Two years ago, I wrote about photography on a longish kayak trip (Ten-day Power Trip, 06/2009) in Baja, a trip without the ability to charge batteries. My solution then was extra batteries and plenty of flash memory, coupled with judicious use of those resources. A solar charger didn’t make sense—the trip wasn’t long enough—and a […]
Photo Tip: Tripod Tricks ___ 2010/09
Last month I arrived in evening light at the Mirror Lakes reflection pond at Mt. Rainer National Park. True to its name, the quiet little tarn was a mirror, but instead of the Mountain it reflected clouds that surrounded Rainier’s massive girth. I looked about for an alternate photo to salvage the shoot. August is […]
Photo Tip: Frame It! ___ 01/2010
Camera and tripod instinctively pop out when we view a mountain sunset or ocean seascape. The tripod legs spread; we mount the camera, plug in the cable release and fire away. Later we inspect the photo and discover that it doesn’t match our memory. An elementary problem in photography is translating a dynamic 3D world […]
Creativity with Timer Remote: Canon TC-80N3 __ 2009/11
I try to simplify the photo gear I take on trips. The idea is that photographing unencumbered by stuff will make the journey easier, and the photography more fun. So I decide beforehand which lens(es) will be most useful, and just take those. Going digital assists simplification. Filters, other than a polarizer and maybe a […]
Light-Weight Backpacking and Photography __ 10/2009
I was tempted to call this tip “Small is Beautiful”.I started pruning backpacking poundage after a 1995 trip to Washington State’s Enchantments, when my pack for five days in mid-September tallied 55 lbs. There’s no reason to re-hash the old gear, but the same trip today would weigh in at about 35 lbs, with better […]
Photo Tip: Backpacker Panorama Hardware __ 09/2009
A year ago I built a light-weight panorama tool out of wood. My hope was to make back-country panoramas. My dream was to rival the pixel count of high-end, medium-format digital backs, or scanned 4×5 film cameras without the weight, bulk or cost. Here in Washington State, I imagined Prusik Peak in the Enchantments, or […]
Tutorial: Adobe Elements 6 Panoramas ___ 08/2008
Edited 3/15/2013. Prior to Elements 6, on the rare occasion that I made panoramas, I stitched images manually. A big problem was that automated stitch programs produced banding in the sky, often accompanied by bizarrely-merged foregrounds. But when I saw a Mark Galer example (Adobe Photoshop Elements 6: Unleashing the hidden performance of Elements) demonstrating […]
Packing a Small Sea Kayak ____ 02/2008
Photographers carry a lot of photo gear, so a big-volume sea kayak logically meets the need. A long, large kayak can be fast as well, but can also be a heavy lift solo, and a bear wrestle in wind or in surf. Most photographers aren’t burly-burly men. They just want a kayak to get them […]
Tutorial: Floral Portrait Conundrum ___ 07/2007
When shooting wildflower or floral portraits — pictures of single flowers or small groups of flowers — it’s often difficult to achieve both sharpness in the flower(s) and pleasing, poster-like, out-of-focus backgrounds. In the past I ususally went for the pleasing background, picking the most important floral part, like the stigma or edge of a […]