Practice makes better

Photography is a craft as well as an art. While it's not necessary to be a good craftsman to make artful pictures, it definitely helps. Knowing how to use the common controls on a camera - shutter speed, lens aperture (opening), perspective control - as well as the specific controls for your equipment - enhances your ability to capture the image you intended(1).

Your craftsmanship improves with practice. Regardless of the field, you work better and faster when you don't have to think about the equipment, when the equipment becomes an extension of your mind and body. You think about a note or scale, and your hands and fingers play it. In photography, this means you don't have to go fumbling around in menus or - even worse - dig through the manual to figure out how to change some setting. Your fingers find the button to move the focus point or exposure compensation while you peer through the viewfinder, intent on your image.

Doesn't look anything like Iceland, but it's wet, May 2016

 

So with this in mind, I went out the other day to shoot a waterfall. I expect to see massive waterfalls in Iceland, so this special case of landscape photography is worth practicing. It was raining overnight and still mostly cloudy, so the weather was a warmer approximation of what I expect to experience when we get there. The rain would ensure the puny waterfalls in my area have at least a little water flow. I packed up what I think will be my likely "walk from the car" kit: Olympus camera, three zooms (wide, medium and telephoto), extra battery, filters and tripod.

Easy to carry, May 2016

I've found if I'm walking a modest distance on easy terrain, I often just put the camera on the tripod and carry it that way, rather than strapping it into a backpack or carrying the tripod in its own bag. This leaves two lenses, filters and extra batteries in the small shoulder bag. If the terrain is steep or I need the backpack anyway for other gear - clothing layers, first aid, lunch - then it all goes on or in the backpack and the small bag stays home (or in the car).

The spot I was going to was about 3/4 of a mile from the car, and a 150' climb. I put on my waterproof hiking shoes and set off through the muck.

After 15 minutes I came upon a group of people with a larger group of dogs - maybe 4 people and 10 dogs. My guess? Dog walkers. This park has signs all over telling people to leash their dogs, and all of these dogs were on leashes. All of which were just dragging on the ground as the dogs saw me, started yapping and ran over to play. Which only made me a little nervous. They were all excited by my presence, and finally one of them jumped up on me, tail wagging, muddy feet on my pants and shirt. Yuck!

After a quick exchange with the dog people about what "leashed" means, I continued up to the waterfall.

My cameras all allow you to save different settings in memory banks, so that you can switch easily from "normal" (auto-most things), to "sports" (fast shutter, wide aperture, handheld) to "landscape" (slow shutter, tripod, moderate aperture, 2 second delay timer, manual focus override) by just turning a dial. As I had been shooting a grandkid's baseball game last weekend, the landscape settings had been messed up. So I spent a few minutes - and a couple of suboptimal shots - getting this setup right, and saved into memory bank 2.

The effect of shutter speed, May 2016

I took a number of shots with different filter combinations. The CP (polariser) cuts the glare in the water and wet rocks, and sometimes lets you see to the bottom of the stream. The ND (neutral density) cuts down the light coming in, allowing longer exposures and the silky water effect. You can easily see the difference between 1/90 second, 1/20 second and 4 seconds in the picture. Different people like different versions. Even I like different versions, depending on the scene and my mood.

I've noticed that really big waterfalls, which have a huge volume of water hurtling over a cliff, tend to need less silkiness. Wimpy waterfalls like this one tend to need more to look at all interesting. I expect we'll see a lot of really big, powerful waterfalls in Iceland.

I spent 15 or 20 minutes shooting the wimpy waterfall, then left. No further encounters with muddy dogs.

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(1) You did have a specific image in mind when you pressed the shutter button, didn't you?

