These pictures were taken many years ago during Mark Bingham‘s 31st birthday party in New York City, with many heinous details that I care not to share with the general public. That being said, I would just like to say that I miss having the big dude around over the past nine years…so many great, good & bad things have happened during that time that I wish we could talk about.

Here’s to better times, great memories & good friends.

This Buddha picture was taken a few years ago in Sukhothai, Thailand. I didn’t, however, use any real computer special effects to take this particular picture. I dropped the shutter speed way down on the camera to do a long exposure, then I manually zoomed the lens in and out to see what would happen (I did a quick auto correct on Picnik, as I normally do, to clean the picture up a little bit).

Note: The Sukhothai Airport is one of the smallest, but cutest, airports I’ve been to.

This Western Lowland Gorilla at the San Francisco Zoo may have been in the mood for love (or he was just hungry, which is probably far more accurate than any kind of hormonal drive).  It is very hard for me not to be anthropomorphic with members of the primate family, since their expressions are not that much different than ours when displaying anger, sadness or other items we define as uniquely human.

The Sumatran Tiger is one of the most severely endangered of the big cats, largely due to habitat loss and illegal hunting in Indonesia, so the sad state of affairs is that it is quite likely that these animals may no longer exist outside of zoos in about twenty years (like many of the big cats). The Sumatran and Malay tigers are much smaller than the Bengal and Siberian tigers, but I’m still sure you wouldn’t want to run into one of them hiking around.

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Hill tribe Girl

Originally uploaded by dbillian

This is a photo I took on my first trip to Thailand, before I started getting moderately interested in photography again (I hadn’t picked up a camera in probably pretty close to ten years).

The primary reason I enjoy this picture, which was taken with a fairly crappy HP point & shoot camera, is the intense look in the girl’s eyes. I can imagine it can be a little uncomfortable being on parade for tourists most of the year.