This long tailed, beautiful Azure-winged Magpie or the Cyanopica cyana was collecting raw materials for its nest. Taken at Beijing, China near the gate entrance of the Temple of Heaven.
Shot using a 300mm f/4L IS + 1.4x teleconverter.
"Kite to Heaven"
A Chinese man shows off his kite flying skills in Houhai (后海/後海), a popular area in Beijing home to a park with a lake and boats, several restaurants, and bars. Very popoular with foreign tourists and the expatriate community.
Qin Shi Huang conquered and united China in 221 BC establishing the Qin Dynasty. He wanted to protect the empire against intrusions by the Xiongnu people from the north, so he ordered the building of a new wall to connect the remaining fortifications along the empire's new northern frontier.
Pictured here is the "North Pass" of Juyongguan known as Badaling. In ancient times, this is one of the most well guarded areas of the Wall as it was the gateway to the capital: Beijing.
This picture was taken on top of a guard tower and this would be what a Chinese soldier would see in ancient times.
You often hear about the strictness of Chinese discipline and how the Party exerts an incredible amount of control...when I finally came to visit the country, I found out these guys are as normal as the rest of the world. There's still plenty of ways they get away with things.
For instance, in this picture, a communist guard uses his cell phone while at work and was hiding in a corner away from surveillance cameras. Check the top left of the picture and you will find the camera he's hiding from. I initially thought he was sleeping.
Shot on Negros Island, photographed at the Bulata village in the municipality of Cauayan, Negros Island on May 31, 2010. He was attempting to get the leaves from this branch. This specific subspecies can only be found in the Philippines (endemic).
This location is about 10 minutes away by boat from Danjugan Island Marine and Wildlife Reserve, a known sanctuary for birds.
This is sometimes called the Scaly-breasted Munia or The Spice Finch. It is also one of the birds mistakenly called "maya" in the Philippines. They will call almost any small brown bird as "maya" down here.
This is a Black-naped Oriole (Oriolus chinensis) I photographed at the Bulata village in the municipality of Cauayan, Negros Island on May 31, 2010. He was sun bathing.
This location is about 10 minutes away by boat from Danjugan Island Marine and Wildlife Reserve.
"That's a pretty amazing accomplishment," says Anthony Forster, a molecular biologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Still, he and others emphasize that this work didn't create a truly synthetic life form, because the genome was put into an existing cell.
For the first time, the Philippines used an electronic voting system that immediately provided results online. This reduced the political tension that was prevalent in past elections. For those that didn't have a computer or television, various organizations provided election results through displays on the street.
In this example, they posted the results on the main highway which attracted crowds and caused a traffic congestion.
Look closely and you'll find the jeepney has the Aquino ribbon while the taxi has a Villar checkmark.
Many believe Senator Noynoy Aquino won the presidential race against Senator Manny Villar because he was the son of the Philippines' most revered modern heroes. The people that voted for Noynoy hope his upbringing and the influence of his humble mother will help reform the country. And while he doesn't have many legislative victories to brag about, he also looks less corrupt than the rest, and in this country, that's an achievement in of itself.
The truth is, Mayweather (age 33) was able to recover and rebound, but he clearly was in danger of losing it in the 2nd and 3rd rounds. It seems like the only reason he survived was Mosley was running out of steam (the guy was almost 39).Mosley ducks a wild left, then lands a right. Mayweather clinches but Mosley breaks away and chases after him. Mayweather appears flustered. Mosley's speed is stunning him. The best Mayweather can do is clinch. Mosley is all over him, in the center of the ring, on the ropes. Mayweather's only answer is to clinch, trying to slow the aggressive Mosley's charge. The crowd is on its feet chanting "Mosley! Mosley! Mosley!"
Mosley's speed clearly has Mayweather worried and you have to wonder what an even faster fighter like Manny Pacquiao would do to Mayweather.
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The Corinth Canal is a canal that connects the Gulf of Corinth with the Saronic Gulf in the Aegean Sea. It cuts through the narrow Isthmus of Corinth and separates the Peloponnesian peninsula from the Greek mainland, thus effectively making the former an island.
