Wingsuit BASE Jumping

Ok, that is just scary shit.

Zion: Evening Light

For those of you in the know, I'm spending 3.5 days in Zion National Park as part of a workshop on landscape photography. Today's assignment was to capture the "golden light" of sunset, while playing with interesting compositions. Here therefore, are the results of scrambling up 600 feet over 40-degree inclines, getting stuck like a pincushion by some fine-thorned cactus, and grazing a much-loved elbow.

While technically correct, this one is actually not a very good picture since the composition is dead boring (Uh-huh. It's a mountain. We get it.) Still, it was pretty for a cliche, and a good example of the quality of the last rays of sunset causing the top of the mountain to glow. I also had a polarizer on which shifted the sky behind to a slightly deeper blue.

I'm happier with this image. It's a stretch for me to be composing landscape pictures with a narrow lens, so I was pushing myself into somewhat uncomfortable territory at this 300mm (35-mm film equiv.) setting. The idea here was to have the setting sun cast a glowing warm rimlight on the tree and the rock ledge, while the background rock face contrasts with a cooler in-shadow look. Personally, I also like the lines of the background rock striations and the foreground ledge that lead your eyes over to the tree.

Other lessons learned:

• This takes time. It's not about cranking out 30 different compositions. It's about looking around and carefully picking a composition (or three). And then it's just a matter of waiting till the light looks right. Sometimes that means coming back another day to get that one shot that looks really evocative.
  
• Timing is everything. The light changes quickly. You need to have your filters in place, and the camera in position on the ball-head so that you're ready to crank off those 3-4 pictures that you'll have time for in the few seconds that the light peaks. If you're fumbling around trying to screw on that polarizer at the last minute, you might as well come back tomorrow.
• Don't pack up as soon as the light's gone. Sometimes your best picture is the one you see over your shoulder when you're putting your gear back in the car.
  

Early Wildflowers

Jayita and I decided to check out the first of the wildflowers peeking out at Russian Ridge this last weekend. So clutching our trusty guide-to-California-wildflowers book (Jayita, that is) and macro lens firmly screwed in place (that's me with the camera), we hove off early on Saturday morning.

Weather was bright and beautiful, and although there was quite a bit of haze visible across the Bay, we caught some nice views:

As expected, there was just a sprinkling of the early-bird wildflowers, but that made the thrill of spotting a novel one all the more keen. Here's a sampling of our current portfolio:

From left to right, top to bottom: Golden violet, popcorn flowers, red-stemmed filarees, saxifrage, blue-eyed grass, charlock, scarlet pimpernel, fiddleneck and baby blue eyes.

It's only the beginning of Spring, so we're definitely planning on making at least two more trips. Watch this space.

Camera Rainwear

As I found out first-hand, the weather during New Zealand's summer is notoriously unpredictable. See for yourself:

This of course doesn't bode well for my habit of carrying around a somewhat non-cheap camera to capture memories of all that troublesome weather. Luckily for me, Jayita had done her homework and warned me of the possibility. So, the day before our flight, I hove off to Keeble & Shuchat --- the local camera experts in Palo Alto --- for some advice, and the brilliant man there introduced me to the Kata E-690:


Ok, I'll admit it isn't pretty, and even on a good day, looks like bondage-wear for the camera. But at around $40 it's been dashed worth it for all the shots I've been able to get without worrying about rainwater/seaspray/bird-droppings mucking up the works. It also means I'll be prepared for rain during the next California wildflower season. The only drawback is that you can't use the camera strap when it's in this, so that means you're holding on to the body of the camera the entire time. I counter this by holstering the entire contraption in my case (hanging at my hip) when I need a break.

Circular Polarizer

I was recently chatting with a friend about imminent ownership of more camera hardware, and the subject of a circular polarizer came up. During the recent trip to Kiwi-land, I've had the object firmly stuck onto the front of my Zuiko 14-45mm lens for most pictures, and I thought it instructive to demonstrate its effect, by means of a simple before/after commercial. Here's the shot without the filter (or rather with the polarizer rotated so that it's somewhat useless).



And here's the effect of taking the picture again (with the same aperture width, shutter speed and ISO sensitivity) but with the filter getting rid of extraneous reflections off the water surface.



The little beast isn't only useful when taking pictures around water. Leaves have a nasty habit of shining (especially after they've been cleaned by recent rain), and so do asphalt on roads and window panes. Filtering out some of that light will either prevent the picture from being overexposed in the areas of reflection, or excessively compensated for by dialing down the exposure time and leaving the rest of the picture dark (a nasty habit of point-and-shoot toys which try to be smart).

The only drawback is that you lose a couple of stops of light, but for most outdoor images where the sunlight is bright enough, it doesn't pose a problem at all.