wild animals you've encountered!

2013-04-24 20:43:28 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

Realmgolds is free on Amazon for the next three days.

Pick yourself up a free read and help me shoot up the Amazon charts. Currently rated at 4.5 stars.

The Human Purity movement is growing in power and influence in Denning, attacking dwarf businesses and caravans and inciting popular rebellion against the central government, with the passive or active support of many of the ruling Golds.

Opposing them almost alone is the Realmgold, a young man named Determined. His problem is that, even though the Realmgold is meant to be in charge, nobody is paying much attention to him.

Victory, who rules neighbouring Koskant, would love to support Determined, but an ancient magical treaty between their realms means she can’t send in her troops, her skyboats or her pressure guns. What she can do, though, is share a new magical communications technology – and her elite corpsof ... mehr »

2013-04-24 02:15:01 (11 comments, 3 reshares, 11 +1s)

Fellow writers,

Scrivener is on sale for half price on Amazon, right now. I just got it. You might be interested, too.

2013-04-23 18:56:56 (12 comments, 4 reshares, 92 +1s)

Here's a lovely little Lorquin's admiral. I hope you enjoy.

We're entering into a great time of year for butterflies. :-)

2013-04-23 02:07:27 (5 comments, 3 reshares, 8 +1s)

"Experiential truth is reborn in positive chaos."

Wise words from this delightful Random Deepak Chopra Quote Generator.

Try it for yourself, and share your gems with me.

2013-04-22 23:31:51 (29 comments, 5 reshares, 111 +1s)

Happy Earth Day, Everyone!

Here's First Light, Mono Lake. I hope you enjoy it.

2013-04-22 21:57:28 (6 comments, 5 reshares, 48 +1s)

I'm giving away a copy of my book Growing Up Humming on Goodreads, right now. If you're a Goodreads member, you can go enter for a chance to win this copy. No strings attached. http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/50914-growing-up-humming?page=1

"Exquisite! ...delightful for persons of any age ... a breathtaking microcosm that few people have witnessed and which somehow makes you feel blessed ... marvelous, awesome story."

From one of the five star reviews of my book on Amazon.

2013-04-22 02:07:55 (28 comments, 10 reshares, 103 +1s)

Photographers: Be Careful About Galleries

A word of caution to prevent some of my fellow photographers from being fleeced.

I got an email from a gallery saying they saw my photos, and they want to "represent" me. They asked me if they could send me more information. 

Sure, send me more information. It never hurts to learn more. 

So they sent it to me. They're in New York's art district. Cool. They've been around since 1984. Great. But then...

They charge a "promotional fee" for "promotional services".

Here's some straight talk about this kind of offer, fellow photographers:

Real representation by a reputable gallery usually won't charge a fee. Instead, they'll take a percentage when they sell your pictures, as a commission.

Why does the difference matter? Itm... mehr »

2013-04-21 19:04:23 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

If You're in the Bay Area...

Do any of the Bay Area folks reading this live near, or work near, or sometimes pass near the corner of Lawton Street and 40th Avenue in San Francisco? If yes, then I have a small favor to ask of you.

Please call me if you're open to going there and helping me out. (831) 325-6917

2013-04-20 23:40:01 (21 comments, 8 reshares, 115 +1s)

Since yesterday many of you seemed to like seeing a snowy egret from the Palo Alto Baylands, here's another. I hope you enjoy.

2013-04-20 21:18:53 (5 comments, 4 reshares, 29 +1s)

So true.

2013-04-20 20:03:24 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 12 +1s)

"Recently I have seen a lot of nature related books for kids. There is absolutely no comparison to this one. The photos in this book are so wonderful that you forget you are looking at a picture at all, it almost seems as though you are there..."

"...I shared this book with my children and they were simply fascinated. They also learned some things that they didn't know before, (as did I.) This book was a wonderful experience to share with my kids and I couldn't think of an age group that would be immune to the charm of these baby birds and this amazing book. By far, this is the best nature book I have seen. I feel great about recommending this to anyone, it is so worth the time."

- Excerpt from one of the 5 star reviews of my book on Amazon.

2013-04-20 02:06:58 (35 comments, 17 reshares, 176 +1s)

Here's a snowy egret (Egretta thula) doing a breeding display. I hope you enjoy.

It won't be long until they're displaying, fighting, building nests, and raising chicks, once again.

2013-04-18 20:19:34 (21 comments, 8 reshares, 83 +1s)

Here's one of the photos from my Sleeping Sea Lions series. I hope you enjoy it.

I'm so close, yet so far, from being able to make a Sleeping Sea Lions book. Some day... hopefully soon.

2013-04-17 22:12:07 (6 comments, 6 reshares, 21 +1s)

This is astounding.

All people have the potential to do amazing things. Remember that.

2013-04-17 19:36:04 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

My latest Talking Indies column for Talking Writing Magazine.

http://talkingwriting.com/why-bookstores-arent-helping-indie-authors-yet/

2013-04-17 18:20:42 (20 comments, 11 reshares, 99 +1s)

WILDLIFE WEDNESDAY
Curated by +Morkel Erasmus and +Mike Spinak    

Here's a photo of a double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) jabbing into a sculpin. This sculpin was too large and prickly for the cormorant to swallow whole, and the sculpin was dangerously thrashing around, so the cormorant gave it a deadly jab, then tore off chunks of flesh, instead.

Remember that every Wednesday is Wildlife Wednesday. Post your pictures of wildlife. Do a search and look at other people's pictures of wildlife. Any wild creature will do. Big or small. From bugs to birds, snails to snakes. All you have to do is post a wildlife picture, and mark it with #WildlifeWednesday .

I hope to see a lot of your wildlife pictures. Show the wild animals you've encountered!

2013-04-16 19:06:07 (29 comments, 21 reshares, 115 +1s)

Here's an Anna's hummingbird nectaring on cape heath (Erica ssp.). I hope you enjoy it.

I made this shot immediately after the deadline for my book Growing Up Humming, but I'm considering adding it to a future edition of the book. I'm not sure whether the shadow on the face will print too dark in a book for my tastes. 

I made this on a lovely morning at the UCSC arboretum, with my friends +Barry Blanchard, +Ed Sweeney, and +Swee Oh. I think it's time for another.

2013-04-15 18:54:21 (9 comments, 5 reshares, 66 +1s)

Here's a phone snapshot of Davenport Crack, because I haven't been to the ocean in more than two weeks (a long time, for me), and I miss it. 

I hope you enjoy.

2013-04-14 20:45:00 (12 comments, 4 reshares, 12 +1s)

For the most part, I agree with this.

I don't watch nor listen to news programs, nor read newspapers. 

2013-04-14 19:57:44 (16 comments, 7 reshares, 82 +1s)

I have a hypothesis percolating in my head about incentive structures in the book industry. If it comes to fruition, I'll probably write a blog post on the topic. 

In the mean time, here's a reminder that I make pictures, too. ;-)

I hope you enjoy this shot of an Anhinga mother and chick.