Stoopid Human Trick

Will Rogers once said "Everything is funny...when it happens to someone else!"  I often profess that while I'm not really a stupid person I frequently portray one in real life.  To illustrate this, just about the time I start to think I'm pretty darn sharp, something happens to keep me humble.  Listen up...

I can safely say that almost every photographer I know is a gearhead, myself included.  As my friend Bret says, we "worship at the altar of Gear."  One of my friends who shall remain nameless takes it to the extreme though.  My wife often tries to get me to quit visiting or shooting with him because there's always some new toy he has to show me that I want to buy.  In the past we've loaned each other lenses and stuff and it seems like every time we're swapping lenses he says "take this...how bout this...why not take this...."  Sometimes I have to tell him to just QUIT!  I got enough of your gear to add 10 pounds to my backpack! 

A few days before my recent trip to Moab, Utah, I was at his house to retrieve my 70-200 f4 lens and he started running through the list.  Seems he was between trips and pretty much everything in his bag was available.  After running through his "catalogue" of lenses, one of the things that I found desirable was a plain jane 50mm lens, the same kind of lens you used to get in the old days when you bought a camera with a "normal" lens.  In this day and age of high quality zoom lenses I haven't owned, much less used a 50mm lens for probably 2 decades but I wanted to do some night sky photography in the desert and the 50mm would be ideal.  Light enough and fast enough for my purposes so I tossed it in my bag. 

Well, the night sky photography didn't come to pass.  It was really windy in the desert all the time I was there which stirred up enough dust to make the air seem hazy.  It was great for sunrise shooting and amazing for sunset shots.  Night sky....not so much.  Besides, even if there were no dust and haze in the air the steady wind would have made a 30 second exposure impossible even with a solid tripod.  I did manage capture a few images with the 50mm one afternoon though and it was kinda fun.  I had to actually act like a photographer and move closer or further from the subject to frame the image properly.  Also, the lens is light, easy to use, and scary sharp!  Check the image with this blog for proof of that.  Ultimately, I kind of like this little lens and here is where the stupid human trick comes in. 

Arriving at the decision to acquire a 50mm of my very own (I still want to do some night sky shooting) I started haunting Craigslist when I got home from Moab.  Sadly, there were no 50mm Canon AF lenses to be had.  Lots of zooms but no 50's.  On to Ebay...tons of 50mm Canon lenses.  I narrowed my search by selecting Canon, Autofocus, Digital, and Prime as lens categories.  Scrolling through the listings I came across a 50mm f1.8 that was ending soon and had a pretty low bid on it so I decided to place my own bid, making it low enough so if someone outbid me it wouldn't be a problem.  To my surprise, the next morning I had an e-mail telling me I won the thing.  I promptly went to Ebay and arranged payment via PayPal and waited for my new toy to arrive. 

It came today and like a kid on Christmas, I had to open it before even taking my jacket off when I walked in the door and that's when my heart sank.  The lens I received is an older Canon FD (manual focus) mount lens.  There isn't enough hot glue and duct tape on the planet to make this thing fit on my autofocus EOS mount cameras!  You can imagine my outrage...someone had listed this lens as AF and sold it to me under false pretenses!  I fired up the computer and brought up the lens listing and sure enough, there in the information section of the listing it said....FD mount!  Duh me....it was right there and I missed it.  I operated on the assumption that since I narrowed my search criteria it had to be an AF lens so I didn't double check the fine print.  I now have a 50mm Canon lens but there is no way it will work on my camera.  It might as well be a paperweight.  Unbelievable...

I often tell my kids something that my Daddy told me a long time ago when I was a little bitty baby boy...he said "Son, if something appears to be too good to be true, it probably is.  I've been shopping 50mm lenses for a while and the going price for an AF 50mm f1.8 seems to be around $100 so what ever made me think I was going to get one in pristine condition for $40?  If it seems too good to be true........ Anyone out there got a manual focus Canon camera and need a 50mm lens? 

Oh Those Goofy Photographers

It's no secret, as much as I despise crowds I also derive great enjoyment from observing the Human Condition.  And whenever you get a group of people together it's almost a certainty that there will be some goofy things going on.  The kind of goofy things that make you go "Hmmmmmmm..."  Sadly, photographers are no exception.