 

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans

In and Out and In and Out(1)

You are here, May 2016

This is a driving trip. Iceland has a very nice Ring Road, Rt. 1, which pretty much circles the island. For an island, it’s pretty big - at 39,000 sq miles, it’s the 18th largest in the world. For a country, it’s pretty small - it’s the 177th largest in the world, about 3/4 the size of New York State, and 1/6 the size of Texas. The coastline is about 3,000 miles, with the huge size being driven by the craggy coastline, with picturesque fjords all around the country. The Ring Road itself is about 830 miles, which gives you an idea of how deep the fjords are. Our hotel-to-hotel driving is 950 miles according to Google Maps, plus we’ll be doing sightseeing in many places.

Checked and Carry-On, May 2016

 



We're staying in eight places on this trip - the first two and last nights in Reykjavik, and six other stops over eight nights. Plus a short night on the 5 hour flight to Reykjavik. So a lot of in-and-out. A lot of unpacking and packing. A lot of incentive to keep the quantity of things we bring both as low as possible, and keep them organized as we move along. Part of the challenge is the difference between packing for air travel, and packing for the road trip.



For air travel, you separate your goods into checked baggage and carry-on baggage. The carry-on is limited, as we all know, to one piece that goes in the overhead, and one piece that goes under the seat. It needs to contain the fragile stuff (cameras), the irreplaceable stuff (prescription drugs) and anything with a lithium battery (phones, tablets, cameras, etc.). Of course, you should also never pack anything which is thief bait in your checked baggage, but that's mostly accounted for already in the stuff you need to bring on the plane with you. Everything else goes in the checked bags. Including especially the stuff you can't carry-on: liquids, pocket knife, tripod - anything which could be used as a weapon (according to the TSA).



Most of our weather-related clothing will be in the checked bags, although I'm planning to wear my hiking boots on the plane - they just take too much room in the suitcase.



Once you land, the organizational strategy changes. This trip has only three days where we are neither checking in or out of a hotel. On all of the other days, we'll be leaving a hotel in the morning and checking into another one sometime later in the day. So we will want to divide our stuff into those things we need during the day, and those we need only in the hotel. The key objective here is to have ready access to everything you'll need for the next 6-10 hours without having to dive into your big suitcase.

Stays in the car, May 2016

Start with outer clothing. I think we're likely to keep our jackets, hats, gloves, boots, sunglasses(2), umbrella, etc. either in the car or on our bodies all the time. So they won't have to be packed until we're ready to head back to the airport.



The tripod, which takes a lot of space in my suitcase, will likewise stay out for the entire trip. Probably it won't even come into most of the hotels, but live in the car overnight.



Sally likes to keep a last-out bag with her toiletries and other stuff, so she can pack those at the last minute. This allows me to load the car and often perform the check-out process while she's still getting ready for the day, and then she just brings that bag with her as we leave.

Worst-case carry, May 2016

My camera stuff gets split into two sets. One set is the gear I expect to be using each day, which will most often be a small bag with my main camera, the three zoom lenses, filters and batteries. The rest - the backup camera, the less-used lenses, all the charging gear, etc. - can go in my suitcase or a separate bag for the day. The tripod, as mentioned above, will be in the car.



 



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(1) "Squeeze Box", on The Who By The Numbers, words & music by Peter Townshend

(2) The sun does shine in Iceland sometimes.

 

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans

Electronics (more Geek stuff)

Each evening's charge, May 2016

Ignoring cameras, here's a list of the electronics we are bringing.

1. Two iPhones
2. Two iPads
3. A Kindle
4. A Huawei Mobile WiFi Hotspot
5. A portable disk drive to backup photos from SD cards
6. Backup battery for all of the above

This stuff pretty much replaces a suitcase full of books, maps, travel documents, travel guides, itineraries, tickets, directions, etc. It's much smaller and lighter than the old stuff, but has to be plugged in each evening. Which means it comes with a load of wall plug adapters, chargers and cables.

Six of them plug into USB ports, and we'll have enough ports available to charge five at one time. The Kindle probably won't need charging very often, if at all.

Four plug into normal wall outlets, including the USB charger and big camera body charger shown on the lower right. I don't expect to need the two small camera battery chargers. We'll have five US outlets available from the one Euro outlet adaptor and the Accell multi-adaptor shown above. So we should be able to blow the fuse on a single line in each hotel room with no problem at all.

