Thank you *very* much for that detailed answer. I have some camera accessories on my Christmas wishlist, I'll add a wide angle lens. Thanks again, this site is great because of the great advice one receives!
It's called "barrel distortion" and there are others here who can explain it much better than I can. Basically (very basically), when you have a very complex lens, usually a zoom, there are lots of compromises that go into the production. This usually occurs on Point-n-shoot zoom or digital zoom cameras. It can be corrected with another lens design, but it would be much, much bigger and heavier and also much more expensive. Check prices on Nikon's and Canon's professional wide angle zooms.
Unfortunately, there aren't too many tools out there to fix it -- at least in Photoshop. Ironically, on many of the free or shareware image manipulation programs, the option is there to correct for it.
I looked for some time for a plug-in or something that would do just this and came up pretty empty. As I recall, there were one or two available and they were upwards of $150. For the one-trick-pony plug-in. I decided to pass. Of course, this was a couple years ago, now and things may have changed since then.
Thanks for your comment. I noticed in almost all of my pictures of this vacation, that the horizon looks bowed. Would you happen to know why that might be? I just figured it's a wide angle and the earth is round after all, but maybe that's not the reason?
The horizon looks a little bowed, and also not even. The blues of the water look fantastic. I also like the weathered (sorry, couldn't resist) lounge chair. It looks like it's been through a storm or two.
I didn't even notice that the foot end was buried until I read your "about."
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{K:4294} 1/1/2003