photography » Traverse Earth

Lower Zambezi Sunrise

Africa, Travel, Zambia, Zimbabwe 1 Response »

Feb 032012

It’s hard to leave Water Horse Safari’s Fly Camp on the Zambezi river after 3 nights there. It’s got the best showers in the world. You stand there with a chest height wall around you and solar warmed river water pouring over you. At the same time you’re spotting wildlife running past in the clearing ahead of you. They’ve got toilets, welcome after a night in the bush. They’ve got a table under a canopy and they have two-men mesh tents with comfy single beds in them. Square meals were prepared nightly and wine, poured from a bag, was available. Perfect.

Each morning we woke up to the sounds of grunting hippos and this view across to Zimbabwe. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Central Park Orbs

New York, Travel No Responses »

Feb 022012

Central Park, New York City. This is one of my first attempts at HDR photography. Shooting so long after the sun had gone down was certainly optimistic. I’ve tried to process this photo over and over again and I’m finally at the point where I think it’s good enough to publish. Once getting involved in HDR you set off on a pretty steep learning curve and don’t even realize it. If a photo is causing problem it’s worth leaving it to sit, the next time you come back to it you may have a better idea of how to approach it.

Boulders Beach Boulders

Africa, Cape Town, South Africa, Travel No Responses »

Feb 012012

Without a doubt, the main attraction at Boulders Beach is the penguins, which, with a little effort, you can get very close to. Also, If you’re willing to brave the cold water (5 people who’d just completed two overnight flights were not), you can actually swim with the penguins here. Searching for penguins is great fun. However, the beach itself would likely be an attraction in its own right.

The beach is walking distance from the Simon’s Town train station and it’s called Boulders Beach for a reason. It is comprised of inlets in amongst these piles of granite boulders. I’m not sure how these boulders formed, but it makes for an interesting scene – added to by the fact that the tides have created stripes on the boulders. The water is crystal clear and with a bit of luck penguins can be seen swimming about. It’s worth spending some time lounging around here.

I had spotted the interesting clouds in the background of today’s photo coming across the sky and set about finding something to put in front of them. A lot of my photos, particularly in places I know well, like Bermuda, are the result of seeing something developing in the sky and finding a location to act as my foreground. If I’m heading out in Bermuda I’ll often look at the sky and make a split decision on where to head rather than thinking of what I want to photograph. The approach may be a little backwards, but it works when you’ve got options in all directions, within 15 minutes drive. I wonder how many more photographers regularly let the sky dictate the location they choose to shoot. Feel free to let me know what you think about this in the comments.

The Czech Philharmonic at Rudolfinum

Czech Republic, Europe, Prague, Travel 2 Responses »

Jan 312012

On my last night in Prague, nearing the end of my five-hour stroll, I decided to make my way to Charles Bridge from the Old Town Square. I didn’t want to take the same route I had in the past and took off in what I was sure was the general direction of the river. Luckily, I was right. On the way there, I stumbled across this building and a very busy intersection in front of it. At the time I had no idea what the building was, but decided I definitely had to stop and take a photo. As I stood there shielding my camera from all the foot traffic, it was situated about a foot off the ground, the van driving politician cruised through with his music still blaring.

Since getting back home, Google Maps has informed me that this is the Czech Philharmonic at Rudolfinum, which I think is a great name for a building.

Cheetah Outreach

Africa, Animals, South Africa, Travel 3 Responses »

Jan 302012

I’ve uploaded photos from our day of wine tasting around Stellenbosch before. This photo is from the same day. Before heading to our first tasting, we stopped off at Cheetah Outreach on the Spier estate. Quoting their website, they are “an education and community-based programme created to raise awareness of the plight of the cheetah and to campaign for its survival. Founder Annie Beckhelling launched the project in January 1997 with just one hectare of land provided by Spier Wine Estate and two cheetahs.”

We arrived just as they opened and were the first group of people through the gates. We were split into two groups for our encounters. My first stop was with the two adolescent cheetahs below. They had a lot of energy. The handlers were keeping them entertained with balls on the end of ropes. They’d swing the balls around them, and the two cheetahs would chase them around and around. During the brief moments they’d calm down, we were able to pet them and listen to them purr. Following this, we set out to go in the enclosure of an adult cheetah. This proved difficult – like the young ones they all had a lot of energy too and were pacing their enclosures. We couldn’t go into the enclosures when they were in this mood so we had to wait. We kept getting ushered from one enclosure to the other as word was received that this cheetah and that cheetah was lying down. But, they’d always hop up again by the time we got there.

Then, finally one stayed calm long enough for us to enter. It’s a weird feeling petting a full-grown cheetah. It purred as well and you could feel it rumbling through it’s whole body.

For this shot I set my shutter speed good and fast and took a ton of photos. All the time I concentrated to keep the cheetah’s eyes in focus. I then created an HDR image from a single raw by adjusting the exposure levels and then combining the resulting three images in Photomatix.

Purple Haze

Bermuda, Travel No Responses »

Jan 292012

This is the view from Mount Island, Bermuda . It’s just off Spanish Point, I actually waded out to it. This was shot right after the sun had dipped below the horizon. You can see the cruise ships in the background moored up in Dockyard. I dialed back the effect of the HDR process on this one. It was useful in bringing up a bit of detail in the foreground but I liked the way the island looked as a silhouette.

I’m planning on committing my day tomorrow to finishing up my free HDR tutorial and getting it online.

Lone Little Girl, Charles Bridge

Czech Republic, Europe, Prague, Travel 3 Responses »

Jan 282012

I set out early in the morning to get some photos of Prague’s main tourist sites, the Old Town Square and the Charles Bridge, without hordes of tourists blocking my view. There’s a few ways to create images without people in them. Of course, the best is to take an image when there’s no-one there. Another method is to set a long shutter speed so that any people moving through the scene will not register in the final image. This requires two things. Firstly, the people crossing through the frame need to keep moving enough that you won’t end up with a ghosted image of them. Secondly, you either need low enough light levels or a dark enough filter to use a long enough exposure.

Neither of the above methods worked for me in taking this picture. I was there early, but not early enough. On top of this people like to stop on Charles Bridge and I didn’t have a dark enough ND filter to really extend my shutter speeds to block them out. As a result I set about working on a post processing technique. I took a bunch of pictures so that I could blend them together and end up with a people-free Charles Bridge. Then, this little girl walking with her parents suddenly took off running and stopped at this little plaque. I decided this made for a nice image and decided to keep her in the photo. Once I got home I decided I’d actually have liked to show the various stages of her approach. Unfortunately, I hadn’t taken enough images to make this work. I’ve seen an intriguing e-book called “Photographing the Fourth Dimension – Time” . It’s available at Flatbooks which is run by Trey Ratcliffe of Stuck In Customs. The photographers he works with in producing these books are always interesting and informative. I’m planning on buying this book and giving it a read as the concept sounds intriguing to me. Also, the next time someone starts moving through a scene in an interesting way I’ll make sure I keep the shutter firing.

Rwandan Insect Repellant

Africa, Rwanda, Travel 4 Responses »

Jan 272012

We didn’t have much of an issue with insects while in Africa, except for one member of our group with an odd fear of moths, and the men’s bathroom in Lusaka airport. It was like a horror movie. Lights flickering, bugs flying around and making the floor squirm along with the shuffling of an individual sweeping live bugs to the corners. Horrifying, but an experience none the less.

The reason I’m going on about bugs is that the flowers in this photo are farmed in Rwanda and used to make a natural insect repellent. I took this photo on our way up to see the mountain gorillas in the volcanoes national park. I’ve mentioned before that it was a tough walk. Pausing to set up for a photo is a great way of taking a rest without admitting that you need one. This is made easier by the fact that wherever you look in the Rwandan countryside you’re confronted with a beautiful view.

I’m pretty sure this is also the hillside where I left my Black Rapid camera strap. If you haven’t heard of these camera straps you should check them out. They let the camera hang comfortably at your hip or lower back and the connection system prevents the strap from twisting and getting in the way when you raise the camera to your eye. Going without it in Prague made life a little more difficult for me, I’ll be ordering a new one this weekend.

This photo is comprised of 7 images ranging from -3 to +3. I had to open up the aperture to get the flowers sharp enough. Unfortunately, I’ve traded off depth of field and the background gets a bit blurry. I’ve started experimenting with blending photos at different apertures to capture moving subjects while maintaining the depth of field only achievable with a smaller aperture. As soon as I find some success with this I’ll post an example.

New York Skyline at Sunset

New York, Travel 4 Responses »

Jan 252012

This is the trip where I really got to test out my new Canon 5d Mk II and L-series lenses. I walked across Brooklyn Bridge and actually got my timing completely wrong. The sun had set by the time I got there. I set up for a night shot of the skyline, and then the sunset provided an encore, spreading pink light across the sky.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I was initially annoyed to have cranes ruining my skyline shot. This was taken a week before the marking of the tenth year after 9/11. I processed this while watching a documentary on the progress of the World Trade Center’s new tower. Suddenly, I realized that is the building with the cranes in my photo. I understand that when this photo was taken it was at about half of the height it will reach.

Large Lunch Companions

Africa, Animals, Travel, Zambia, Zimbabwe 10 Responses »

Jan 242012

Our last day paddling our way down the meandering Lower Zambezi was an exciting one. By now, the surroundings were familiar and comfortable. Working in tandem to navigate the river was almost second nature. It even became easier to suppress the fear of crocodiles that occasionally welled up in my mind. This was despite coming closer to the eerily calm reptiles than we ever had before. As we approached midday, we spotted a group of elephants on an island. After paddling into a small inlet, and walking a very short distance, we were approximately 30 feet away. The elephants acknowledged our presence, but continued munching away and even moved closer. I was completely focused on grabbing a good photo. Once I realized that most people had already moved on to return to the canoes I turned to follow. It turned out that we weren’t departing. Our guides had prepared lunch for us, the usual beautiful fresh salad to accompany the most processed meat in the world. They were some form of Frankfurter, but were fluorescent pink on the outside and white in the middle. So, we ate and watched the elephants munch their way back across to the other side of the island. Then, they started to head to the water and we followed. They took the plunge and meandered their way down the Lower Zambezi.

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