When I got to Guatemala I was surprised to discover that one of the main modes of transport around the cities is the Tuk Tuk, typically synonymous with Thailand. They’re good fun, if not entirely safe, as they bounce over the cobbled roads of Flores and Antigua. I used them to travel around quite a lot and on this occasion, while on my way to el cuevo del serpiente, I decided to catch a cool photo of the view. If you look closely you’ll notice this photo also includes a self portrait.
On my first day in Flores I planned on taking it easy. I was going to sleep in and then take a tour of the lake. Little did I know that I’d wake up at 6am and not be able to get back to sleep because my room was absolutely boiling!
I lay around for about an hour before giving up and going for breakfast in my hostel. Then, it was time to do something. I grabbed my backpack full of camera gear and made my way down to the docks to procure a boat for the day. When I arrived at the water there weren’t any boats about. Then, a kid was passing by and called out to me. Stretching my Spanish abilities to the limit, I arranged a price to visit two viewpoints, a beach, and an animal refuge center called ARCAS.
As we sped out of Flores I snapped the below photo of my new guide.
I’ve said that a lot in the past it’s true, I don’t normally take photos of people. It’s just never really come naturally to me and I don’t find it as interesting as setting out on foot to find that incredible vista for a landscape shot. I’ve always been more into landscapes, really only taking photos of people who ask me or candid shots. However, people clearly fit into the genre of travel photography. Some would say they are one of the main subjects. This has resulted in me gaining an interest in photographing people. Still, I’ve stuck mainly to candid shots, people doing things or people as part of a landscape. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to take photos of people posing. Then along came today’s photo.
If you’ve been following this site for a while you’ve seen my previous post, Three Generations, and may recognise the kids in the photo below. After I’d taken that photo I let my camera hang to my side, on my BlackRapid strap (awesome by the way). Little did I know, my camera was on and the photo I’d just taken was on display. The kids started craning their necks to get a look at their photo, so I held it up and pointed to the photo. Their faces lit up and I got ready to take another photo. They all started moving towards me and jostling for position. After motioning for them to stop I took a quick photo as I didn’t want a load of cheesy grins. As a result I got some very unique and interesting expressions. Right down to the boy in the back who had clearly already lost interest!
So, normally I find posed pictures of people boring, but I’m quite pleased with this one. What do you think, is this photo interesting enough to be featured as my photo of the day? Let me know in the comments, I read them all.
When you see a site called Amazing Pics you click on it with a degree of doubt, especially when it claims to feature only the best photographs. Typically it’s full of very good pictures, but the quality varies and you’ve really got to wonder if they really are the best. Whoever is making the selections for this site is definitely maintaining a uniquely high standard and the photos featured here are absolutely incredible. I hope one day to take my photography to a level where my photos could be featured alongside these.
You can help me out by clicking this link… a lot! That way the selector may take note of my site and keep an eye out for when I do achieve something truly amazing!
Here it is: http://mostamazingpics.com/
I know I’m sending you to another daily photo site. It’s okay, I can handle you seeing other people. Just don’t forget about Traverse Earth!
It’s wake-boarding season again, with the water warming up and wave free days popping up. I decided to bring out my new Canon 7d to give it a test. After all, it was supposed to compliment my 5d mk II by excelling at action shots. I was not disappointed. The 7d’s burst mode sounds like a machine going off in comparison to the 5d mk II. On top of that it’s more complex focusing system, with far more focusing points, make holding focus on a moving target a breeze. To illustrate the action capabilities of the 7d, I decided to upload the best photo of the day, next to a couple falls that were captured brilliantly.
I used one exposure shot in RAW to create this HDR image. As there was so much white in the scene, between the boats’ wakes and the clouds in the background I had to bump up the exposure by one stop to expose Soniko correctly. In post processing I adjusted the RAW photo to provide exposures at -1, +1, and +3. These were then combined in Photomatix and tweaked in Photoshop.
On the way from Ruhengeri to the basket weaver’s, we waked through a few villages. Each time the kids would run out to greet us. They all wanted their pictures taken. and after taking photos of a big group I turned around to find this lone boy standing here watching. I motioned to my camera to ask if he wanted to have a photo. He smiled and nodded and posed ready. I decided to kneel down to get down on his level. But, as I knelt, he crouched, trying to stay on the same layer as he’d been with the camera. I motioned for him to stand up and he wouldn’t. So I stood up and he followed. When I knelt back down again so did he. This happened a few times until I managed to get the shot.
I kind of wish I’d stopped down my aperture to blur the background. I’ve just spent about an hour trying to achieve this in photo shop (for the first time) and wasn’t happy with the results. So, I decided to stick with the original image: boy in front of sugar cane, all in focus.
This is one of my early attempts at HDR. I spotted this little structure and decided to see if I’d be able to capture the detail inside as well as the skyline in the distance. I have no idea who this guy is but he made quite a good subject to anchor the photo on. He seemed completely oblivious to my presence as well, must have been a good book.
Most people visit Gisenyi for the gorillas and a lot of people will trek up the volcano to see them twice. At $500 for a day permit we decided we’d only go once. As I’ve mentioned before, we made the most of it by going to the largest, and hardest to reach, group.
The next day we went on a much easier hike. We departed Gisenyi and walked along a well used path that links villages to the town. On the route we passed numerous little hamlets, crops, and fish farms. Along the way we stopped and traded a child a football for his homemade version – crafted from plastic and twine. Further along, there were grids etched into the baked ground and upon asking about them, we discovered they were used for a hopscotch type game. The children demonstrated this to us and then got a good laugh as we attempted it ourselves.
Our first official stop was in a village to see how the baskets photographed below are made. We’d seen a lot of these baskets across Africa in curio markets. They were all made of thread. These seem more authentic as they are made entirely from dried dyed grass. They work with long grass and bind it together with more grass as they spiral out from the middle. They thread the grass though a needle and push it through the thick bundle. We all gave it a try and concluded it was pretty difficult to push the needle through. I think Shannon was the only person with any luck. After this attempt, and chomping on some delicious sugar cane, we decided to play with our newly purchased homemade football. We had another real football with us, earmarked for the orphanage we visited later and the children in the village looked on inquisitively as we shunned the real football to kick the homemade one around.
I grabbed this photo on the way out. I’ve had a lot of difficulty processing it for some reason. I was combining three exposures from -2 to +2 but the results kept coming out grungy. So, I decided to try processing this image from a single raw with Photomatix. This result came out much cleaner but some of the photo was still under and overexposed. To fix this I layered all of the photos I had in Photoshop and masked in selected areas from the other exposures.
Normally I wouldn’t include people posing for a picture in one of my shots. But, as I mentioned in a previous post, taking photos of the kids in this village was great fun! Here you can see my travel companion Chris posing for a picture as Shannon teaches a couple of the kids how to use her camera. The sky was striking and I liked the opportunity to catch a picture of the kids having fun without actually having them pose for me!
This photo is only bracketed from -1 to +1. I had to shoot handheld because if I’d set up the tripod the kids would have flocked long before I was ready to take a shot. I also needed to use a small aperture to get the whole scene in focus. If I’d gone to +2 I never would have been able to get a sharp image.
We’d brought clothes to give as a gift and as thanks for allowing us to visit. We didn’t know that we were going to be visiting this village and had actually packed very light for the safari. It was a shame as Shannon had been carrying a lot of stuff to give away the whole trip (this eventually found a home in a Rwandan orphanage). Everyone managed to pull something out, including Soniko who offered up a brand new world cup rugby jersey. But, Soniko wanted to give this to someone personally and eventually gave it to the older kid in the blue sitting down in the middle of this picture. Being selected for Soniko’s prize possession made his day and he beamed a huge smile as he received the jersey.
This is a village just outside the Lower Zambezi National Park in Zambia. We visited while on canoe safri. As we drove into the village we were greeted with glowing smiles from everyone. The kids were all excited to see us and came running up. We were introduced to the lady in the red headscarf who is the wife of the village Headman. When asked how old she is she didn’t know and when she informed us that she was in fact the Headman’s only wife she beamed a big smile. The lady with her back to the camera is one of her eight daughters and all of the children in the photo were her grandchildren. The place was full of kids and it turned out they were all her grandchildren! We asked how many grandchildren she had. She had to think for a while and said about thirty.
Here, they are demonstrating one of the steps involved in producing nshima – a maize dish that looks like mashed potatoes. They’re using a giant mortar and pestle to remove the husks from the grain. Maize and water go into the large wooden pestle on the ground. Then, they take a big wooden mortar each (you can see one lent against the hut in the background) and they take turns lifting their pole and dropping it back down. They did this at a great pace.
Stepping out of my comfort zone of landscapes and cityscapes, I was inspired to shoot this portrait. The kids we encountered in Zambia and Rwanda were great. They certainly make a memorable impression. They’re also fascinated by the camera. I’ve mentioned the boy who followed me around Gisenyi setting up and packing away my tripod for me. While we were canoeing the lower Zambezi we paid a visit to a local village. As the chief’s wife gave us a demonstration in how they make flour, I snapped a photo of her toiling away with a small portion of her mob of grandchildren in the background. Without realizing, I left the screen on as I let the camera hang to my side. Suddenly I noticed all the kids were jockeying for a view of my hip. So I knelt down to show them the picture. They responded by pointing while chanting “Aye Nappa” (I have no idea how to spell this and am a bit ashamed to say I don’t even know what language it is, maybe our African language buff, Soniko, can fill this detail in). Our guide, C.B., filled us in that they were saying, “that’s me!”
Kids wherever we went loved having their photos taken, normally in a pack with huge cheesy grins. Most of these were really just snap shots to show them. As we climbed this hill in Rwanda (in a truck this time) to get a better view of the twin lakes, Burera and Ruhondo, we came across loads of kids – we were in Rwanda during a school break. As usual, they ran after us along the road and posed for photos. Then, at this verge looking out over one of the lakes there were only a few kids around. I’d started concentrating on taking landscapes before acknowledging the kids as it tended to be impossible after that. I snapped a few photos of this view and noticed that the older boy in this photo was watching me very closely, with that exact expression on his face and the littler one always by his side. I took a few photos and then called him over and had the two of them press the shutter button to fire off my bracketed photos for me. Neither asked for a photograph, which was a bit different, so I asked to take a photo of them. I’m very happy I did. I feel like this kid has the eyes of a wise old man. Regretfully, I don’t remember his name. I’m hoping to track him down. Cameron exchanged e-mail addresses with a few kids further up the hill who I need to send a few photos. They all wanted to be photographed with Cameron, who seemed a bit of a giant in Rwanda. Maybe those kids can track these guys down.
My HDR technique is based on Trey Ratcliff’s website, Stuck in Customs, where he bemoans the fact that Nikons force him to take 5 exposures in order to bracket exposures from -2 to +2. He states that the light range in the majority of scenes can be captured in three exposures, -2,0,+2. For no real reason I started using 7 exposures and have wondered what I would ever tell anyone if they asked me why I take 7. Now I know. It may be possible to capture the light range of the majority of scenes in three exposures. However, I’m still new to this HDR stuff and as such I’m not tuned to recognize when I need to go wider. For this shot, as I was photographing people (which aren’t very still), I dropped my usual 7 exposures down to 3. As a result, the background of this photo was plagued with noise. I think this is the result of Photomatix having to adjust the exposure of the background as it was not captured in the three images taken. Also, the option to mask out the sky in the Photomatix result to replace it with a noise free version didn’t work because I was missing the correct exposure. It’s come out alright after using Noiseware Pro, which is a great Photoshop plugin for removing noise, but I’ve lost some detail as a result. So, as I’m still learning when to shoot which exposures, I’ll stick to my -3 to +3 just to make sure.
