CalevPhoto

How to take travel shots without people

I am a self professed introvert.  I am very close with my wife and kids and have several close friends, but if you are not in that list I am not a very chatty person. I do not want to smile and have a fake conversation with you, and most of all I do not want your picture.

I also do not want your picture because if you are in my shot and I want to sell it, I either must figure out how to clone you out of the shot or I cannot sell the shot.  So it is in my best interest to take steps to assure that you (and by “you” I mean any one of the other six billion odd people out there) are not in my photograph.

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My Impressions of Turkey

Earlier, I wrote a blog about what went right and wrong in Turkey, but I never wrote a post about what I truly thought of the place. So, without further ado…

About a month ago, my wife, kids and I traveled to Turkey for seventeen days. We spent time at three main places - Antalya, Cappadocia, and Istanbul - in that order.

First up was Antalya.  We really liked Antalya, but the six days we spent there were probably one day too much.  Five days would have been much better.  The old town is very nice and I had a lot of fun walking around one morning, getting shots of the interesting houses there.

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Let’s Chase Some Pigeons!

Kids get different things out of a vacation than we adults do.  While Nelya and I marveled at the Blue Mosque and Haghia Sofia in Istanbul, Eitan and Nathan marveled at a square with thousands of pigeons they could chase.  To them, this was heaven and they spent ample time there chasing said pigeons.  Of course, I couldn’t resist getting my camera out to get some shots.

I am certainly no expert in pigeon shots - these being my first attempts - but the following is what I did learn.

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The Reality of Lighting when Traveling

We have all read a great deal of blogs about pros as well as books by pros.  In these books, there is a great deal of information about lighting, but the golden rule is if you want to take good landscape photos the best light occurs either early in the morning or in the late afternoon.

The reality of course, is that this is often not an option for us mere mortals. We do not have the flexibility to get up at the wee hours of the morning and trek to a good spot that we scoped out the day before and stay there for several hours getting good shots.  If we did this, our families would kill us.

Therefore much of the light we get to shoot in is of the worst kind.  It occurs when the sun is high above during the mid day.  The other reality is that you may find that the sky is cloudy and ugly on that particular day.  However, this does not necessarily mean that all hope is lost.  There are a number of options available to you and in this post, as well as future ones, I will go over these in more detail.

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Back from Turkey - what worked and what didn’t

After nineteen days of travel in Istanbul, Antalya, and Cappadocia, we are finally back!  Actually we got back a few days ago, but it has been difficult getting back to this time zone and taking care of various issues.

The trip was very interesting and was one of the better trips we have taken.  Everyone had fun and I set a personal record with over 2000 pictures taken and 80GB of data.  Rather than discuss at length what we did, I thought I would cover what went well and what did not in terms of the photography planning I did for the trip.

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A hike at Twin Falls State Park

As those of you who have kids will know, a chance to get out and take some shots around town is a real treat.  Therefore, when a coworker asked if I would like to go hiking at Twin Falls State Park and my wife said OK, I jumped on the opportunity.

The park is not very far from Seattle and is one of the many nice waterfalls we have around here.  This is one of the great benefits of living here.  While back East we had Niagara Falls (which I have seen perhaps a hundred times but never photographed) after that the waterfalls taped off a bit.  Not that case here - as we have a good number of waterfalls over a hundred feet tall.

Ironically, I feel that the best shots from the trip were not of the waterfalls itself.  They are nice waterfalls, but I believe it is necessary to get down to the waterfall level for a truly nice shot.  Unfortunately conditions were not favorable that day towards doing that. Continue Reading…

What equipment to bring on a jungle trek

Sometime ago I had the opportunity to take a once in a lifetime trek to Manu National Park in Peru.  At the time, I only had a P&S Sony Cybershot 717.  However, now that I know more about photography, I thought I would share with you what I would take if money were no object and if I decided to return to Manu - which I certainly hope to do someday.

First, I will divide the trip into the different types of photos you may take - landscape, wildlife, and macro.

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Let’s take a trip to Singapore!

While recently going through my photos, I noticed that I never posted anything about our trip to Singapore several years back.  The likely reason for this is I had a P&S at the time and the photos suck, but it still was an interesting travel destination.

At the time, Eitan and Nathan were 23 months and 10 months old.  Nelya wanted to take a nice relaxing vacation.  Her ideal vacation was resting by a beach, but she wasn’t against shopping.  My ideal vacation was exploring an exotic location.  I spent months searching for the ideal destination, with the end result being the island of Sentosa in Singapore.

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Here come the coatis!

At our resort in Mexico along the pathways to the beach it was quite common to find wild coatis.  Though wild, they are obviously habituated to humans and will often scrounge the tables after people have eaten or, more simply, beg for food from those who have it.

The full name of this mammal is “Coatimundi” and they are relatives of the raccoon.  Unlike raccoons, though, they travel in large packs - as many as 40 coatis in a pack.  The baby coatis travel with the parents - as you can see in the picture above.

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Hello Dolly!

On the last day of our trip to the Riviera Maya area of Mexico, we were hit with a tropical storm called “Dolly”.  After hitting the Yucatan, this tropical storm then turned into Hurricane Dolly and hit the Texas coast.  At the time, there was a lot of conflicting information about the storm.  The hotel began by removing all of the beach and pool chairs and canceling events.  They then told us that the storm would hit overnight and would not be a problem.

In the morning I woke up early and headed to the beach to see if I could find some good photos.  Winds were noticeable but nothing that would cause alarm.

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