Very cool - i have a reef tank myself - it is soooo incredibly hard taking shots under aquarium lighting - kudos!

tis a beautiful image, not sure i understand the title, tho it is amost 1am and my bed is calling!!

Great colour, I'm assuming this little chap was stuck to the glass of an aquarium, did you need to colour correct this?

Dave, I use addr.com. I have had them for over 3 years (for a site other than my photoblog) and have never had ANY problem. They run PHP, and MYSQL.

I tried to open Chromasia several times today. I am glad it finally worked. It was well worth it. This is a beautufil picture. Wonderful color and texture, and the blurred bg is just perfect.

Hope things work out better for Chromasia soon.

Name picked for the boy yet?

VelviaPix

David, I use Insider Hosting. Their service is excellent, their servers are fast, and they're relatively cheap. I have a resellers account (which means I haveabout 1000GB bandwidth and God-only-knows how much disk space) for only US$12/mo. They're the best hosting service I've ever had, and i think it's because of the price, and their lightning-fast response times when I have questions.

That said, great color in the foreground, the muted colors in the background really make it pop out! It's like it's floating!

Amazing that you managed to have no blur after hurling a starfish through the air.

Did the dog catch the starfish by the way?

good luck to you on the move. the hosting company i use doesn't provide anything over 70GB/month, so that's of no help to you. wow, 200+GB/month? craziness.

You can have a look at :
http://webhostmagazine.com/

They rate host web companies since 1997.

We have professional and very good and not so expensive web hosting companies here in France but I don't think you'll be interested by a list !!!

;o)

edouard

Superb colour and background blur. Were you able to get this amount blur at f4 or did you have to use PS to help? Either way, it's a lovely effect.

Hey,

I use (mt) Media Temple and they're fantastic. I'm sure with a site like your you can call them and talk about a special deal. But overall, they support everything and technical support actually has a person on the other side of the line. A+ from me.

For the love of God just dont go by price.... if the price is way too cheap but the deal is way too good then beware !!

I own a consulting firm and have dealt with many clients stupidly choose hosting companies based on price.

you want something reliable try http://www.idologic.com

they are not cheap, but i'm sure if you talk to them about... maybe a small link on your site (since you recieve so many hits) - they might offer you a good price or may be even host it for free.

Let me know if you need any help and i will be more than happy to talk to them.

BTW - great photos ! thanks.

I only suggested canaca because I've had about a year of experience with them, and for the most part, I've never been let down. Also all of the hosting companies listed by commenters don't seem to compare in price for the amount of bandwidth you get.. As far as support goes, Canaca's support has always been good in my experience. But in either case, there's the 30 day money back guarantee :) .. So if it doesn't work out for you, you can tell them to piss off...

Anyway, I'm not trying to push them by any means, (they're not paying me to) and i'm sure that some people like canaca, some don't (as it is with anything: some people love something while others totally hate it) .. I simply exposed Dave to the company I use, he seemed to be interested, that is all.

Also Dave, I think the $7.95/mo is in USD.

Beautiful colour and lovely bokeh :) The focus doesn't seem to that sharp on the outer parts of the legs which seems a little strange as I'm assuming the starfish is completely on one plane.
Apart from that, it's an exquisite image.
How's fatherhood treating you? Getting all down and dirty with lots of nappies? :)

can't say much about servers....

but the photo - it's gorgeous.

This was so weird because I only just downloaded "white rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane before I saw this image - freaky!

As for hosting, I think you will be hard-pressed to beat a deal as offered by canaca - especially bandwidth wise. As a reselling webhost myself I know what the current scene is for webhosting and Canaca is the only one I know offering over 100GB (as apposed to MB like the other hosts people have suggested here) in bandwidth.

My recommendation would be looking for a virtual-dedicated setup (costly yes - but nothing beats full control). Costs could be offset with some tiny eeny weenie advertising (yech - did I just say that?).

I do agree with some form of repriprocal deal with having such a high profile site as chromasia - it would be worth mentioning your stats when it comes to negotiating a deal with whoever you go with as you will no doubt be sending traffic their way.

[RANT]And finally, could you please explain why you choose saving your files as progressive JPEG rather than standard, I HATE waiting for the image to clarify and sometimes I don't even know when it has finished...[/RANT]

David-

Great shot- I have one very similar to it that I may post soon.

I have also had serious server and speed problems with my host, fatcow. A couple of bloggers have suggested Dreamhost and I will be moving my site there shortly. I sympathize with you on these difficulties!

Wow that stands out a lot. Nice shot, as usual.

My first thought when I saw this photo, was oh crap, he threw that in front of the camera didn't he?

But, very nice shot. I love the colors as usual. Great choice in DOF.

www.dreamhost.com is a great hosting company. i would definitely consider them. here is a link to their plan comparison chart:

http://www.dreamhost.com/shared/comparison.html

I just looked at that chart and for the 200GB of bandwith a month, you'll not be getting such a good deal as you've mentioned for canaca.com

this is so random and unexpected! totally cool! love the macro.... the colours are fab!

awwww.. i love it! it's so cute.