Don't get me wrong, the group of Rocky Mountain Nature Photographers I spent Saturday with is a great group of folks.  I enjoyed myself more than I have on a photo trip in a long time and I didn't observe anything strange though I'm sure there are as many eccentrics  in that group as the general population with me leading the way.  For the time I was around them, all parties were well behaved and rational.

I can't say the same about every photographer I encountered this weekend though, especially some of the ones I saw at Delicate Arch.  There were some really "interesting" folks both on the trail and at the Arch and I spent time alternating between chuckling and just shaking my head. 

As I stated in a previous blog I knew the opportunity to make world class images of Delicate Arch wasn't going to happen on Sunday afternoon.  It was overcast and really windy so the light would be flat and there would be little or no chance to steady a camera in the gale force winds.  With this in mind I left the backpack and big tripod in the car and started up the trail with my G10 in it's belt pouch and carrying my little Induro tripod.  The light was going to be flat and ugly (witness the image above) so there was no logical reason to drag 25 pounds of gear up 1 1/2 miles of slickrock.  Besides, the G10 is a great little camera and capable of producing some fantastic images so I was covered in the event of a miracle. 

Going up the trail I saw all the expected things.  Tourists with movie cameras running ahead of their group then stopping to film them coming up the trail.  There were the usual array of people both young and old photographing the scenery with their smart phones.  And one older gentleman who had an array of gear like I've never seen.  He had a large photo backpack on his back with a camelback water bladder strapped to one side of it.  On the other side he had a HUGE tripod and massive ballhead which together probably weighed close to 12 or 15 pounds.  In front he had a large padded lens case capable of holding a camera with a large telephoto lens and since I saw a trunk case for a 300mm lens in the back of his truck I have to assume he was toting that lens in the big case.  Though I don't know what he had in his backpack, with the water, the big lens, mongo tripod, and everything else I bet he had 35 or 40 pounds of gear strapped on his torso.  To carry that much gear up a moderately difficult trail on a day when it's going to be impossible to make a pro quality image is something that baffles me.  God bless you, brother.  I'm glad it was you toting the stuff and not me. 

The strangest thing about him, though, is that he carried that bigass tripod all the way up the hill and never opened it up.  I was there for an hour or more and I never once saw him shoot something that wasn't handheld, a lot of it with a big heavy lens, probably an 80-200 f2.8.  He may have been shooting wide open to increase his shutter speeds but in the low light conditions with the wind blowing at gale force, there is no possible way his images could have been sharp.  Things that make you go "Hmmmmmmmm..."

During my time at Delicate Arch I saw the usual suspects hiking down to have their picture taken standing under the arch and there was even one guy laying on his back with his camera pointing up at the arch.  The first and only other time I was at Delicate Arch, any time someone walked near the arch they were met with a chorus of "Get out of there...you're spoiling my shot" from the photographers up on the rim.  This time, though, we all just looked at each other and grinned.  What the heck...the folks down there under the Arch paid their $10 bucks just like I did and most of them are tourists from another country.  They most likely will never see this site again so let em get their pictures to show the friends when they get back wherever home is.

But by far the oddest duck of the day was a young man with a shiny new Lowe Pro backpack chock full of camera gear.  There I was, holding onto my tripod mounted G10 to avoid having it blown off the hill (have I mentioned the wind was blowing pretty hard?) when suddenly I hear someone fire off 9 frames with the drive on their camera on full auto Shake and Bake mode.  9 frames in about 2 seconds.  Having done that before I assumed that he had merely forgotten to take his camera off motor drive after shooting some wildlife but NO!  He moved a few steps to the right and did the same thing.  Again, handheld camera and big lens. At this point I draw the conclusion that he's bracketing exposures which is something that I don't usually do but I know a lot of photographers that bracket everything.  But wait...it gets better!  A few minutes later the same young man hops up on a ledge fully exposed to the wind (I hate being redundant but I swear, it was probably blowing 40 mph gusting to 50 or 60mph) and triggers his motor drive again.  This time, though, he turns at the waist, panning about 140 degrees from left to right.  Shooting frames for a panorama? 

