Even though it was cold and dreary yesterday I felt the need to get out there and try out my new lens. I decided that it would be a god day to finally go check out a heron rookery.
I went to North Mississippi Regional Park because a) it was closer to home, and b) it's much smaller, therefore my chances of having to walk forever to see the herons were much less.
My pretty new lens? Here's an example of what it can do.

This was the whole frame in the camera:


And this is the detail I still have when I zoomed in quite a bit:


I love my new lens! (it is heavy though)

Working at the photo store made me think that I really needed to get the sensor on my digital camera cleaned. Since I work there they would do it for free instead of charging the usual $50, so I got it done yesterday.
The way to check how dirty a sensor is is to open the aperature way up and take a shot of a blank light-colored wall. Then you take the picture and open it up in Photoshop. Open levels and hit auto levels. This will make any specks of dust on the sensor show up.
This was what mine looked like:


Now that it's been cleaned it looks like this: