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Blue and Gold Macaw #2

Photo of a blue and gold macawThis is the same photo as the previous posting, but with significant work done with it. Notably I have blurred and darkend the wing at the right front to provide a sense of depth of field. To draw attention to the bird's eye, I used Photoshop's "Lighting Effects" filter placing a soft omni spot on his eye and also a spot light running from the lower right to the top left across his face.

Working with this photo made me think about what it might be like to get a parrot. Luckily right about the same time I ran across this story from NPR called A Delightful, Awful Marriage, all about the joys, and drawbacks, of letting a parrot move in on your life. Quite funny! And quite a warning!

This and other photos I have taken of birds can be found in the bird photo galleries. There's one for broadband visitors, and one for dialup visitors. Here are the links to each:

Bird Photo Gallery - Broadband Flash Gallery

Bird Photo Gallery - Dial Up Optimized

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Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival

The 15th anniversary Pasifika Festival poster — a collage of the Pacific cultures the festival celebrates. On Saturday 10 March 2007, I spent the day at the Pasifika Festival at Western Springs Park in Auckland. It was the festival's 15th year — an annual celebration of Pacific Island cultures that has been part of Auckland's calendar since 1993, and which typically draws crowds of well over 100,000 across the day. Nine Pacific villages are traditionally represented — Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Niue, Fiji, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Kiribati and Tahiti — with music, dance, food, arts, and craft from each community sharing the same park for the day. I usually visit New Zealand earlier in February, but in 2007 I was there in March and it was the first — and, to date, only — time I've been able to attend Pasifika. I hope to make it back one of these years. But I came away from that single visit with the str...

Cool Granny Has Taken Up Flying — The Little Old Lady Collection Grows Again

Cool Granny in Her Biplane — © John Corney 2026 Our cool granny is back, and she has done something the family has been quietly worried about for a few months now. She has taken up flying. A Brief Recap for New Readers If you're new to the series: she first appeared in a beautifully kept yellow Austin A35 on the corner of Queen Street and K Road in Auckland , waving cheerfully out the driver's window as she went past. That piece was, in its quiet way, a tribute to my own mother, who in her fifties bought her own motor scooter in Whanganui and never looked back — and to every older woman who has ever decided it was finally her turn. Then she showed up in a pink-and-yellow flame-painted monster truck, waving out the driver's window in exactly the same spirit, but with rather larger tyres. Same silver hair, same coral scarf, same oversized sunglasses. Same little red heart pa...

Samoan Youth

This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .