I’ve decided that I want to start sharing more of my photography because I love taking pictures but I realize that not everyone will like posts with lots of images and not a lot to read. So, I’ve decided to start something I’ll call “Sunday Sampling” where I’ll share a bunch of images from a particular place/event/etc… that I’m into right now. Unless otherwise indicated I use Photoshop CS3 – I’ll be switching to CS4 soon – to play with my images. I try not to do too much to them as I’m working extremely hard to get good pictures when I initially take them. Despite this, I love playing with actions. I use Totally Rad Actions and particularly love the following actions: Boutwell Magic Glasses – I use this to on nearly every image with varying degrees of opacity  – and A Better Web Sharpen.

While in Prague over winter break, Peter and I had the chance to visit the Prague Zoo with my father-in-law, Pavel. We had talked about making the trip over (it’s technically in Prague but requires a metro ride and a bus to get there), and towards the end of our trip, with a bit of fresh snow on the ground, we did.

A couple of thoughts about the Prague Zoo…

• It’s huge – we were there nearly all day and never ran out of things to do. You can go on an interactive tour here.
• It felt like we could get much closer to the animals than in any Zoo I have visited in the States.
• The Zoo cafeteria was quite tasty – full of Czech food (I know, duh – we were in the Czech Republic after all – but even Peter commented that it was impressively tasty.
• The kid wagons – for the parents to pull the kids around in – have Mercedes Benz logos. How cool is that?
• The animals all looked healthy, well cared for, and happy.

I want to go back in the summer so we can see some of the animals better. As it was quite cold, many animals that are usually outside (Elephants, Giraffes, etc…) had been brought inside for the winter.

This set of images were also processed using an action called Get Faded (winter) and I love how it enhanced the wintery feel. You can learn more about the actions on the Totally Rad Photoshop Actions Blog.