Who are We?
**** 2007 was Our first year together. Married in November 2006. ****
It was our first year looking for Smith County Birds, Butterflies and Moths together as well.....
We now have a Group! 
Come join us at Google!
Justin Valleau
I am a wannabe photographer who married an avid Texas birder.
My enjoyment of the outdoors, comes in the form of trying to photograph the
wildlife I see, so that the pictures will always refresh my memory. I'm not a
good photographer by any means and I never will be. I don't have the time,
resources or talent to be good, so I just take photos for my own personal
scrapbook. I started this website because I thought someone else might enjoy
some of my photos, or at least see what not to do, when taking photos. I have
enough of those "what not to do" ones here....
I also decided on this website because of my wife's love of
birds and birding, as well as our new found love of Photographing Butterflies. I
thought I might be able to offer some information to others, about the sights we
have seen and places we have been. Maybe some of you will learn something about
an area that you were thinking of visiting, or maybe you might gain some details
from our site. I used to shoot 35mm and then DSLR, but now I just use my Sony
DSC-H2, because I need the anti-shake feature and it's a camera I could afford.
If nothing else, I hope this site will be visually pleasing to our guests. Feel
free to e-mail us with
comments.
I guess this is really more of an online Life List, than anything else..........
Valerie Valleau
I am a native Texan and have enjoyed birding Texas and parts of the
surrounding states, for many years. I also enjoy my privacy.
That's all I have to say about myself for now...
How we typically see birds & butterflies
- Due to our health issues, we don't get too excited about doing a lot of
hiking in the woods any more. Mostly we drive to an area and bird from the car
or take short walks. This limits the species we can see, but you adjust to life
as you need to. We butterfly much the same way, but fortunately butterflies are
easier to find and photograph! Valerie uses a fabulous Leitz 8X binocular,
A Pentax Papilio 6X Butterfly Binocular & her Canon S3 IS. I just use
my Sony DSC-H2 and sometimes carry a Nikon Binocular.
Justin's personal "take" on Photography
There's 10 million photographers out there (me included) who want to be photographers.
There's a handful of actual, real, photographers out there.
It takes a lot of training, years of experience and a lot of luck, to be recognized as good. It also takes thousands of dollars to outfit a professional Digital photography setup. We don't have any of that and we don't try to pretend to be anything else. We just have a couple cheap cameras and the ability to turn them on and shoot pictures.
The SITEMAP page, shows a listing of all the species, so you can find a species more quickly.