I often neglect this blog (bad habit, sorry!), only to suddenly say – wow, for how long I didn’t post anything new? So, forgive me lacking in this department, but life here is so engaging, pulling you in different directions… not always enough time to sit on front of computer.

We are safely off the hurricane season, and now can really enjoy living in Paradise without checking weather so often. Delightful! We are literally picking “fruits of our labour” in our garden. Grapefruit and mandarin jam is in the making, oranges, lemons, and so much more. I experiment with grafting, we planted so many new trees and other things…

I did some more short nature movies, posting them on Youtube. One of them – a documentary about Dominica recovery after Maria – actually won couple of international awards, also being presented in Sweden, UK and India, Check them out! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbd8t2aqFAF2af0uqSl1BOA

Speaking of videos and films – the beautiful nature TV series about smallest creatures, titled Tiny World has been released, and it was delightful to see it. Great production, and filmed in large part in Dominica! Watching it, I felt honoured that I was invited to work with that team, contributing to this fine production. Thank you, Plimsoll!

Now I work on a new batch of photos and videos for Nature Picture Library, my stock image agency in UK. And that includes photographing of one of our garden’s tiny pests! So, at least they paid this way for messing up our tomatoes! Here are some of my nature photos…

My new, modern, mobile-friendly website DerekGalon.com is up, thanks to my friend from Azed Marketing. Thank you!

What else? Quite a few other things of different caliber. Several smallish jobs, some videos for Government of Montserrat, photographing back at my favourite Dominica place Secret Bay, and a major job for another fine place here – Rosalie Bay eco-resort and spa. That was quite a nice work. Flying drone over Atlantic shore, between palms, inside rooms, photographing and filming it all. I also did a drone map of property, which will be used for all guests. Drone mapping is something I recently perfected, actually.

Thing with drone Mapping is, that it is more often done by engineers than pro photographers. Mapping software requires genuine untouched JPG images straight from the drone. This way all GPS and other location data can be used for a map or 3D model creation. Engineers and photo amateurs are OK with that. However – using JPG image straight from the drone means average quality at best. And, I am not interested in average, never been. And, not only it’s not looking so good – but also with missing detail! Often details are unsharp, or blown whites lose all details they would otherwise have. And, with mapping for safety inspections, constructions, and so on – details are crucial!

So, I spent quite a bit of time finding my go-around it, and now I can do it in a totally different way, but still feeding all required info to mapping software. Quality is drastically improved, and the map can be created with all Geo-location info. A win-win, happy to say…

Ah, another thing I am quite focused on these days. We’ve meet a new friend. A determined lady running animal rescue center in Dominica. With a small group of volunteers they rescued hundreds of animals last year. And being a medical doctor, she takes personally care of injured or handicapped dogs. And, she has lots of success stories, with paralyzed dogs walking again, difficult rescues with help of fire brigade, and so on. If you know how tough Dominica can be, you know they are working really hard. Lots of personal respect for her made me dedicate many hours of work towards her cause. So, I did some photography and marketing, we donated some food, and plan to do much more in the close future. Check out their new, beautiful site created by their new sponsor, and if you feel like making even a small difference – I know it will be appreciated! Here is their Facebook page.

Well, let me finish this post with belated wishes of Happy New Year! Look at this photo – it was taken around midnight on New Year – a night rainbow created itself just to welcome new year. I just had to photograph it – straight from our patio!

All the best, I hope to see you here soon again! Cheers!

Derek

All photos copyright of DerekGalon.com Text Derek Galon and Margaret Gajek.
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