Wilderness Wildlife Week
Once again we will presenting a workshop
and a program at Wilderness Wildlife Week in Pigeon Forge, TN This weeklong
series of free programs and field trips covers a huge variety of topics
concerning natural history and history with an emphasis on the Smokies
region. We have presented a Nature Photography workshop with our friends
Kendall Chiles, and Harold Stinnette for a number of years. This year we'll
be changing things a bit with new programs and emphasizing the creative
aspects of photography along with the technical. That workshop is free and is on Saturday
morning, January 13 from 9 until 1. (I had last year's date on our website
for awhile but that's been corrected and January 13 is the correct date.)
Then on Sunday, January 14, there are a number of programs presented by
different photographers. Our
program will be at 3:30 and will be entitled The Composition of Light. We
hope that you will be able to join us there.
Birding and Nature Festival
We have never attended this since it’s the
first year for it, but it sounds interesting so we thought we'd pass it on.
This festival is to be held April
12-15. The event, staged
in and around St. Augustine and Ponte Vedra, combines shorebird field
trips and boat trips with hands-on training with the latest in nature
photography techniques and technology. The 2007 festival will
add
digiscoping to the line up of more than 120 events including photo
safaris, nature tours, birding and photo seminars and the
ever-popular
nature photo contest. Digiscoping is a format that combines the use of
a
telescope and PC programming to produce amazing digital photographs –
perfect for bird and nature photographers. Check out the Web site
to
make reservations for individual festival events online.
http://www.Getaway4Nature.com
Kayak.com Tips
We've found
Kayak.com to be really helpful in comparing various
travel fares. Here are some tips for using Kayak
- With the Flexible Search Tool, Kayak.com remains the only
meta-search
site to offer users the ability to search up to three days before and/or
after your preferred travel dates for the best fare and itinerary
combination.
- The Flexible Search option allows you to specify the class of
service
(first, businesses or coach), itinerary type (round-trip, one-way or
multi-city) or number of stops.
- Use Kayak Buzz to see where other users are going and
what they're paying. You'll view displays of the cheapest fares to
the
25 most popular destinations from a specific airport or city.
- Sign up to receive a free customized Kayak Buzz Alerts by e-mail
that
will notify you when an airfare meets your travel specifications.
Click
on the "Fare Buzz" tab.
- The Best Fare Trend Graph charts pricing for city and date pairs
found
by Kayak.com users over the past 90 days. Use the date drop down
menu
to change the departure date and instantly review a new Trend graph.
- Track an unlimited number of trip itineraries and receive an e-mail
notification when an airfare meets or beats your specified price at
'Fare Alert'. Or, click on "watch this fare" at the top of
any
flight/fare results page.
- A new Kayak.com feature, Pinning, lets you customize search results
to
select and save preferred flights, hotels or rental cars. By
"pinning"
a specific result, you can keep that selection at the top of the
search
results as you check out other flights and hotels. Likewise,
your
original result appears atop of Kayak's search listings on future
searches.
Last Minute Travel Deals
This is another site we learned about and
haven't tried out but it might be worth exploring.
MySmoot.com offers daily 'drop dead' travel deals that
last just 24
hours, or until the deals are deemed sold out. The deals can be
offered
by hotels, airlines, cruises, vacation companies, rail and more. The
combination of
www.familyvacationcritics.com and
www.MySmoot.com work well together. On there you will also
find a link to American Express and their last minute deals.
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