For almost as long as I can remember, I have had an admiration for Bald Eagles.  Though they live in our area, and in fact are sometimes seen within a mile of my house, I have rarely seen one here.  Occasionally I will spot one flying over Kentucky Lake, and just a few years ago I was privileged to find an inhabited nest in the Land Between the Lakes.  About that same time I found a nest very close to my home, but was never privileged to see an eagle in it.  Just a few days ago though, my oldest son excitedly called me and told me he found an inhabited nest nearby, and this morning I was finally able to get out and see for myself.  Sure enough, an inhabited Bald Eagle's nest, and it was fairly easily accessible without disturbing the birds.  Here is the best shot of the morning:

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On Saturday I was blessed with a great photo shoot with David Leipzig, a graduating Senior at Marshall County High School.  David is one of the most politically engaged teens I have met, and was privileged to attend Governer's Scholar Program and Boys State.  David is lined up to begin school this fall at Murray State University majoring in Political Science.

As you can see in the photos, David loves the outdoors and Kentucky Lake.  He enjoys swimming, fishing, and kayaking.  He also plays baseball in Calvert City.

I have known David for most of his life, and it is nice to see him grow into a young man with a promising future.  I pray for the Lord's blessings over this transition from high school to college and beyond.

You can see the whole set of images here: http://sceeephotography.com/p1020946149.

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The photo world is abuzz with the announcement by Adobe that the next version of Photoshop will have Camera Shake Reduction.  They aren't the first to the table with this though.  Intelligent Imaging Solutions beat them to the punch just last week with a public beta release of Piccure, a plug-in for Photoshop.  I was eager to get my hands on this and see if this was too good to be true.  In short, I wish I could say it differently, but I am not a fan.  That is not to say I am not impressed though - I am.  It is fascinating what they are able to do, but my experimentation didn't lead to usable images.  Here are a few examples:

This first image was shot with a 200mm lens without Image Stabilization at 1/50.  You can see the obvious blur in the original cropped image to the left.  The image to the right is the outcome after using the Piccure plugin.  I was hopeful with this image, as perhaps you could salvage a shot with this in certain circumstances.

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This next image was shot with the same lens, but at 1/30.  The blurriness is far more evident, and the resulting image from using Piccure is not only useless, but perhaps even worse than the original.  

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The final image was once again shot with the same lens, once again at 1/50, but this time more blurry than the first, and entirely unusable after attempting to clean it up with Piccure.

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We do have to remember, this is a beta release, but honestly, it doesn't give me much hope.  I hope the folks at Adobe or Intelligent Imaging Solutions can improve this technology to create something that might be useful, and perhaps if I had a photo with less blur it might have been, but the icing on the cake was the fact that each time I used Piccure, Photoshop would inevitably crash.  Not good.  Yes, I know it is a beta, but still not good.