Category: Travel
Irish Moments
I bought an older used photo book. It was “A Time That Was”, Irish Moments by Jill Freedman. I was not familiar with her work, but I was interested based on something I had read as well as the subject of Ireland. The book was published in 1987 and this copy is stained and showing its’ age, but is in fine shape for reading and viewing Jill’s pictures.
Her pictures and words take you back to the older days that we all like to remember. The pub and music pictures in particular bring back many happy memories from when I visited Ireland.
If Only
There were many flights out of the northeast heading southwest on the morning I took this image.
Days like that bring back rich memories of when we often traveled in that direction in order to tour warmer climates in South and Central America.
I have no desire to take such long flights anymore. A lot has changed, and I now think of all of the adverse affects on the climate brought about by such travelers as well as the cramped conditions on those airplanes for long periods.
We missed getting stuck in Peru for a week in 2001 because of terrorists. Missed by one day. Now one has to also be aware of pandemics, and wars, as well as our health and climate changes.
It would have been so much better for all if we all understood and took appropriate actions long ago.
Reliving 30 Years Ago
Reliving and reprocessing scans from small prints made with a small sensor P&S film camera around 30 years ago in Hawaii.
Weird things I remember, like when Marcia and I were walking on a trail that had been closed to the public and we came across two young Russian girls walking with flip-flops that were not suitable for the terrain. They spoke enough English to at least talk a little with us.
I wonder. If I could go back with my E-M5 III camera, would I still process the images this way?
Previous WVa Pictures made with TG-6
When I was in WVa last October I made lots of jpeg pictures with my TG-6 camera. When I processed them for display on my blog after getting home I was a little disappointed in them. Now that I have recently gone back to using my TG-6 more, I have been using one of my recent presets as a starting point and I like the older jpeg images a lot better after I reprocess them. The image above is one that I reworked. The final result is more pleasing and more realistic.
Additional House Pictures
These are some pictures taken of the sides and back of the house at 123 Floyd Street. I’m showing these as I considered displaying the previous ones in a toned monochrome; but, I decided that the color images were more graphic for showing the decay, trash, etc.
An Issue Relative to Gear
I made these images in Mexico in 2008. They were in-camera jpegs that I recently tweaked with Lightroom software on my computer. These images and the ones in the previous post were made with a 6MP Canon Powershot S3 IS camera with a 12x optical zoom lens and a small 1/2.5 CCD sensor. I sometimes wish I still had that older camera. In good lighting conditions, those old small sensor cameras were pretty good. It is a shame that they aren’t made anymore. I would like to compare them with the latest micro 4/3 cameras and lenses. I sometimes get the feeling that the micro 4/3 cameras aren’t as good.
But, which camera to use for wildlife images isn’t the leading issue. The main issue is there isn’t much wildlife close at hand to be photographed, and I won’t be traveling to places where they are. I really can’t come up with a good reason for having long focal length zoom lenses anymore.
Costa Rican Wildlife
We traveled to Costa Rica in April of 2007 where I captured these images with a small sensor camera and then reworked them recently to make these images.
I have been reviewing older images and cameras as I consider possibly concentrating more on local wildlife this year close to home. I still haven’t decided, but I’m getting closer to picking my emphases for this year for my photography and camera(s).
I Like the Amazon River Region
A trip that I would most like to take again is a river cruise on the Amazon River in Peru. If I went back, I would take a better weather resistant camera with a zoom lens since it is a hot, humid area with heavy rain and mud, and yes, mosquitos. We were there in March 2006 when I made these pictures. The following shows a picture of my knee covered with mosquitos when we took a hike ashore. I didn’t get any bites since they couldn’t get through my clothing, but I did come home with a lot of jigger bites on my ankles. The second picture below shows one of the many small frogs.
I also liked the Amazon region of Ecuador, the Nile river in Egypt, and the desert in Tunisia. Do you know what is common to those places? They are all located close to the equator and are not cold or densely populated; but, they are also places that few, if any, of the major tour companies now have tours.
One Future Option
I’m still thinking about a different direction for at least some of my photography. I’m considering shifting my emphasis from blogging to printing a zine in B&W. My first thought has been, what subject, pictures, etc.? I am thinking about maybe first using some images from our travels to see how it all works.
Wanting to see how they worked in B&W, I revisited images (shown above) from our trip to Ireland, but I focused on images that I hadn’t already printed for my walls.
I’m more interested now in the common things and seeing if I can shift my future photography to the small things I see on a daily basis during 2022. I’m looking for memory joggers that include different things than the classic iconic images that others make.
I’m also thinking about extending this approach to images I make while walking around Hanover this spring and coming summer.
One problem is that I don’t know how I want to process the images until I see them printed in a zine. I need to make a test zine using different styles to see what I like best before I decide on camera settings, etc.
Well, I might or might not go this route. I’m still dithering on future options. I figure I have at least two months to continue dithering before spring arrives and we see what the future Covid situation looks like.
The Burren in County Clare in Ireland
I made these in Ireland in May 2011 before moving to Homewood at Plum Creek later that year. I have been reminiscing about trips and cameras used in the past. Marcia was showing me the small snail she spotted as we started to walk in the Burrens.
I used the Olympus E-PL2 with the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 lens to make these. Micro 4/3 cameras make great travel cameras.
Everchanging Perspective 