Two-Heel Drive

Ask Steve why he never takes a camera hiking and he’ll mention the boxes & boxes of slides from backpacking trips of days gone by that he never looks at anymore.

Then there’s Dan, who could equip a polar expedition on what he’s shelled out for high-end camera bodies, lenses, tripods & such.

I’m in the middle — I don’t want to carry the weight, spend the money or endure the aggravation of a bigger, better camera. My digital point-and-shoot brings home OK pictures most weekends; the quality depends mostly on the scenery.

A few conclusions based on a few years of hiking, taking pictures and posting them online:

• Image stabilization technology is the best thing to happen to cameras since the flashbulb. If you’re looking for a light point-and-shoot for hiking & backpacking, pay extra to get it (I’m thinking it’ll be pretty much standard on all digital cameras in a couple years.)
• Cameras that use double-A batteries are far more flexible — you can buy a recharger and a bunch of cheap rechargeable batteries and always have some power ready. GPS units often also use double-A batteries, so you get multiple uses.
• Pictures you plan to air publicly should be cropped for best effect.
• If you’re planning to post a bunch of pictures, leave out redundant images, even if they’re from different locales.
• Master all your current camera’s functions before you buy another one with even more functions.
• Backlighting is evil. You can get some cool silhouette effects, but otherwise, make sure the sun’s over your shoulder.

Well, these are the first that spring to mind … feel free to add suggestions.

Stephen W. Oachs of San Jose won first place in the “Mammals, Amateur” category of National Wildlife Magazine’s 2007 photo contest.

Oachs photographed play-fighting grizzlies near Yellowstone National Park at a nonprofit preserve for bears and wolves. The rest of the contest winners here.

The pix put my shutterbuggery to shame. Stephen’s Web site is here, photoblog here. Here’s his photographic philosophy:

I have never taken any formal training. What I’ve learned has been from a lot of trial and error, photography websites and books. I have been asked “how do you get images like this?”. The answer is simple, 1) Using the right equipment and 2) know where you’re going to shoot. It is very difficult to go on a weekend trip to a location and come away with a dozen great photos. But the post cards in the gift shop always look so great, Why? Because they are usually shot by local photographers — those who live in that area and have 365 days a year to capture a scene in just the right time of day and light. Good photographers don’t walk around taking great shots. They learn the subject or location and choose when is best.

Light is everything. If you think about a camera and how it works, you are painting your picture with the light that enters the lens. Learning how your camera works and how to control it goes a long way. The magical hours for light are early morning (sunrise) and dusk (sunset). The light is indirect and makes for ideal photography conditions. I like to take advantage of that pristene, early morning light and then use the day to scout for other locations, when the light is often too harsh.

Translation: you have to stop walking long enough for something interesting to arrive in your viewfinder. This one always foils me.

Rock face and clouds, originally uploaded by busybeingborn.

Just a test of the Flickr “blog this” function.

Melissa and I dashed over to Yosemite early Sunday (the end of Daylight Savings gave us an hour we had to spend). Didn’t do any hiking but did click a few choice images. The greatness never ends at Yosemite, and no two days are alike, even if you’re standing in the same spot.

For instance, Tunnel View has never looked quite like this before. Some controlled burns were contributing to excellent clouds-painting-the-sky action.

Another Tunnel View shot, looking up the hill toward Inspiration Point.

Half Dome and the High Country from Washburn Point along Glacier Point Road just up from Glacier Point. I guess when a piece of rock is this big, it has its own gravity, which naturally attracts the human gaze. Or something.

A popular vantage point on the Merced River in the Valley does not disappoint this time.

El Capitan also has that strange magnetism.

This is the dome behind the pull-in at Olmstead Point.

Arrived at Tenaya Lake just in time for the surface to become calm as a sheet of glass.

A dusting of snow gets washed down the hillside in the mountains at Ellery Lake just east of Tioga Pass.

More rock and sky opposite Ellery Lake.

Ellery Lake looking west towards Tioga Pass.

I know this is quickie but I’ve been staring at highways all day and need to rest my peepers.

She and her tribe — Dad plus four young-uns — had some good fun camping at Lassen Volcanic National Park last week. Pictures here.

Beth’s pics prove conclusively that if you’ve got kids, you’ve got a huge leg up on coming home with interesting shots.

I’m a total fool for people’s vacation pictures; if you’ve got some, send me a link and I’ll be glad to share it here.

Beth’s blog is here, by the way.

East Bay Regional Park District wants your best pictures taken in the district’s parks. If you win, you earn the right to have the district decorate its Web site with the fruits of your labor at no compensation whatsoever. Of course you’ll have lifetime supply of glory and accolades. Contest rules say you have to submit a CD or DVD, and the pix have to be at least 300 dpi at 8.5×11 (which rules out most point-and-shoot digicams).

Too bad Santa Clara County isn’t having one of its own: Dan Mitchell’s shots of Almaden Quicksilver and Calero would have it sewn up.

I did a merely mildly excruciating hike Sunday at Henry Coe State Park — details to come Monday morning, but I wanted to post this picture I took:

It’s the face of Henry Willard Coe from the relief sculpture at the Coe Memorial. I was wandering around the stone memorial looking for interesting angles and this one really stood out. Cool, eh?

Dan Mitchell says his equipment measures up.

Lenses: I try not to succumb to Lens Fever, so I use a small set of good Canon lenses: EF 17-40mm f/4 L, EF 24-105mm f/4 IS L, EF 70-200mm f/4 L, and 50mm f/1.4. While I may take all four on some hikes, more often I take a subset. On pack trips where weight becomes a significant issue I may take only the 17-40mm and the 24-105mm lenses.

Actually, Dan has a nice description of a serious shutterbug’s outdoor photography set-up. I’m too lazy to set up my Gorillapod, but those of you with ambition will have some good points for comparison.

The weekend before last, my pictures from one local redwood forest got rave reviews. This weekend, another redwood forest — arguably much more spectacular — and I get yawns. For good reason, mind you, the pictures from the previous week were much better.

The main culprit (beyond my photographic ineptitude) is the sun: it does crazy things to the visual canvas of the forest and drives a camera’s metering system batty because it can’t figure out how to set shutter, aperture, ISO, etc., so some part of the picture comes out overexposed, another comes out underexposed, and almost none of it feels properly lit. Here’s an example from Saturday’s hike at Big Basin Redwoods State Park:

To the human eye, it’s a lovely setting with still water to produce nice reflections. Direct sun, however, plays havoc with the camera, creating a leopard-spotting effect that makes it almost impossible to glean a good photograph.

Now, for comparison, a shot taken two weekends ago at Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve, on a day when the whole park was clouded in by fog from the coast:

Here you can actually see what the trail and the vegetation look like because clouds deflect direct sunlight and prevent the leopard-spotting effect.

I’d love to know what real photographers do in these settings. Using a flash might help the foreground but you’d still get blown-out areas beyond the flash’s range. I’m sure the better cameras (I still refuse to pay more than $300 for mine) can handle these light variations better.

This’ll be something I’ll be working on this summer in the local parks; I don’t plan to spend my weekends sweating out the miles under direct sun as I’ve done in summers past.

Any tips y’all can pass along are welcome.

Stumbled upon Wild Things Photography, found many pretty pictures. The shooter is John Hyde of Juneau, Alaska.