Fort Bragg, Oregon

Video Blogging

I've been watching YouTube videos produced by Thomas Heaton. He's a young Englishman who is turning into a terrific photographer. His videos are wonderful on so many levels ... technique and humor and emotional connection. He generates such amazing content and the images he produces are beyond wonderful. I recommend his YouTube channel to anyone who is interested in improving their game behind the lens.

I'm thinking about doing something similar. I spend 3-4 months a year on the road, visiting interesting places and finding the most amazing images to capture. It would be a good way for me to gain some exposure and fill the long hours I spend waiting for the right light. I already have all the equipment and software I need so there's very little expense involved. I'm a pretty good storyteller. It just seems like a good idea. And maybe I can make a little money along the way which isn't a bad thing. At least I could maybe pay for some new equipment and my travel expenses.

Trip Plans

I haven't made definite plans yet but things are starting to come together for the next trip home. It looks like I leave in late February and return to Crimea in mid-June. I want to get to Grand Canyon while there's still some snow and I want to get to the far north in Idaho, Montana and Washington which means I have to stick around until the snow melts in late May. I'm planning to revisit quite a few places I've not seen in a while and to add a long list of new venues to my already long list. Because the West is so big and there's so many places to see I'll be occupied for many years to come just filling out all the holes in my catalog. Hopefully I'll have my trip plans in place before Feb. 1 and will let you know my schedule.

Fort Bragg, Oregon

No, it's not FB, NC. No military base for miles around. Just a small, coastal town north of the California-Oregon border. I spent a few days there exploring the local beaches. Lots to see but the weather wasn't really conducive to getting around so my catalog is a bit thin. Most of the ground was saturated and unwalkable so I had to confine my shoots to blacktop areas and turnoffs. But what I did find was really nice. Like this rocky coastline. Not sure what it's called but wow, what a beautiful area. The sea was really angry and taking panoramas like this one are very difficult when the water is tossing and turning. You have to carefully match your shot times so you get waves in roughly the same place each time or it's impossible to stitch the images together without funny breaks and transitions. What I usually do is to pick a spot where the waves are hitting a known obstacle (usually a rock sticking out of the water) and that's when I start the bracketing sequence. It works pretty well as you can see.

This is a 3 image sequence, 10 sets all told, run through Photomatix. I spent a lot of time on this particular set of images because I was testing out alternative pano stitchers and wanted to see which one did the best job. I downloaded trial copies of PTgui and Auto Pano Giga and ran the images through them along with Photoshop. I wish I could say there was a clear winner but I can't. They all had issues with the image and it was frustrating to see how they each stumbled at one point or another. Stitchers look for similar features in each image which they use as reference points during the stitch. The problem is 1) waves are not static so the stitcher struggles to find matching points on the water. It generally punts and finds references on the ground and in the sky. That leads to 2) problems when the clouds are moving relatively fast so the reference points don't really match up very well. This leads to issues on the horizon with the water not being flat ... big steps giving really funny results like a staircase. So you have to get the best you can and then go into Photoshop to correct the horizon and to fix the discontinuities in the water. It gets very nasty very fast. I've got a lot of experience with this and can fix it somewhat but I need to get one of the other stitchers because Photoshop doesn't give me access to the various images being stitched. PTgui lets me output each image so I can blend them in Photoshop if I want. APG does some serious blending internally and that's OK but it's not as easy to get to the base images. I'm still debating which one to buy (and there's another option --- Hugin which is free and open source but isn't quite as advanced as the commercial offerings but, did I mention it's free)! The commercial offerings are expensive so that's a consideration as well.

Anyway, after several weeks of messing with this image I went back to Photoshop. I had to do some tonal adjustments to the various images as some were darker than others and Photoshop doesn't do a really good job fixing those problems. Then I just messed with the various settings in PS until I got something I could live with. There's a lot of work getting this image right but I think the result is pretty good. Love the rich colors and how the water is crashing on the rocks. It's lovely and I can still feel the wind in my face as I stood on the bluff taking these images. Will definitely return soon and, this time, I get the name of the beach. Promise.

Fort Bragg, Oregon! Enjoy!

Fort Bragg - 24mm,f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Bean Hollow SB

Hurt My Back

I've always had a touchy back. There are spots where I have little feeling and some even tingle at times. I'm also quite susceptible to sprains. Last year I did a number on my upper back and, just last week, did a real number on my lower back. Not sure how it happened. I painted the kid's bedroom on the 3rd and 4th of November and also had to get on a ladder and clean the top of her big closet on the 6th. No big issues at that point but a few days later ... WOW. Was sitting on the couch watching TV and went to stand up. Full scale pain explosion which literally brought me to my knees. Couldn't walk or bend at all and even sitting was a real painful experience. No idea where the damage originated but it was a major episode. I applied heat and started pumping ibuprofen like crazy in hopes I could cut the pain down a little so I could function. It took most of a week until I got to the point where I was able to do anything useful and now, 9 days later, I'm off the meds and able to move around for the most part. Still have some pain ... where the back muscles attach to my hip bone ... and some stiffness. Really hoping this gets significantly better or I'm in trouble with this year's trip. No way can I carry around all my camera gear and hike long distances with a back like this. No real physical therapy in Crimea so I'm out on that score. If I'm still troubled I'll have to bite the bullet and find someone in Albuquerque who can maybe help me. A chiropractor would be a good choice and maybe someone who can give me some pain meds when it gets worse. Damn ... I hate growing old.

Bean Hollow State Beach

Travel down California rt. 1 from San Francisco and you come to the town of Pescadero. That's where you'll find Bean Hollow State Beach. What an amazing place. The ocean has carved the most intricate shapes in the soft sandstone. All kinds of hollow spots and interconnecting ridges make for the intricate webs one finds walking around the place. I was fortunate to be there on a day when the clouds and sun cooperated. It was a bit stormy and waves were crashing on the rocks. I got really lucky on this shot as a wave was just cresting as the shutter cycled. It actually looks like some aliens sculpted these rocks. It's surreal. I highly recommend visiting if you're in the area.

This is a sequence of 3 images, run through photomatix and then finished in lightroom. Hope you enjoy.

Bean Hollow SB - 28mm, f/22,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Point Cabrillo

Hurricane Irma

I'm starting to feel like a broken record, always talking about hurricanes, but they are the number one topic right now. Irma is within hours of pounding into south Florida and I have every reason to expect this will be another disaster. Florida has been ignoring the threat for a long time, building big hotels and resorts right on the beach and draining the Everglades in the stupid belief that they will never be needed to stand sentinel against a big storm. Well, now they are about to pay big time. It will be truly interesting to see how much of south Florida is left next week. Of course, the pundits, who have little skin in the game, are convinced that this is just another storm like all that came before it. Rush Limbaugh, the mouth who can't stop "entertaining" his followers with one bucket of bullsh*t after another, announced that this hurricane was all a liberal fantasy, not real in any form, and then, like the coward he is, ran from his Florida home to somewhere safe while those who listen to his bile are stuck there to ride out the monster. If ever there was a case for muzzling someone, this clown is a prime candidate. People are going to die because of his lies and I think it's time for him to pay up. What do you say .... Rush? Willing to put your money where your mouth is?

As always, my heart and thoughts go to those who are being hurt by this storm. And I hope some of our lying politicians are watching this disaster unfold with a new awareness that our country and others need to start taking climate change and these monsters seriously. Maybe it's a good idea to abandon much of the low lying parts of Florida ... to let it return to the barrier reef state it had in the "good old days". Maybe we should reconstitute the Everglades too while we are at it. This storm gives us the opportunity to rethink our development practices and to not throw good money after bad in some stupid attempt to regain our foothold on the beach.

Point Cabrillo, CA

Point Cabrillo light is a few miles north of Mendocino on California's north coast. It's now a museum but still functioning as a lighthouse. The association that keeps it running is sanctioned by the Coast Guard to maintain the light in first class condition and they do an amazing job. I spent an hour talking with the keeper on site and he filled my head with all kinds of neat information. I took lots of pictures of the light and will, sometime in the future, put one or more here for your enjoyment.

This image is of the rocks near the light and it shows why the light is there. I wanted to really show how it must have looked to an earlier mariner, trying to feel his way up the coast in a storm and at dusk and what he must have seen. Those rocks and the crashing waves gave me the willies and I was on solid ground at the time. Imagine what it must have felt like looking through an old telescope as your boat pitched and yawed beneath you. Crazy or insanely brave they must have been.

Anyway, I took this image at f/22 so the exposure would be long enough to show the breaking waves as a mist. In this case the view is very ominous, as the dark rocks thrust up through the surf. The noise was deafening. Put yourself in that mariner's shoes and feel the pounding water and the salt spray. Makes you feel a bit queasy, doesn't it? A picture can do that sometimes. That's the power of an image. Grab hold of the rail ... it's going to get very rough out here.

Point Cabrillo - 144 mm,f/22,10 sec, ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0