9-27-05
Travelling 43 miles over three days (I commute 40 miles one way) in Sequoia National Park is a liberating experience.  You know you have a lot of tough miles ahead and yet the beauty and grandeur of the place more than makes up for the dirt, sweat and blood you experience while there.  This 2005 Labor Day trip had to be one of the best yet.  It's the farthest I've ever travelled in a weekend and without significantly reducing my base pack weight down from 17 pounds, more mileage than that is not practical.  Did run into a person who made that distance trivial, so I know there is much room for improvement.  Click on the below image to go directly to the gallery.

7-12-05   Finally bought the sailboat after my now ex-girlfriend and I parted ways and just got a picture up.  Couldn't have taken longer to get an actual photograph but when you're busy putting the boat together and figure out things with your copy of the 1979 instructions, there isn't even time to get a snap of yourself.  Now the trick is to get decent at it and figure out what to do from there.

6-20-05  A good weekend of forestry stewardship.  I went with the founder of Total Escape to Quatal Canyon in the Los Padres National forest in a cleanup effort.  It was amazing and sad to find the trash we did, everything from shotgun shells, car parts, buckets, bottles and the like.  Like the broken window theory, once a little trash shows up, people assume the place is a dump and add their collection to it.  We did make a small dent but there is much to do.  There are other efforts in the works to help improve other forests.   Please enjoy the Los Padres National Forest photos. 4-5-05  Returned from Japan with a new found enthusiasm for learning about different cultures.  Japan's culture is about as different as you can be from American.  Virtually everyone dresses up well there, service is spectacular and there is no lack of people willing to help you find your way.  There are sad challenges there, too.  We came back with over 3,000+ images and video clips.  It will take some time to cull through and comment the photos.  We promise the wait will be worth it! 12-14-04  After using  Rota  to rotate the D70 images, I've found that Photoshop leaves the images as they originally were.  There is a rotation flag embedded into the files, so depending on the software, the image may or may not be correct.  Enter Nikon View, a program that came with the camera and is downloadable.  The files can be imported from the CF card through the program and the files can automatically be corrected.  Also, © information can be embedded into every file during the transfer.  Very handy indeed!  The image rotation is lossless, so there is no worry there.  NikonView can rotate images from other cameras as well.  It's a free download from Nikon.

November 30, 2004:  One of the biggest problems I've run into with using my D70 is the image rotation when you are shooting a vertical/portrait image, like the one below.  Funny thing is my Kodak CX7530 does it right!  When the file actually comes up in any photo viewer, the image is not saved in the correct orientation.  Although Nikon View does view this correctly for you, the image is never the less in the wrong orientation.  I was thinking I'd have to purchase IView Multimedia Pro ($200), something I'm not ready to do yet.

However, after a little poking around, I found Rota, a simple progam that will rotate your JPG images to any orientation you like, it does it WITHOUT loss and the program is free.  Can't beat that!  It doesn't rotate your thumbnail all the time, so thumbnail view may be wrong, but your main image is still correct.  Give it a try and let me know what you think.

November 11, 2004:  Continue working on getting through all of these photographs.  Amazingly, the  D70 allowed me to dispose of a lot of the garbage shots right on the spot rather than waiting to get home and do that.  That's the great thing about digital over film.  You can shoot something and say, "Ya, I got it" if you don't care about your images.  If you're an experienced film shooter, you'll take something from tons of angles and exposures just to make sure you've got it.  There's never any going back.  With digital, I can see what I've shot.  But, instead of walking away, I can look at it and say, "Ya, but I can do better than that!"

This shot shows some of that effort.  I wanted the viewer to look at the stairs at the bottom of the photo and feel like they're falling into the picture, almost down the stairs, if you will.  However, the effect isn't as strong as I'd like.  I'll have to keep working on that effect, though it probably won't be from the great wall anytime soon!

November 4, 2004:  China is an incredible place.  You don't really go there to relax but to have an honest adventure and explore, especially on a DIY (do it yourself) trip.  The tour groups do insulate you from a lot of the challenges to be had and I believe you miss out because of it.  Going through places at warp speed is not my idea of touring.
Have begun going through the 3000+ images I took with the D70 while in China.  That's quite a lot to go through, but at least all of the shots are digital so it's not that bad.  Also, there are an additional 180 movie clips to add on as well.  Didn't want to go all that way and come back with nothing.

The portable hard drive worked very well.  Since there are only two buttons, Select and Copy, you can't accidentally trash files while in the field.  You can only do that back home while hooked up to your computer.

October 26, 2004:  Returned from an excellent trip through China.  Visited Beijing, Shanghai, SuZhou, Guilin, Yongshou and Xi'an.  Actually, you don't really visit these places.  You experience them. 

Everything in China is Super-Sized!  Everything in the Forbidden City is name the "Hall of Something".  I began to believe we were going to come across the "Hall of Forever Walking".  Not that I mind walking but wow, you'd better bring good shoes, a water bottle and snacks.  If you are lacking in any of these, you will pay the price.

All of these cities were more beautiful at night than they were in the day.  The smog melts into the darkness and all you are left with is the sights that the Chinese intended you to see.  Sans smog.  Sadly, China is one of the most polluted countries on the planet.  Hopefully one day this will improve.

Took over 3000 photos with the new D70.  The camera appeared to work flawlessly, though once or twice it hung up and had to be turned off and on.  Wasn't sure if it got into some funky mode or what.  Also discovered that when I changed lenses on the Great Wall, my changing technique wasn't as great and some lint landed inside, causing a bunch of photos to have a blur.  However, it's only noticble in areas of continuous tone.

September 29, 2004:  After a bunch of reading, planning and ticket buying, we're prepared for our China trip.  I don't really think there's much other than learning Mandrin Chinese that will help.  Not being able to say anything other than Hello and Thank you is going to be much more challenging than the trip to Paris.  Also, three weeks is quite a long time to be trekking.  It will be good to see another culture and another part of the world.

September 15, 2004:  After discovering that there was flooding and potential disease outbreaks in the Sichuan province from links here, here and here, I and Patty have decided to alter our plans.  My initial reaction was to bail completely out of the trip and tried to use the travel insurance I purchased through Travelocity.  However, those policies don't cover places being under water.  Only if the flight was delayed could that coverage be initiated.  Since my first flight was into Beijing, there is little likelyhood of that.

Naturally, it takes a day or two to recover from having your trip and hopes dashed to mud.  My primary activity there was to take a cruise down the Yangtze River through the Three Gorges river before it's completely submerged by the huge dam .  Maybe this whole area is now under water anyway.  My recovery plan is now to visit Beijing, Shanghai, Guilin (beautiful landscape) and Xi'an (terra cotta warriors).  It's not a bad plan, just not the one I had hoped for.

September 1, 2004:  ALERT:  I was just about to purchase tickets to China through vipfares.com until I read this POSTING HERE about their site.  Okay, maybe not!  Read into the user comments.  They had flights $150-$200 cheaper than anyone else.  That made me think to do the usual check with someone I haven't used before.  Google vipfares.com scam.  If you have other info, please let me know!  Also, read this Rip Off Report page

July 24-29th, 2004:  Made the first trip to Alaska to get a feel for the land, how to travel and where to go.  It's an amazing state with extraordinarily long driving distances.  Alfonso and I spent many hours going from Anchorage to Denali and back down to Seward.  We flew to Cordova to see the Childs Glacier with hopes of seeing glacial calving which did not materialize.

My slides are in process, the digital snaps are ready and hopefully the video made it in one piece.  Funny thing was, I had 1/4 of my pack for clothes and the rest was dedicated to imaging equipment.