When I found out a baby panda had been born at the National Zoo, I wanted to see him as soon as he was available. Unfortunately, the tickets to see him sold out right away. Now, nine months later, the tickets are largely an unnecessary formality. However, I didn’t know that when Danielle and I woke up at 5 am last Sunday to get a glimpse of Tai Shan. I had read that before 0830 tickets were not necessary to see the Giant Pandas, so I got all my gear ready on Saturday night and set my alarm for 0500. Then we went to go see Tai Shan. I found a group of photographers who all visit at least once a week (some every other day) to see what antics little Tai Shan was up to. He’s currently weaning, so he’s learned that bamboo goes in his mouth, but he still doesn’t eat it as voraciously as his parents. I had no idea I would find him so amusing! I ended up taken nearly 150 pictures of him. In raw mode, that cost me nearly 1.5 GB of space! Below are some of my favorite pictures from that day and I’ll be adding more soon.

I’m not Catholic, but if I were to give something up for Lent, it would have to be my only addiction - flickr!

In the sciences a pupil is taught formulas and learns to aply and adopt these to whichever situations present themselves. By contrast, artistic learning requires studying the masters and learning to imitate their techniques before being able to create a new one. By knowing the rules and how those great artists adhered to them or broke them, the student gains a greater understanding.

My own learning by imitation began with the internet and the homepage. I would navigate to one which looke dneat, view the source, consult my OReilly HTML book, and figure out how to do it myself. Flickr has had a similar effect on opening my mind to new possibilities.

Some people might look at my pictures, particularly those who are in the 400 views group and say, “so! Anyone can get to 400 views by climbing the Views bracket groups.” For the uninitiated, these are pools of pictures that start with 25 then go to 50, 100, and every hundred after that. The point of the group is that a photo with at least 25 views is placed in the 25 group and when it outgrows that group, it moves on to 50 and so on and so forth.

Some of my favorite photos: