My son may be a musical prodigy in the making..
This made the rounds of my family a couple of weeks ago – but at the time I wasn’t able to link to it here due to some technical limitations at SmugMug with video. Now that Adobe has released H.264 support in Flash – it’s playable and embeddable!
If this isn’t playable – and you want to be able to see more cute little clips on here – upgrade your Flash player to Version 9 here: Firefox, Other Browsers
Enjoy..
We can sleep and eat when we get home – Jon’s Travel Photography Philosophy
Both of these quotes (supplied by Jon Cornforth in the days leading up to our photo adventure) proved prophetic during my three day private nature photography expedition to the Olympic Peninsula.
My wife decided to give me a trip to a photography seminar after listening to me talk for months about how I’d like to go on one. I roped my friend Ross Simpson – another pinball and photography nut – into joining me on the trip.
We started looking for seminars and got a little disappointed to find that most of the spring seminars were either too long (a full week) or already full. My problem was that I had a very narrow window of opportunity between when the weather improved for the spring and the birth of my second child (forecast for May 5th). After doing a lot of digging, Ross found Jon Cornforth‘s advertisement for private lessons on photo.net – and he was able to accommodate our desires and our time frame.
I was specifically looking for a very hands-on trip where most of the time was spent out shooting and learning. I didn’t want one where we spent the morning in a classroom learning technique before going out for an hour or two on a field trip where we’d get dumped off and picked up later. I also wanted something that was a little more advanced – I know how to use my camera and understand basic photographic principles.
After an initial “get to know you” phone call, we were convinced that a private lesson was worth the additional cost over a group seminar and that Jon was the right guy. I think it was his philosophy of focusing our efforts to get one perfect image rather than a bunch of average images that hooked me.
Jon gave us a shopping list as well as a reading assignment to complete prior to arriving. Our reading list was:
I bought all but the large format book – being a digital shooter, I couldn’t quite see the point. All the books were pretty good – but I think the Hill & Wolfe book was the best.
For a gear list, we had to be sure to have the following gear in addition to our camera:
Of those items, I only had the wide angle lens. I had to do a lot of research to figure out what gear to get. I ended up getting a Bogen 190XPROB tripod with a Manfrotto 486RC2 ballhead, a B+W 77mm Slim MRC polarizer, and a set of HiTech GND filters.
Jon gave us a few possible destinations to choose from – and we chose to go to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. Since we wanted to have power to recharge our laptops and our cameras, we elected to stay in Jon’s camper in a campground with electricity rather than roughing it camping or staying in a hotel. Jon made us reservations in the campground in La Push – right on first beach.
Jon also handled all food arrangements. This is when I started to see Jon’s Travel Philosophy in motion. Instead of wasting time in restaurants, Jon did all the grocery shopping so we could eat on the road or in the campground. Aside from banning “Super-Fruity-Choco-Sugar-Bombs” from the breakfast menu – he took our food requests and lined up lots of yummy things of his own.
In the next installment – the trip begins!
I originally saw this idea on another photography blog: Chris Barnes’ Digital Imaging. The idea is to itemize ten places to take pictures at some point in your life. I thought it was kind of thought provoking – so I decided to take a swing at it myself.
This is my list of top ten things that I want to photograph before I die. There is no rhyme or reason to my list. It’s not along any common theme – other than they are all places I want to photograph. Some of them are not even practical given current socio-politico-economic reasons. But – it’s before I die and lots can change in the next seventy or eighty years.
1. Mustang, Nepal
Only recently open to Westerners, one could potentially get a view of Everest on the same trip.
2. India
Okay, I’ve shot in India before so technically I’ve got one out of ten. There’s so much more to see – and India’s got it all.
3. Masada, Israel
I saw the mini-series as a kid – bummer about the politics in the region.
4. Petra, Jordan
I saw Indiana Jones as a kid. Bummer about the politics in the region.
5. The Isle of Skye, Scotland
For only about $4500, I could join a SmugMug tour!
6. Easter Island
Yeah, that’s cool.
7. The South Island, New Zealand
I’ll either get pictures like this – or a lot of sheep.
8. The backcountry of Iceland – in the summer
Okay – I’ve been there too, but as you can see it was the dead of winter. It’s supposed to be gorgeous in the summer!
9. Pyramids, Temples, Sphinxes, etc. – Egypt
I’ve always thought Egypt was cool. There’s also a lot of things to point a camera at!
10. Earth’s Orbit
It couldn’t hurt to wish, could it?
It looks like it’s time to start making some travel plans. At one trip every three years.. it’ll only take thirty years..
Apologies to the people who own the images that I linked to. I’ll gladly remove them if requested!
The Olympic National Forest, that is..
My friend Ross and I got back today from a fantastic weekend landscape photography seminar with Jon Cornforth in the Olympic peninsula of Washington State. I have good news and bad news about it:
After all – good weather makes for BAD photographs! It still was a trip of a lifetime – I learned a lot, had a lot of fun, and we still were able to get some keepers! I’ll have a full review of my experience in a few days.. but until then..
Sunset at Second Beach – The Olympic Peninsula, WA
The last day of the trip started early when our limo to the airport showed up. The driver arrived with a sedan – and he looked a little panicked when he saw three adults, one child, and LOTS of baggage. He somehow got everything in and we were off to the airport.
Once checked in, we got one last round of panini sandwiches and cafe’ at the airport. The late morning journey home turned out to be perfect for William – he fell asleep the second the wheels left the ground. He didn’t awken again until the plane was on final descent into Amsterdam.
We had a couple of hours to kill in Schipol Airport, so we grabbed a sandwich for lunch. We also ducked in to the gift shop and picked up some of the essentials – gouda cheese and waffles. As we were waiting to board our plane, we saw a pretty unusual sight. A KLM pilot was retiring and completing his last flight – so the crews doused his plane as he pulled in to the gate. All of the gate personnel stopped what they were doing and applauded the pilot.
A retiring pilot pulling in to the gate in Schipol
After taking off for Minneapolis, we had our dinner and William curled up for most of the rest of the flight. We were able to arrange the entire bulkhead again – so we had lots of room for him to spread out and run around a little. He finally woke up about an hour out of Minneapolis. Of the nine hours of flying, William slept for 7 of them. That was a blessing – but it wasn’t as much of a blessing when he woke up at 3 AM back home and was ready for breakfast.
The way William spent the flight home
See all of my Italy pictures over at Smugmug: link
