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A few days back, Melissa left a comment about some of the photos in my diary, and asked how I'm doing on storage space on Dland.

Well, I should have mentioned this before, but I am well known for being late in expressing my gratitude. When I first got the digital, we were limited to 12 Mbytes of storage here on Dland. Which I was quickly consuming. Then, Andrew, the guru who runs this site, nudged us up to 15 Mbytes. Even so, I was running out of room much too quickly, hence the shrinkage of most photos down to 260 pixels in width, and distinctly reduced jpeg quality.

And then, not so recently, Andrew bumped us up to a whopping 30 Mbytes. And I immediately went back to 300 pixel photos. But it is amazing how much file size increases with just a 15 percent increase in photo width (or height on a few). So we're back down to 260 pixels.

Yes, it reduces the quality and impression of some photos (also makes them less likely to show up somewhere else). The small size also saves some photos, since you can't see the blurring that is in the originals because I or the subject moved. Severe size reduction also concentrates colours, which is the only manipulation I have allowed myself with the sunrise and sunset photos. Some would be almost bland at full screen.

But there have been a few gems that didn't get proper justice. And it seems like this country is best suited for wide, panorama shots. I have been making and enjoying these, and it seemed like time to share. Please remember these are mine, and I'd rather not see them show up elsewhere (some are ideally suited for banners, which I just ran five more of, to little effect).

One of the first was this shot of the Wind Rivers, covered with their blanket of Saint Patrick's Day snow.

While the snow was no where near as deep, this dusting out in the desert was fresh, and lay like powdered sugar on the hills when the morning's clouds lifted.

I am almost ashamed to admit I had sat there for a minute or two, counting the grouse faintly visible through the binocs on the lek in front of me before I even noticed these mists trying to swallow up the Ferrises.

I also have to admit that these buttes and hills are not my country. There's an Interstate running between the buttes and the foreground here, and that is my southern border. One of my neighbors gets to take care of the critters in those hills, and I have the flat sagebrush lands on this side of the Super Slab (as the highway patrol call it).

Speaking of critters, we found this mallard drake and his mate on the little pond mentioned a while back regarding a sick deer (I'm too lazy to look up the link... we're gonna be lucky if I get all these photos done today).

And these are some of the beasties that are occupying most of my time this time of year (and until about the first part of May). This was earlier this month, near the peak of hens for this strutting ground, which is a little more than a half-mile from the mallards' pond.

But of course, most of my better shots are still sunrises...

With the occassional moonset on the opposite horizon.

When I showed the wife the first of these two sunrises

She did the obligatory oohing and aahing. Then when she saw the second photo, she said "There's the same, a minute later."

She was wrong.

Those are two different sunrises. The photos were taken from the same point, where I park to count a lek out in the desert. The second shot was taken exactly 23 hours, 59 minutes and 20 seconds after the first.

Other than the gas fields, it sometimes seems like my country doesn't change much.

(And I have to admit, I cheated a little on that one above, bumping up the contrast just a little to get more shadows. I like it anyway.)