 

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans

Geek alert: camera gear discussion

Polaroid Land Camera 800, May 2013

 

Well, I'm finally at a point were I don't need(1) to buy any new gear for this trip. The Olympus/Panasonic cameras and lenses I've been collecting for the last three years seem to be pretty stable. But, just as with the clothing, I'm going to review the inventory in light of the type of pictures I expect to take(2). I am primarily going to be taking landscape images, with a bit of cityscape and the usual documentation of our lodging and other interesting things.

So we start with my big tripod(3). You can't take great pictures if you're holding your camera around in your shaky hands, especially as the sky will be overcast much of the time. And all the waterfalls and shorelines beg for long exposures to give that silky moving-water effect. The tripod and the ball head which goes on it are pretty expensive; together they cost more than either camera. Yet carrying it on-board the plane it is not practical, as there's a real chance the TSA will decide it's a weapon. So it gets disassembled and packed in my checked bag. In a way, that's good; it weighs about as much as my cameras and lenses in total. But loosing it will put a real cramp on my photography on this trip, and I doubt I could buy a new one in Iceland at a reasonable price.

Current camera kit, May 2016

 

On top of the tripod goes one of the cameras, usually the Olympus OM-D E-M1, which is setup for convenient tripod use. The Panasonic Lumix GX7 is a little less convenient in that mode, and is really along as a backup in case the Olympus decides to kick the bucket. Since they use the same lenses, it's a good backup. The Panasonic is also lighter and a bit smaller to carry if we're out for dinner.

A big part of landscape photography is the filters you put in front of the lens to shape and control the light coming in. With digital cameras, the filter requirements are actually far less than they were with film, as many of the adjustments can be made after the fact with software. But not all. There are three types of filters I use:

- a circular polariser (CP) cuts down on glare and reflections, just like your polarised sunglasses. This is particularly useful to make skies blue-er, and make the clouds "pop".

- a neutral density (ND) filter cuts the amount of light entering the camera, enabling you to keep the shutter open longer. This is how you get the silky moving water effect, and we're going to see many waterfalls on this trip.

- a graduated neutral density (GND) filter lets more light in on one half of the scene then the other. This is usually used when the sky is very bright, but the foreground is much darker, perhaps in shadow. It lets the camera record the details that your eye and brain automatically adjust for.

Unfortunately, the GND kit is pretty bulky. With modern digital cameras and sophisticated software like Photoshop, GNDs are not as widely used as they used to be. In some sense, the software - used well - creates better results than the GND filters. I'm leaning towards not bringing them (and they're not shown in the picture above).

The lenses are my standard kit of three zooms(4) - wide (9-18mm), mid-range (12-35mm) and telephoto (35-100mm) - plus one or two tiny fixed length lenses.

Sadly the two cameras use different batteries, which means different chargers. And since the cameras become paperweights without batteries, at least one backup charger.

Extra memory cards. Straps. A little device to backup the memory cards each day. Stuff to clean the lenses and filters.

It all adds up at the end. And most of it needs to be hand-carried on the plane, either because it's critical, fragile or thief-bait. For instance, I need to carry chargers, as the cameras become useless if they are lost. Of course, the cameras and lenses get carried. The batteries must be carried per the TSA, because of the lithium fire hazard. The filters, cleaning kit, and straps can be in the checked luggage, along with the tripod. I have a large multi-battery charger which can be checked, and the small slow chargers will be carried.

Zeiss Ikon Pocket camera, May 2013

 

When we went out West in 2012, the carry-on camera stuff filled a 24" roll-aboard (which is now too big to carry-on), plus some spill-over in my backpack and suitcase. The newer, more compact gear will fit in my backpack along with other carry-on necessities like meds, iPad, a USB charger for the iDevices, etc., with a very small "personal" bag in addition. The kit in the picture above weighs under 5 lbs. The tripod adds another 4 lbs. Batteries and other small accessories add (maybe) another pound. So the carry-around weight is about 10 lbs. if I bring everything, plus the bag to carry it all in. Experience tells me it's about 4 lbs. of gear and the 4 lb. tripod most of the time. Not bad at all.

