Insomnia

Ok it's not really insomnia. I just didn't sleep last night. For a few reasons I decide not to reveal here.
While I don't really have a blog post for today, because I'm too tired to think, I did daydream away to years that were and thought how amazing it would've been to get back to Brazil again.
Here's a photo of the Iguassu Falls that I took with my old Canon PowerShot A70 when I was there in 2006.

Devil's Throat/Garganta do Diabo/Garganta del Diablo

Jupiter and Venus

Last night Jupiter and Venus were pretty close together. I had originally planned to go out and take a photo when they were closer to the horizon, but since the thick dark clouds came in fast I had to put on my 14mm Samyang lens and take a quick photo before they disappeared completely.

Edit: Today we had a clear sky so I went out and got this photo using my 30mm Sigma lens.

Weight loss - before and after photo

The before photo was taken on September 14. On that day I weighed 109 kg (240.3 lbs).
The after photo was taken on March 8. On that day I weighed 81,6 kg (179.9 lbs).
So the difference is almost 6 months and 27,4 kg (60.4 lbs). My face looks much more chubby in the before photo. Sure the photos are taken with different lighting and at different distances, but you can still see the difference.

Before

After

Bird photography at Lake Hornborga

This morning I went on a trip to Lake Hornborga (Hornborgasjön) to see if I could take some photos of the birds that stay there every spring. Unfortunately I didn't see any cranes. They started to arrive a few days ago, but they were probably in a different part of the lake when I was there. If I had gone there in two weeks or so there would've been thousands of them there. I did see lots of Canada geese and Greylag geese and a few Whooper swans though. So how did my photos turn out? Well, to be honest I think my Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM lens was way too short and the Canon EOS 550D's autofocus wasn't fast enough for the flying birds.
Below are the best photos of the day. Some are not that good I know, but I wanted to show what I managed to produce the first time I tried bird photography.

Information center Naturum Hornborgasjön

Sign that welcomes you to the "Crane dance"

Geese and Swans out on the field

Canada geese (branta canadensis)

Whooper swans (cygnus cygnus)

Whooper swans (cygnus cygnus)

Canada geese (branta canadensis)

Greylag geese (anser anser)

Whooper swans (cygnus cygnus)

Whooper swan (cygnus cygnus)

Greylag geese (anser anser)

Short poem

 I wrote this poem about 10 years ago about a girl that I fancied. She never read it or heard it or even if she did she wouldn't know it was about her.

All I see around me is darkness.
Not the least bit of light anywhere.
It's like walking around in the middle of the night during a blackout.
Until suddenly, I see you smile.

Canon 5D Mark III

Today Canon presented their new fullframe digital SLR: Canon 5D Mark III. Not that I will ever get one, I'm happy with my crop sensor EOS 550D (Rebel T2i), but everything I've read about this new camera on forums is scary. Even before anyone has gotten a chance to test it or even seen sample photos taken with it they jump on the bandwagon and cry about it being "worse than Nikon D800 because the way I read the specs tells me the D800 has more megapixels and that's all that matters".
Some people have even said "that's it, now I'm going to sell all my Canon equipment and buy the D800 instead". Why would someone do that? Because the D800 has 14 megapixels more? That's ridiculous. Who, besides the professional "billboard photographers", has the need for 36 megapixels? And who needs it so badly that they are willing to sell all their old equipment just to buy a camera that has instead of buying a very good camera that has 22 megapixels? Morons, that's who. Or more likely forum trolls that will never get rid of their equipment. They just want to complain because it wasn't the best camera in the world ever for an extremely cheap price... Preferably less than the cheapest compact cameras.
My advice to anyone out there interested in the Canon 5D Mark III: Wait until you've had a chance to read reviews and been able to go to a store to look at it and feel what it's like to have it in your hands. Then make up your mind. If it's not right for you, then have a look at another camera. If you already have Canon equipment, maybe you have a camera that's still good and wait for the next release.

Stars twinkle, planets don't

Sirius, Jupiter and Betelgeuse

It's easy to think that all the small dots in the night sky are stars. They aren't of course. There are at least 5 planets that you can easily see with the naked eye. Mercury can be seen with the naked eye, but being so close to the Sun it's usually at dawn or dusk and not at night you can see it. The others are Venus, Earth (duh...), Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. So how can you tell the difference between a star and a planet if you just happen to look up at the night sky? Stars twinkle. Yes the nursery rhyme is true. Twinkle, twinkle little star. Although they aren't exactly small they appear small to us.
The photo above illustrates the difference between stars and planets. Left to right it's Sirius, Jupiter and Betelgeuse. Why I chose to have two stars is because they are different colours so they appear to twinkle differently. Jupiter as you can see does not twinkle at all. So why is that? From what I can guess, and what seems logical to me, is that stars shine light in all wavelengths and Earth's atmosphere lets the different wavelengths through at different speeds so that it appears to twinkle. That would also explain why they twinkle more near the horizon. Planets on the other hand reflects just a few wavelengths of light from our Sun so they always appear to be a solid dot.
Even if I got this right I'm sure there are people out there that can explain it better.
The photos are 10-second exposures taken handheld with my Canon EOS 550D (Rebel T2i), Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L. At least the stars make really nice artworks that way.