A Harris Hawk that I got a picture of during a falconry demonstration. I tried to take a lot of pictures of it flying, but had some trouble with focus and motion blur (and getting dive-bombed; I have a picture of nothing but hawk-tail going over my head...) The problem with these guys is that I always want to pet them... but I don't think they'd like being pet.

A slice of birthday cake at a restaurant. This wasn't difficult to take, although snapshots of people were a nightmare since it was so dark. (I refuse to be one of those people taking flash pictures in the middle of a restaurant.)

Little birds playing on a weather vein. Through the wonder of photography tricks, this picture was actually backwards when I took it. I flipped it so that the "1994" would be the right way around. I was pretty surprised at how blue I was able to get the sky, since it was actually pretty overcast.

I actually got around to getting some work done! The top is now pretty thoroughly stripped, and I've made good progress on the drawer fronts. There is pretty extensive damage to the veneer on the piece, but I'm hoping to be able to repair it all rather than than having to replace it. The drawer that's not in this picture had some veneer coming off the front that I'm going to have to re-glue before I can strip the paint off. I'm not entirely sure what wood the veneer is, or even if the rest of the piece is the same wood. From stripping the paint, it looks as though it might take a very red hue on it's own; I'm debating whether I'm going to stain the whole thing or simply varnish it once I get all the paint and old varnish off. Either way, that's a long way off from here.

Documentary here for a day or two; this is my latest project. We picked this 'distressed' piece of furniture up for cheap from an antique store that had already started 'refinishing' it (hence the paint). They're a shabby-chic type of place, and had already started priming it before they lost steam. We certainly aren't shabby-chic people, so it's getting completely stripped down and refinished. I'd actually already started, as you can see by the top and unpainted door. It's pretty rough, and it going to need some rebuilding instead of just refinishing, but I think the final product will be very nice.

Not a lot of time to take pictures today, so I ended up chasing my poor cat around late at night. This was a trick one of my friends from school was playing around with when he borrowed my camera a few years ago. I wouldn't exactly call it artistic, but it's fun to play around with. All you do is zoom out a little bit while you're taking the exposure. It's easier if you have a tripod, but you can do it hand-held too (as I did).