Keep in mind, some of the photographers I hang out with are gearheads of the highest order.  My friend Rich paid big bucks for a special head called Nodal Ninja that allows you to precisely calibrate multiple exposures for stitching together as a panorama.  One of the photographers I was with on Saturday had a special device built to allow her to shoot time lapse panoramic images.  Now here this goof is trying to be his own panoramic head when you can see him swaying in the wind.  There is absolutely no way he could have possibly gotten sharp images that way.  Combine the wind with the movement of the camera while he was twisting his body and it's a physical impossibility.  I was tempted to ask him what he was doing but I couldn't figure out a way to ask that wouldn't sound like I was patronizing him or being condescending.  Sure made me go "Hmmmm..." though. 

What's your goofiest photography trick?  You show me yours and I'll show you mine!  Leave a comment and lets have some fun.

A New Beginning (and a new bucket)

It was a dark and stormy.....Nah, that one's been taken.
It was the best of times, it was the worst....Nah, that one's taken too.  Wait...I've got it!  Try this one...

It was windy and overcast when I started up the trail to Delicate Arch.  Yeah!  That's it!  A great new beginning.  And a very incongruous statement for a couple of different reasons.  First, the clouds were building in the west and I knew there was not going to be epic light on the arch.  Normally I would have bagged it and headed back to the hot tub at the hotel. 

Second, I have been to Delicate Arch before.  I knew it was 1 1/2 miles uphill to get there and it was going to be a tough hike for me.   I knew because I'd had tremendous trouble with the Klondike Bluffs trail the day before.  The first pitch of that trail was more difficult than the Delicate Arch trail.  It was very steep and involved a lot of steps up, not just going uphill over slickrock.  By the time I got to the first ridge I was gasping for breath, my knees and thighs were aching, and I was probably 1/4 mile behind Bret and Scott in the first 10 minutes.  I saw the trail start downhill and knew I could probably make it down there but if I did someone would end up carrying my happy butt out of there cause I'd never make it back up.  Too many cheeseburgers, circus animal frosted cookies, and nachos finally caught up with me. 

I stayed on the ridge and found some pretty decent images so all was not lost.  After making my way down the hill in the semi darkness after sunset I was at the trailhead talking to a few others in the group of RMNP folks that had come to Moab for the weekend.  That's when my new friend/photographer buddy Tim uttered the most prophetic statement I've heard in a long time.  We were talking about another get together in Moab next spring and discussing the trouble we'd had keeping up with the others going up the hill and he said "I look at this as a beginning...when we get back here next year I'm going to be in shape to keep up and this is the beginning of that process."  Thank you, Tim, for shining the light into my brain.

I came to Moab this weekend ostensibly to hang out with friends and create some great new images and both of those things happened.  But there was a disturbance in the force...something else occupying my thoughts.  You see, 10 days ago I was diagnosed with prostate cancer.  Don't be alarmed...my Urologist has assured me that this cancer won't kill me.  I may die with prostate cancer but I won't die OF prostate cancer.  Nevertheless, the "C" word is a sobering thing and I came here to spend some time alone after all the other photographers headed home Sunday morning.  I spent the day deep in thought, trying to decide what to do for the rest of the day and, more importantly, the rest of my life.

While heading back to Moab from Onion Creek I started thinking about what Tim had said and as if someone had turned on a light bulb in my brain I had The Epiphany!  Driving down the Colorado River towards Moab I came across some kayakers taking turns surfing a wave in the river and they were having such a grand time I figured that Kayaking should be added to my new bucket list.  It was lunch time so I stopped to watch them while I ate and that's when it hit me...this disease isn't an end to anything...it's a beginning to the rest of my life.  Then the revised bucket list and watershed events in my life started to bombard my senses.  Here's what I came up with.
First, the critical events of this year: 


1.  In November I turn 60.  That's 6/10's of a century!  Damn, no wonder I'm starting to fall apart.  My cardio vascular capacity is pathetic.  My muscle tone is deplorable.  In short, I'm a physical mess.

2.  My eldest child is getting married in September.  It's going to be a glorious event and I'm really looking forward to it. 

3.  I've made it to the 10th year of employment with my current employer and got that extra week of vacation!  Whooooo hoooooo

4.  Yes, I do have prostate cancer and something needs to be done.  I have some decisions to make

So with those things in mind, I'm going to have to come up with a new bucket list.  I'll let you know when it's ready for release but rest assured, #1 and #2 will be to get this cancer cured and get in better shape.  And that's what made me decide to make the trip to Delicate Arch despite knowing how much difficulty I was going to have.  I made it to the top and it was a lung busting bitch.  But I had to do this you see. This is the New Beginning.