I posted new pictures today of some wildlife in the back yard. Included are shots of mourning doves, cardinals, squirrels, grackles, a robin, sparrows, and finches. Here's one of my favorites, titled "Oh Say Can You See"—look at the placement of the left paw...:
In my first attempt at posting flash video the the web, I'm putting up a rather strange clip I took using my Mom's PowerShot S3 IS of a 'common grackle' (kind of a fitting name for an annoying bird) making squawks while puffing up his feathers. I'm not too sure what prompts this behavior, but it seems that the grackles do it only when other grackles are around.
I finally have settled down for a few days at home before I head back to the Seminary to begin the summer formation program, and I have a few minutes to write about the College's end-of-year silent retreat and where it was held.
Cardinal Glennon College Seminarians participate in a five-day silent retreat at the end of the year, to wrap things up and give a 'spiritual boost' (as it were) to the men as they enter their summer months. We go away from the Seminary to the King's House retreat center in Belleville, Illinois. The King's House has pretty good food, beautiful trails (including one for the outdoor way of the cross), and a quiet, natural atmosphere. Here's a picture of one of the views from the walking trails:
Last night, I, along with four brother college seminarians, graduated from the Cardinal Glennon College Seminary (part of Kenrick-Glennon), and I have posted pictures (graciously taken by Stephen Mirarchi—thanks, Stephen!) from the event.
Last night I walked around outside the Seminary (it was a beautiful night, with a slight breeze), and took some pictures using my D40 on a tripod to make some HDR pictures (HDR = take a few pictures with different exposures, then combine them to make a picture with a seemingly higher dynamic range - where highlights aren't blown out...). There are some areas of the Seminary which look beautiful with this method, and I'll show you those pictures here. All these pictures were taken in the RAW format at ISO 400, and converted to HDR images, then tone-mapped in Photomatix Pro.
Here's a picture of the whole Seminary building from the back baseball field. It was very dark, and I took 5 pictures, one which exposed for the bright building lights at about 1/10 sec., up to a 30 sec. exposure to expose for the darkest areas of the image:
Today I installed Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium on my iBook (to help in my production of the Seminary website, this website, and Vocations videos, among other tasks), and I can't believe how many awesome features I was missing out on with my now-antiquated copy of CS1 from many years back (well... two years ago, I guess—that's way back for me).