 



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(1) "Need" is such an ill-defined word, don't you think?

(2) After all, I am a geek, eh?

(3) It's actually modestly sized by photography enthusiast standards, but my gear is also smaller than the traditional Nikon/Canon stuff most use (and I used to use). It's the biggest tripod I've ever owned. It's also made of expensive carbon fiber, like golf clubs or bicycles.

(4) if you're used to the lenses that we all used to use on 35mm film, double these focal lengths to get the equivalent. If you have a compact camera, it will usually specify the lens focal length as the same "equivalent" sizes.

 

 

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans

Wet and Wild

With any trip, one needs to consider the weather, your planned activities, and then pack accordingly.

You and me and rain on the skylight, Plitvice, Croatia, May 2014

If you're going to sit on an island beach for a week, some tshirts, shorts and swimsuits may suffice. Along with flip flops, sunglasses and a hat.

If you're going on a cruise - as we did last year - there may be some dress code requirements you need to accommodate. On our cruise, men were expected to wear jackets to dinner. This then begets shoes, shirts, slacks, etc. Women needed a whole set of outfits, with the appropriate shoes and bags to match.

We have had two trips with heavy duty packing requirements. In our month-long trip out West in 2012, the weather ranged from snow in Grand Teton to oven-like in Death Valley, and from hiking gear in Bryce to resort chic in Napa and Las Vegas. Plus, we were away for a month. We took a lot of stuff.

Our trip last year to Hawaii was equally complex for me, as I spent four days in Yosemite in a photography workshop, then met Sally in San Francisco and went straight to Hawaii. So I needed all my workshop equipment, outdoor garb suitable for Yosemite in the fall, and resort wear for Hawaii. I took too much stuff.

In many ways, Iceland will be simple. The weather appears to be consistent during the 12 days we'll be there: expected highs in the low 50s, lows in the mid 40s, and rain on 70% of the days. Occasionally very heavy rain. Plus lots of spray from waterfalls. So, cold and damp is the order of the day. Layers which can go on and off as the weather changes are the strategy.

So a waterproof jacket with hood and shoes are a must. I'll bring my hiking boots, and Sally is trying out a new pair of waterproof hiking sneakers. From reviewing trip reports and YouTube videos, many people appear to have rain pants as well - we don't, although my hiking pants are synthetic and dry quickly. Not so my jeans ... .

Typical summer garb in Iceland, May 2016

For warmth, typical hiking/skiing layering: top and bottom base layer, lightweight and compressible quilted jacket, wool hat and gloves.

We'll need bathing suits for the hot springs and Blue Lagoon.

Typical summer garb everywhere else, May 2016

The usual assortment of undergarments, shirts, sneakers, and an extra pair of jeans will mostly complete the set for me. Maybe a sweater. Fortunately, we really don't need any fancy stuff.

And Sally keeps asking: exactly why are we going here?

 

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans

Planning when you have no idea where to go

Most of our travel is self-guided: we rent a car and drive, and occasionally fly, between stops. Even for our most complex trips - the Western parks and Croatia - we figured out where to go, picked the hotels, set the itinerary. So we naturally started planning this trip the same way. We started with no more knowledge than that the airport was near Reykjavik.

Each of these places is not like the other

 

One technique we've used in the past is to look at suggested tours in various travel guides, see what interests us, and then assemble the stops we want to make based on that. We immediately ran into a problem: while Icelandic (mostly) uses the same Latin alphabet we are used to, the place names all had a strange similarity to each other. It seemed like every place had the same long multi-syllabic name. This made it very difficult to assemble a list of stops to make, as I couldn't remember which was which.