Don't find it interesting. Why don't you shoot it with your macro lens?

here's a list of the top 100 hosting companies... it'll give you a good list of companies to scope out

waw ! nice shot !

Whoa. When I looked at this earlier, I neglected to read the title and completely missed the rabbit. That's crazy. Did you plan this or notice it later?

David,

With days of downtime lately, I would not recommend my host. They are cheap, but their uptime is a joke.

That said, Chromasia has been really interminent and slow lately. I have had serious problems posting comments as well.

Great picture.

WOW! Cool! Is it floating?! I love it.

I use sreamline net (www.streamlinenet.co.uk) i have never had any problems with their service and they have unlimited storage and bandwidth for just over £50 for the whole year.

I love the clarity of this shot, especially since it is through the glass, very nice.

May I suggest the provider I am with, iWeb: http://iweb.ca/en/index.php?page=mutualise
their best advantage (to me, and maybe to you) is unmetered traffic for all their plan.

where's the rabbit?

I love your pics! So much so that it pushed me over the edge on buying a Canon 20D. Now I need some real lenses.

I've been very happy with WebHost4Life:

http://www.webhost4life.com/hosting.asp

They have a $4.95USD and a $9.95USD plan that might suit you well and they have a 99.99% up time guarantee.

Keep up the good work!

:-/ me no see any rabbit :-/
is me dumb??? =(

Lol. The white rabbit is a reference to Alice in Wonderland ;-)

Very cool! nice to see the little feet moving around. We have a great aquarium in Myrtle Beach but this is so much better!

OK, still don't get the rabbit thing.....

John: the rabbit's stock phrase was "I'm late, I'm late", and the starfish - if you overextend your imagination - looks like a stick figure running from left to right. I told you it was tenuous ;-)

A very interesting study, just perfect. I couldn't spot the signs that the starfish was attached to glass. (Still haven't -- guess it's time for a research trip to the aquarium!)

When you opened your comments with apologies for the title, I wondered what else might have worked. My contribution: Keep on truckin'. Now that will probably be as obscure for most people as the rabbit, but, for the curious, here's a graphic found at Google Images: http://www.killertoys.com/prodpics/bowkeep.jpg.

I've been using eleven2.com for my hosting and have been happy with it's speed and up time. I found it from a link on pixelpost's site.

Thanks everyone :-)

My site is at Midphase.com. For ~$8/mo you get 3gb disk space, unmetered bandiwdth, a quad Xeon server with 4gtb of RAM and fiber to three different backbones. Support is competent but it's email-only (~2-3 hour response time 24x7). You can get root access via shell and they support everything software-wise you can imagine.

I have a referral link if you want it somewhere but the deal from the homepage is just as good right now.

Great Photo! It's almost as though you caught it just before it leaped up and attacked your lense. Crazy Starfish. You always have such vivid and crisp photos.

As for the hosting, I suggest using www.asmallorange.com or www.surpasshosting.com. I've been with both for some time now and have had no troubles. Some people talk about their super duper million gigabyte bandwidth companies but remember, bandwidth doesn't make up for reliability. And, they are probably offering so much bandwidth as a marketing ploy to stand above the crowd which is both supercilious and ambiguous.

Hi,

Go to eleven2.com and use coupon 'pixelpost' you get 10% off for life. Our experience with them has been pretty great so far.

Cheers,

Jen & Michel

p.s. We love your site and check it almost everyday. Congrats on the new arrival.

Canaca is worth every penny. As you'd expect from such a low price, the tech support is a little slow, but still helpful. Downtime exists... probably more than they predect, but again, certainly minor and acceptable for such a low price.

http://groundstate.ca is very happy living there.

Austin

contact http://www.tengun.net/
he's a friend of mine, hosting www.fourbysix.com (he's a photogrpaher too)
while his listed rates don't match what you're seeking, e-mail him with your needs and see what he says.

that said, the deal you listed above looks pretty good.

Thanks for the rabbit explanation. Am reading AIW to my daughter at the moment and couldn't remember anything about starfish, hence my blank look ;-D I would probably have called it "Ebay" - a valuable prize to those who spot the reference........

Excellent picture though. The one thing I find is the incredible sharpness you wring out of your photos - I have a 350D (albeit with the kit lens and my old 28-80 for the time being) but struggle to get anywhere near it - USM is my favourite tool! Your lens choice is therefore defining my wish list, starting with the simple 50mm - brilliant portrait lens, as demonstrated by your most recent posts, and my friend is offering me his 17-40 on loan......

This is a great photo! Love the colours!

Looks like a happy person skipping to me! Lovely!

It looks like a happy person skipping along to me! lovely!

For my two penneth, I would suggest having a look at supanames.co.uk (referral link). They don't have bandwidth restrictions even on their cheapest package (!), they just restrict files like mp3s. Used them for years with no probs. Whether they'll come in cheaper than your canadian chappies though, I don't know.
Keep up the good work...

I use surpasshosting.com for all my sites. I also know a fair ammount of other people who use them and are happy with their service. :)

Beautiful picture!