The canal is 6.3 kilometres in length and was built between 1881 and 1893.
The original idea to cut through this area was proposed in the 7th century BC by the Greek ruler Periander.
What's one of the rarest occurrences in the world? Not diamonds. It's Joshua Clottey throwing a punch! I caught it on this photograph. Pacquiao gets hit by one of the few punches Clottey gave on this bout.
Manny Pacquiao vs. Joshua Clottey, billed as The Event, was a boxing welterweight fight for the WBO World welterweight championship. The bout was held on March 13, 2010, at Cowboys Stadium, in Arlington, Texas, United States. This match was put together after the long awaited "superfight" between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather, Jr. had fallen through.
Over 50,944 fans were there, the biggest boxing audience in nearly two decades.
Skittles should hire me as their official photographer. This picture, cropped a little bit wide, was taken with a Canon Rebel XT (350D) and a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L glass. I found this recently on my old hard drives and was delighted to find this once in a lifetime shot.
There's no added detail to this picture, the rainbow, the ship, the waterfalls on the left hand side -- are all real and a testament to Norway's hidden worlds. If you loved Avatar's 3D fantasy world -- you need to visit Norway.
Shot at one of Bergen's fjords.
This beautiful bird, the Negros Bleeding-heart (Gallicolumba keayi), is unfortunately close to extinction due to over hunting and habitat lost. It is mainly found in the islands of Panay and Negros. It is estimated that there are only a hundred of these birds left in the Negros island. The local name for this species is punalada. Like all bleeding-heart doves, they can only be found in the Philippines.
This species has an extremely small, severely fragmented population. Continuing rates of forest loss on the two islands where it occurs suggest that it will continue to decline, thereby qualifying it as critically endangered with the possibility of being extinct in the wild within years time.
What a gorgeous bird this is!
The Luzon Bleeding-heart (Gallicolumba luzonica) is a number of species of ground dove in the genus Gallicolumba that are called "bleeding-hearts". They get this name from a splash of vivid red color at the centre of their white breasts. The Philippines' Luzon Bleeding-heart is the species in which this feature is most pronounced.
The species is endemic to the central and southern parts of the large island of Luzon, and the neighbouring small Polillo Islands, in the Philippines.
Somewhere on an island in the middle of the Philippines is a faint sound of 8 frames per second. That's me with wearing a Canon camera vest, with a Canon EOS 7D DSLR, a Canon 70-200mm f4L and Manfrotto 682B Self Standing Monopod.
This awkward looking bird with a pink featherless head isn't the Philippines' most attractive endemic creature. Nonetheless, its strange features make an interesting photograph.
The Coleto bird (Sarcops calvus) is a starling species (family Sturnidae) in the monotypic genus Sarcops. It is endemic to the Philippines.
It was one of the final closing shots.
The sun was closing down on me really quickly and the colors started shifting. I moved a little bit off the rocks and started focusing on where the sun's final rays broke through the clouds.
It was nature's "grand finale". Until tomorrow.
Canon EOS 7D
Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L
Tv: 1/160 secs, Av: 5.6, ISO 160
Focal length: 70mm
A photographic irony: A domesticated water buffalo (called a "carabao") supervises the humans as they tend to the rice field. Location: Balasan, Iloilo, the island of Panay, Philippines
Estancia, Panay island, Philippines. A public fish market that specializes in dried fish. If DSLR cameras could only record how badly it smelled.
Bacolod's 124 hectare reclamation area now hosts one of the busiest ports in the Philippines.
The BREDCO Port has daily access to Iloilo, with different shipping lines such as Supercat, Weesam Express, Ocean Jet, and Aleson Shipping. There are also access routes to Puerto Princesa City, Cagayan de Oro City, General Santos City. Dipolog City, Zamboanga City, Butuan City, Iligan City, Ozamiz City, and Surigao City served by different shipping lines such as Negros Navigation and SuperFerry. By boat, Bacolod City is 18 hours from the Port of Manila and 45 minutes from the Port of Iloilo.