 

Second, we had no idea where anything was, nor where the accommodations were relative to each. You can't just rely on two spots being (say) 30 km apart; that could be 20 minutes or an hour, depending on the road condition and terrain.

 

I reviewed a number of trip blogs and vlogs to try and get a sense of how to approach it. Most of them appeared to be young travelers, with a very different style than us: a lot of camping and/or sleeping in the car. Not really suitable for us old folk.

Pick a card, any card

 

After a few weeks of this, we broke down and asked two travel agents to make proposals for a 12 day trip. One was a Scandinavian firm with good reviews on TripAdvisor, the other a US firm we've used before. After getting them both, we still were clueless about how they compared. We wound up selecting the Scandinavian firm based on their obvious expertise in this trip. They booked the hotels (which they selected and only showed us after we paid a deposit), arranged a car rental (a medium sized 4x4), and even transfer us from the airport to Reykjavik, out first stop.

 

Once we paid the deposit and got the hotel list, Sally started working on ensuring their choices were acceptable, the room class was appropriate, and working with our agent on any any changes required. She also specified our hotel in Reykjavik for the first two nights, which they were happy to book.

There's a Ford in our future

 

We still can't pronounce the names of many of the places we're staying and seeing. But our car will be a Ford Explorer (or equivalent). But this is the first time we've relied completely on an agent for our itinerary.

 

 

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans

Summer Vacation? Not ...

A Geyser, but not Geysir: Yellowstone NP, May 2012

 

So okay, Iceland isn't your typical summer vacation. No warm breezes, no sandy beaches to sit on, no poolside drinks, definitely no sunscreen. So why visit there in the summer?

Would you prefer the winter?

Actually, Iceland seems to have two seasons: a damp and chilly summer, and a damp and chillier winter.

June weather has temperatures in the low 50s by day and mid-40s at night. It rains about 21 days during the month. December, on the other hand, ranges from the mid-30s by "day" to upper-20s at night. Of course, come late December, it's night most of the time. June is the reverse, with Reykjavik having about 21 hours of daylight (most of them sadly through clouds), and the north of the country having but 15 minutes of "night" on June 20.

So why visit here at all? As usual, there's a back story.

I've always been attracted to wilderness, preferring hiking in the mountains (or skiing) to sipping a pina colada at a resort. Or even better, going hiking, then enjoying a beer or glass of wine back at the lodge later. My lovely better half prefers the reverse. So we've been trading off for the last several years, visiting the national parks, then taking a four star luxury cruise. By the way, this luxury cruising stuff is really not torture - you can refer to the Crusin' blog for the details. But still, it was my turn to pick some place to go and I was searching for an outdoorsy-adventurey kind of trip.

My first thought was another round of the US National Parks. We even sketched out an itinerary hitting a number of the places we haven't been yet. The problem is that we've been to many, and the ones we haven't seen are far apart. Which can lead to extremely long drives.

My second thought was Antarctica. It doesn't get any more wilderness than that. And it's also melting away due to global warming, so there's some imperative to go sooner rather than later. There are a number of dedicated photography tours, which would be right up my alley. But almost all of the tours are by sea from Patagonia, and the several-day crossing is far too rough for Sally, who prefers the smooth waters of the Mediterranean. The tour that was most appealing to me would have me away for over three weeks. And the cost is comeasurately high.

Not sailing to Antarctica, May 2014

 

From Antarctica, I segued to Iceland. Lots of snow and ice, I guess.

If you look at pictures from Iceland, it is pretty spectacular. When Sally and I were first talking about what we would do on the trip, my description to her was: imagine a gigantic national park. Waterfalls, geysers(1), icebergs, seabirds. Mountains and glaciers. Volcanos.

Since we haven't gone yet, I don't have any pictures to show. But look here to be blown away:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=Iceland

We probably won't see the Northern Lights, as they are a nighttime event and we probably won't ever see any real darkness.

And so we started planning a trip to the land of Fire & Ice.

 

 

 

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(1) Actually, the original geyser in the world is Geysir, in Iceland.

 

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans