Yesterday's Commute

My commute is a bit variable. It takes me somewhere between a few seconds to roll out of bed (i.e. home office) and travelling 24+ hours to a far flung corner of the planet. Yesterday I did a rather low key commute from Las Vegas back home.

As is often the case, we were in the landing pattern that goes above Milpitas, over the salt ponds, up the bay, and landing on runway 28L or 28R. I always like to get a window seat in order to enjoy the views.

Yesterday, just after we flew past the Foster City sign and the San Mateo bridge and we were a few moments away from landing, the pilot gunned the engines and we were quickly gaining altitude again. Not sure why we aborted the landing - it wasn't terribly foggy - but I'm glad we did.

The photo above is of the salt ponds across the bay in Menlo Park. Ordinarily this is the view you get. But after the aborted landing, the flight was re-routed out over the Pacific, back inland over Palo Alto, and down towards Menlo Park.

The following photos are of the salt ponds and marshlands on that side of the bay.

So there you have it. That was my commute yesterday. This week I'm working from home. And the following week I'm off to glamorous Pittsburgh. Not to worry... I'll find somewhere else exciting to go before year's end. Already have somewhere in mind and planning is underway!

Roatan

Herbert Woods of Roatan Ocean Adventures is a man of his word.

He led us on a tour of Roatan, Honduras recently. During the snorkeling portion of the tour, he was popping off shots on his GoPro, and he promised to send the photos. "Promises, promises," I thought.

But Herbert delivered.

I received his underwater photos by email today. I freely confess that his underwater photography puts my feeble attempts to shame.

I'll include some of his fabulous photos here in this blog post, but there's more of Herbert's photos to see.

If you find yourself headed to Roatan, I highly recommend ROA. Herbert knows the island, he knows the underwater sights, and he knows how to go above and beyond. I wish him success in his business!

Here are some of his photos...

I, too, took photos. Big surprise, I know.

Here's some of the underwater action I captured on the GoPro (forgive the hurly parts of the video)... 

This cute guy is a capuchin monkey.

By himself, he's quite cute.

But there were three or so others in the cage with him. They all seemed to delight in digging through my pockets, burrowing into my collar, commandeering my iPhone, and doing parkour on my head. You can witness the monkey mayhem here...

After visting the monkeys and other critters (you can see more here), we headed to Arch's Iguana Farm. I have never - ever - seen so many iguanas in my life...

If you'd like to see more, there's more Roatan photos here.

And time permitting, I'll post photos from Belize City, Costa Maya, and Cozumel soon.

Passports

Alicia just pointed me to an article I missed in last Sunday's Chronicle. Loved it. If you're a travel nut like me, you will too.

One of my favorite lines:

"... an expired passport is never invalid."

Experiments in Airplane Photography - Part I

Recently (Can't say when because there's no WiFi here aboard UA395) I saw an article online that offered a simple, but useful suggestion on how to improve photos taken from an airplane. I've been meaning to try it out, and today I finally got around to do so.

Shortly after takeoff from IND on UA3473, the plane banked slightly (See tip #3 in the article above) and I pounced at the opportunity.

I confess intentionally copied the composition of the example photo (hence the inclusion of the engine). The composition adds depth to the photo.

But even without the engine, the photo is much better than my usual regrettably dull airplane photos (I've kindly refrained from including one of those lackluster photos in this post).

One improvement in this photo is that the top of the photo isn't faded the way such photos usually turn out. In hindsight, I now recognize that my previous photos suffered because they inevitably grew increasingly desaturated from bottom to top. Including the horizon in the photo was essentially a sure-fire recipe for a bland photo. Taking the photo when the plane banked as the article suggested took care of that.

The banking suggestion also helped overcome another problem I've had with these photos. Ever notice that windows in commercial jets inevitably slope upwards? That tiny design decision practically forces photos to include that boring, desaturated horizon. I wonder if there's a reason for that design. I read recently online (therefore it must be true) that airplane windows are intentionally rounded. They have a nasty tendency to fail otherwise.

Full disclosure: I enhanced the photo in Photoshop (increased the saturation, adjusted the levels to darken the midtones). I've found that combo to be a tremendously effective tool for improving photos in general. In the case of this photo, that combo helped two ways. First, it lessened the lingering traces of that annoying bottom-to-top desaturation problem. Second, the combo eliminated a another recurring problem I've had with airplane photos: glare and shadows cast on the window.

I'm hesitant to include this next version of the photo, because some anti-Photoshop fanatic out there is likely to accuse me of having cheated in the photo above.

To you, whoever you are, I Photoshop to make my photos more asthetically pleasing - prettier, if you will.

More often than not, my goal in photography is artistry as opposed to accuracy. I'm not attempting to document. I'm attempting to capture the feeling of the moment as I experienced it when I took the photo. So there.

But take a moment and examine the engine again in this un-Photoshopped version of the photo. Two things are going on: There's a shadow reflected from seat 1A dividing the engine in half diagonally, and running perpendicular to the shadow there is glare streaking across the engine.

Previously I've figured out that one method to reduce shadows and glare in the airplane windows is to shove my camera lens as close to the window as possible. Another method I've figured out is to cloak myself with a piece of clothing such as a jacket. That second method kind of makes me look like one of those old-time photographers hiding underneath the black fabric on the back of an old-fashioned large format camera - except that doing it on a plane makes me look more like a dork than say Ansel Adams.

I have a theory about shoving the camera lens up to the window: Even though the optics are better and the pixel resolution is higher in my 30D, I'm more likely to get better photos with my iPhone 4S, surprisingly. I'll be taking both on our upcoming trip to the UK. I'll try there. I doubt I'll be able to do so on the outbound flight since I'm stuck in an aisle seat. I can't complain too much, though, since that seat is in business class. Oh wait, yes I can... Alicia's seat is in first class. :-)

Back from Oz

We arrived back from Sydney yesterday morning. I'm always amused by the return flight when you arrive hours before the time you departed - a fun quirk of the International Date Line. Getting to experience the same Saturday twice makes up for the disappointment of losing a Friday on the outbound leg.


Purposely didn't do much yesterday - reserved the day to deal with jet lag. Took a leisurely walk at Rio Del Mar beach to the cement boat, took a look at some of the photos from the trip, and didn't do much else.

One photo has captured my attention. It's a photo of an flower that was growing in a nondescript spot behind a retaining wall at the hotel we stayed at on our last night in the Southern Highlands.

It was a pretty enough flower, but it wasn't likely to get much attention growing in anonymity where it was. And I don't know enough about flowers to even identify it. Anyone know what type of flower it is? [Update: The consensus appears to be iris.]

Something about the flower drew me in, so I popped off a few shots using my Olympus FE-370 point-n-shoot. I left the Canon 30D at home this trip. I figured this was my sixth or so time to Sydney... What was I going to see (and photograph) that I hadn't seen (and photographed) multiple times before? Why bother lugging around the 30D when the point-n-shoot fits so easily in my pocket?

I decided to take a different approach this time. I wanted to see what sort of photos I could get working within the limitations of the point-n-shoot. It doesn't have the resolution and clarity of the 30D. Its lens is inferior to the 30D's. Its lens can't zoom in the way the 30D can. Its macro capability is inferior to the 30D's. Its low-light capabilities are lower than the 30D's.

But rather than use the 30D's superior capabilities as a crutch, I decided to work with what I had. I had the point-n-shoot's limited capabilities and my eye as an amateur photographer.

Many of the photos I took with the point-n-shoot this trip were sub-par. Many were blurry. Many were washed out. Many just didn't 'work' for a variety of reasons. But some did work - one in particular.

BTW... When I said above that one photo captured my attention, it wasn't the photo above. It was this one...
 

To fully experience this photo, please click on it to see it enlarged.

This is the very same flower as in the first photo above. But whereas the first photo is a snoozer that does a gross injustice to the flower, this photo is vibrant with color. The photo is primarily yellow, but it is an explosion of yellow. And all the intricate details that are absent from the first photo command my attention in this photo. When I took the photo, I didn't even notice the cheetah-like pattern on the lower petal. The more I look at this flower, the more I see.

While all of the above is interesting to me from the perspective of photography, there's a deeper message in this whole experience for me. Beauty is all around us. Beauty can be found in new places and in new experiences, but beauty can also be found in the same old places if you're looking for it. Using the same old eyes that I've been using for decades but with a different perspective, I was able to see and experience a new beauty.

One last comment in closing... Earlier this year, we completed our goal of setting foot on all seven continents. That had been a personal goal for fifteen years. It took a long time to achieve that goal, but the years of stubborn (and some might have said foolish) dedication to that goal paid off.

When we landed at SYD the morning of October 15th, we accomplished another travel goal - to step foot on all seven continents within one year. That goal didn't take fifteen years to accomplish. It only took nine months.

So why that latest goal? Did the vacuum created by accomplishing the first goal leave a void that had to be filled? Or was it simply the pragmatic realization that this was likely to be the only chance I'd have in my life to achieve that latest goal? A little of both, I suspect. Regardless what the exact reason was, underlying all my travels is the desire (as I've written about previously) to show others that life can be an abundant experience - an experience that too often passes us by.