A little while back I mentioned that I had reclaimed an old domain of mine and was looking for something to do with it. It took about two months to pull the free time together to design and build it, but I’ve just relaunched the site: Hike New Jersey.

The Secret Lives of Insects from Chris Casciano on Vimeo.

I spent Labor Day afternoon on a 7 or 8 mile hike of some local trails, exploring areas of the park I don’t normally get to. During the hike, while still in the South Orange area of the park, I passed a really busy tree. It was snack time for a wide variety of insects from ants to flys, bees and wasps.

Video shot with a Nikon D90 & Nikon 105mm 2.8 VR, though I shorted and recompressed it a little, its otherwise straight out of the camera.

View HD version of the video at Vimeo

As a college student in the mid 1990s I got my first regular access to the internet. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the internet was more then just a new piece of software, but a new way to communicate with others and find and form communities and relationships. Back then we didn’t have Facebook or Twitter — or really even web sites at all — the communities I found were in mailing lists like the very active forum for hikers that centered around the Appalachian Trail, at-l.

Out of those interactions came my desire to share online and as the web grew into a place for regular people to share more static and permanent information I registered my first domain name – hikenj.net.

What’s in the Hudson, Passaic, Hackensack and other local waterways that has people increasingly using them for recreation — or maybe the better question is what isn’t in the water. Boaters and kayakers enjoying these rivers some might be afraid of due to pollution or other fears aren’t exactly new, but this story of some local school kids building their own canoes and paddling down the Passaic caught my eye today, and caps off a few weeks of hearing or reading about the local rivers.

N.J. students in environment-education program ride self-built canoes on Passaic River [The Star-Ledger]

After reading Moose Peterson’s blog post on the Nikon GP-1 GPS Device I need to correct a bit of misinformation from my earlier post Nikon D80 To D90 Upgrade First Impressions.

There I lamented the fact that you could only plug in the Nikon MC-DC2 remote cord, or the GPS unit, but in fact the GPS unit has a remote plug in is so you can daisy chain the two devices. Also in the blog post, Moose mentions the GP-1 includes a clip to attach it to your camera strap instead of the hot shoe leaving the hot shoe free for flash usage.

Though I’ll continue using my off camera geologger for now, with these two options the GP-1 design looks much better and it will be an alternative I’ll consider should the time come that I want to change up my system.

New Storefront at Zenfolio

For a long time I’ve just looked at my photographs as something to for myself and as an excuse to get out of the house and into the outdoors. Maybe I’d share some of the images on Flickr or print something for a family member or friend but nothing more. No, I’m not looking to go pro or anything, and I don’t think I’m Ansel Adams either, but its time to do a little more with my hobby [and maybe pay for some of my gear in the process].

So just in time [barely] for the holiday gift season I’ve launched Chris Casciano Photography.

Comment on this photo at Flickr

Comment on this photo at Flickr