Irish Channel home shows "good bones"

She's an old house with "good bones."   Time and weather have revealed her wrinkles and blemishes, baring her inner beauty.  This old home still stands proud in the Irish Channel neighborhood of New Orleans near the Mississippi River.

Duck! a Lafreniere Park scene

There must have been some good eats down below for these three ducks to "duck" in unison  --  A Lafreniere park in Metairie, La.

The Soul Queen of New Orleans, Irma Thomas

We made it to Irma Thomas' 32nd Annual Mothers Day Concert at the Zoo in New Orleans.   The Soul Queen of New Orleans still has it.  Her backfield may not be in as much motion, but she can still make you want to dance... and laugh..... and cry.

Oh, and the towel?  That's for the second liners  -- it's a New Orleans thing.

Mardi Grab

I know it has a been a couple weeks since Mardi Gras, but I'm just getting around to processing the pictures.  At any rate, I hope this photo lets you capture the excitement of the shindig. You go mad yelling for beads and climbing on ladders to capture attention to get a bunch of stuff you really would rather not have.  But, ah,there is the occasional treasure that makes you glow with warmth thinking, "can it get any better than this? -- cares gone, party on, wild behaviour accepted, cut loose.  O yeah, the good times are rolling, for sure."

In the front is my niece Savarra with my sister (her aunt) Karen behind her.  My sister Sue is in the orange hair on the ladder on the right. I am faced with my back to the parade and, as luck would have it, about to get smacked in the back of my head with a bunch of beads.  Cue B.B. King's song: Let the Good Times Roll.

Mardi Gras was a bright shade of fun

Everybody had a lot of fun on our Mardi Gras excursion this past weekend. But none more so that my wife, Linda. She was parasolling wth the best of them.

Pink-backed Pelican

This pink-backed Pelican at the New Orleans Audubon Zoo hails from the African continent.  It's pinkish beak is a visibly different from the Brown Pelicans and White Pelicans in this part of the world

Glowing close together -- Hot Air Balloons

Another shot from the Moon Glow of hot air balloons at the festival this weekend in Gonzales, LA

Hot Air Balloon Festival warms crowd

We were at the Moon Glow at the Hot Air Balloon Festival in Gonzales yesterday.  As the sun expired, the balloons at the Lamar Dixon center seemed to take its place.  Their faint sun-mimicking effort made a wide-eyed crowd come to life.

White alligator

The famous white gator from the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans where Canal Street meets the Mississippi River.  I took this a few years ago, but I never had the chance to post it.  I guess this dude is bigger these days.

Trees gather to life in glimmer of morn

Daylight mists down on Lake Bigeaux along side the I-10 bridge over the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana early one morning last week.  The first revenants materialized into tree shapes from the foggy breaths of the lake waters.  Maybe a little too much coffee on the drive?

Reddish Egret watches for night

A reddish egret does a one-legged, wait-for-the-night-to-come, stance near Lacissine, LA. The highway night gathering spot for egrets and their friends is one of my favorite places.  Lucky that it happens to be just where I am often passing by as the dark eats up the sky. The assembling includes hundreds (maybe thousands) of Cattle Egrets, Ibis, Snowy Egrets, shore gulls, Blue Herons, Cormorants, an occasional Roseate Spoonbill and more.

It looks as though our solitary sentinel may have snagged a spiders web on his glide to his post.

Flamingos at the New Orleans Zoo

The Flamingos at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans were pretty listless recently when we went to see them.  For that matter, so were we.  The heat just zaps your energy.

Heron hangout harkens thousands

How many Ibis can you get into the top of a pine tree?

This is the place to find out.  Last night was the 4th time I have visited the spot along I-10 at the Lacassine exit. Three times it looked like this; once there were no birds.  I think I have it figured out now -- they all start congregating here about an hour and a half before sunset. Don't come in the middle of the day.

This time, like the others, there were thousands of herons -- Ibis, Cattle Egrets, Snowy Egrets, Blue Herons, Comorants and even some  shore gulls passed by ( but didn't land).

The spot is in the northwest corner of the intersection on the service road (not on the I-10 on-ramp).  Just as you come onto the service road and negotiate the sharp turn, there is a small industrial facility (looks like a sand operation). The trees behind it  are where the herons hang out. They literally fill the trees and keep coming by the hundreds.  They fill the trees behind the facility first and then spill out toward the I-10 as the sun goes down and room on the limbs runs out.

You can easily get a solid half hour to an hour of shooting photos in, depending on your lenses, the clouds and what ISO you want to go to.  I shot this at 800 and about 1/500 sec. I was using a lens equivalent to 450mm.    If you have better glass, this would be a real treat.

Fishing the flood

This is from the big flood on the Mississippi River in New Orleans in 2008.  The Bonne Carre Spillway was opened to alleviate the flooding and it made quite a site.  These were among the many who took advantage of the situation to do a little net fishing.

The newest baby

This is our newest grandchild, Sloan Buser, born to proud parents Shawn and Sarah.  Of course Linda and I are just bursting with joy.

The spray of summer opens imaginations

Add some heat, a lot of spraying water and an fertile imagination, and the splash pad becomes  an chimeric escape from the mundane days of playing at home.  At the Splash Pad in Port Neches, this is our granddaughter.  I am thinking that that in this day dream  there is some kind of metamorphosis into a feline.

Pigeon wants to know what I am photographing

While I was shooting pictures of  the New Orleans Central Business district from atop the Tulane Medical Center parking lot, this pigeon lighted a few feet away and glanced around, as if to ask "What are you looking at, anyway?"

I felt I didn't really owe this bird and explanation, so we parted company without a word spoken.

New Orleans's tall icons draw "close"

I was struck by the seeming juxtaposition of St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans and a Carnival Cruise Line ship heading out of port and down the Mississippi River.  Of course, the two are far apart, but the long lens needed to capture this shot compresses the space and makes them appear as next door neighbors.

Notice all the waving people (if you can make them out) on the upper decks of the cruise ship.  The photo looks east across the French Quarter.  The ship is making its turn off of the short section of the Mississippi River from the Greater New Orleans Bridge to Canal Street where the river actually flows due north.

New Orleans from a different point of view

This is the view of the New Orleans Central Business District from the top of the Tulane Medical Center Parking garage -- eight stories above the street I think.  The shot is looking west.  I was enjoying this different view of the city.

Mississippi River is imagination highway

The Carnival Cruise Line ship gets the right of way as it heads out of dock and heads from New Orleans downstream on the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico and days of fun and leisure.  The Canal Street Ferry waits its turn to pass behind the huge ship.