I Love You, I Hate You - Tripod

Whenever I pack for a trip I have a 5 minute staring session with my tripod. It isn't because I'm deciding whether I should bring it or not, it's more of a "I wish you were smaller and lighter" kind of a staring session.

Some of my best pictures are a result of me lugging my tripod around and I've got a standard operating procedure when it comes with me. If I know I'm going to be out until sunset there's no way I'll leave the tripod in my hotel room. That means lugging that sucker with me all day long. Most of the time though I know what sunset or after dark pictures I'll take so I plan my itinerary in such a way that I go back to the hotel before it gets dark.

Sometimes the hardest part of bringing a tripod is actually bringing it in the first place but once you do you'll definitely use it. It's a bit of a fail safe system really, I always reach for it at some point in my trip "I didn't drag you half way across the world not to use you".

For the pictures posted here I think I experimented a lot. Waited for the sky to turn just dark enough for you to think that it's too dark, set my camera to Aperture priority, then played with the exposure compensation to get enough blue out of the sky. My earlier shots had my ISO at 800 but on hindsight you can get away with 200-400 since you're using a tripod anyway.

People who travel

Since I have been grounded so to speak by the most lovable grounding mechanism in the world, my daughter Eve, I thought I'd start featuring people who do travel in my blog. Sure I could do the easy thing and talk to my brother who's in and out of the country on business trips but I think writing about the business lounge is less than exciting.

I'd rather feature some of my friends who have taken on a different career path. Friends who have joined Greenpeace and found themselves arrested while on protest deep in an Indonesian forest, or those that have joined Medicine Sans Frontiers who have been to locations where taking photographs could have dire consequences. It's still a work in progress but that should spice things up so please be patient with me.

Oh and if you've been following me on twitter, if I can track him down, I'll also feature an Armenian I met at a party here in Manila. He's been hitch hiking across the globe and has reached the farthest places in China and Russia. He's in Cebu now to study Mandarin in a Buddhist temple . . . I know, strange right?

Choices, choices

I just had a very interesting argument with myself. It goes back to an earlier post about buying a point and shoot camera for the family (actually its for me). I was going back and forth between form and function. Sure it would be great to have all the functionality of my DSLR in a point and shoot but that usually means the cameras will be too big to fit into shirt pockets which I decided was important to me. Maybe it's because of all those miles lugging around my DSLR kit but small, compact and brainless to use were on the top of my priority list.

Then I starting seeing new features in the newer cameras out there. Samsung's T1000 has an imbedded GPS in it which tags the location on to the photo whenever you activate the shutter. That's something I always wanted and would come in useful for any travel photographer. It also has built in wifi and bluetooth so you could post your pictures on some web apps directly, handy for you social network butterflies.

Then there was Olympus' Tough 8000 which was waterproof (to 10meters), shatterproof (from a 2m drop) and freezeproof (to -10 degrees). Okay so the last one is of no consequence to me coming from the Philippines but imagine bringing a camera to the beach, kayaking, mountain climbing and not worrying about it. (Secret tip - most travel photographers do that anyway, even if their gear isn't water/shock/freeze proof).

In the end though the it's all about the pictures and both these cameras didn't stand a chance against the Canon S90. Okay, so it's an unfair comparison the S90 costs US$100 more than either the Olympus and the Samsung. I thought I could live with average image quality but on reading the reviews I can foresee major bouts of frustration if I don't get the Canon. Also, some of the functionality seem to not work as well as you think but give it a year or two when image quality is up to par and when the GPS and wifi and the waterproofing works as it should and I may pick one up. BTW, Olympus said it would be releasing GPS with all of it's cameras in the near future.

Horses Galore

What do you do when you have half a day to kill in a new city? You do the touristy thing of course, in Vienna that means jumping on one of the horse drawn carriages that criss cross the city. The carriage drivers politely point out the different historical sites but don't forget he's a tourist attraction himself.

Did the same thing in NY a while back but this time my aunt came along for the ride. She shyly admitted that this was her first time on the famous central park carriages . . . . . and she's lived there for 20 plus years.