Last year I  trialed using advertising on the site to see how good internet advertising is at making a supplemental income. One often hears, or sees, claims on the internet that serious money is being made by website owners simply by allowing advertising companies to place a few links, or inventory as they call it, on your site.

I started with Google's Adsense but I was uncomfortable with the whole experience as adsense seems to be designed on the basis of taking visitors away from your site rather than complimenting your site and your visitors experience. In money terms I made enough for 2 cups of coffee a month and then, to my surprise Google just banned me. Turns out I had clicked on one of my own adverts, I must have been thirsting for a third cup of coffee! Anyway 2 cups of coffee a month was not enough for me to warrant an argument over. I packed my proverbial publishers bags and headed over to a competitor, Adbrite.

Identifying the animals in ones photographs be they fish, insects, mammals, birds, crabs, shrimps, whatever is a daunting task and is done through the purchase and use of specialized ID books or laboriously searching through specialized online resources and websites.

But the whole process may get simpler in the future. In a whale-sized project, the world's scientists plan to compile everything they know about all of Earth's 1.8 million known species and put it all on one Web site, open to everyone.

I seem to be constantly in a never ending search for the perfect bag to carry my photo gear in. So far this search has cost me a small fortune and resulted in a room full of camera bags that seem to be ill suited to general usage but have a specific use. I had given up the ghost of ever finding my perfect solution but for now I seem to have found a nice solution for my hiking trips and journies into the Thai forest and jungles as well as about town.

One of my favorite pastimes is to study the books and photography of other photographers, notably the world's best photographers working in natural history photography. I can spend hours gleaning over their photos and descriptions of photographs hoping to work out their methods and approach for a particular shot. It all helps we with my own photographic journey.

It's not only to try and learn from their work but also just to admire the photography that comes from full-time photographers who have dedicated part of their life to achieve what the rest of us aspire to. The world's best photography is inspirational photography that makes your jaw drop and yearn to visit the place it was taken or see the animal or culture it portrays. I have put together my personal collection of what I think are the best photography books available today. Hope you enjoy!

Buying a big lens is a complicated experience as well as an expensive one also. After months and months of procrastination and waiting I decided to take the plunge. Why waiting - waiting to see if Nikon would introduce a new lens or institute a price reduction on their current 500mm f/4D ED-IF AF-S II Nikkor or for short Nikon AFS 500 f4 , which is priced at a monstrous $7000+. Why procrastination - because considering a 500 made me also consider walking down the Canon route, their 500 is better than Nikon's offering, their cameras have better high ISO capabilities and the Canon EF 500mm f/4 IS (Image Stabilizer) USM is only $5000 (in the states, still $7000 in Bangkok, unfortunately).

I am often asked what type of equipment I use/used to produce the pictures and as the shots have been taken over a period of time its not easy to answer because of the needs to advance with camera technology. To help answer the question, below is a list of the equipment used. The core items that I am currently, primarily, utilizing are marked with an asterisk.