Yesterday's Shoot

This was just one of the 111 shots I came home with yesterday. Still have 200 or so to develop from last Sunday's excursion and 200 from Saturday's shoot of the youngest Granddaughters' Sports Day event. To be continued.....

Never Delete In-Camera. NEVER EVER !

This post is a reminder for me and, I hope, a lesson for everyone who shoots with a digital camera. I've read it a thousand times and probably told friends hundreds of times "Never delete photos you've taken in your camera. Always wait until you download, then delete after viewing the shots on your computer monitor".

This past weekend, I attended an exotic Festival that takes place in the northern area of Okinawa. I had been planning the shoot for months in advance, got a magazine interested in the story, made 3 liaison visits to the remote location and even arranged to have a translator accompany me. The Festival and exotic rituals take place only once every two years

Loaded-up with 2 cameras, 5 sets of fully-charged batteries and 5 SD cards, tripod, cable release, toothbrush and paste, moist towels, camera cleaning gear, a back pack and hiking boots; what could possibly go wrong?

Let me tell you what went wrong. I decided to DELETE ONE BLURRED SHOT IN-CAMERA.

A couple of enthusiastic party-goers came stumbling towards my tripod in the dark and I moved twice to prevent them stumbling over it. This took place as I was hitting DELETE and paying more attention to them, than I was to what I was doing. Over 100 shots of an important event for my assignment are gone forever!

What's the photo here got to do with all this? That's my Grandkids sketching the events I lost. They're making the sketches from shots I took of someone else's photos while I'm looking for a magazine that likes sketches, as well as, photos in their articles.

NEVER DELETE IN-CAMERA !

I Know Better

Sometimes a wildlife photographer shouldn't be allowed to go to the big city. This past weekend I shot everything but wlidlife, but sometimes other missions take priority; like trying to earn a living.

Saturday was a Mud Festival shoot and Sunday was Dragonboat Races, all part of the weeklong holiday called Dragon Week in Japan.

For the past week, I've been trying to figure out some Word 2007 program to make my life easier and Billybob Gates and the Microsoft heathens have been installing all kinds of Explorer stuff to make my PC run faster and the print on the screen smaller to make me stay up later at night squinting at the screen.

So, staying up late and waking up early to go shoot festivals got the better of me and my cameras. I should have known better, no, I DO KNOW BETTER; I just got stupid.

Wildlife photographers always keep their lenses clean and make sure there's no dust on their sensor. As a force of habit, I always clean my sensor ecerytime I change lenses-ALWAYS!!!

Well, I went to switch lenses the day of the mud fest and it was around 4AM. I took out my cleaning kit and removed my big zoom to replace it with a smaller zoom. Covered the lens I removed and grabbed my mini-turkey baster to blast air on my sensor. Turned the power switch on my camera to raise the mirror and the dang thing tells me there's no battery in it !

My batteries were charging for the busy weekend. So, I figure it won't hurt to skip cleaning the sensor (just this one time) and slapped the lens in.

Two great days of bright, sunny weather. I had plenty of spare batteries and Gigabytes of extra SD cards. Lots of action and hundreds of great shots. I kept the same lens in the camera all weekend and just made sure the outside of the lens stayed clean. Still have lots of photos to process on a rainy day, but, it didn't take long to discover: I HAD DUST ON MY SENSOR ALL WEEKEND !

The photo above was easy to fix. I cropped it so the dust didn't show. Some of the other photos won't be so easy to fix. Dust can be removed by cloning it out. That means buying another progam and spending more time squinting at a computer monitor !

I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER !!!!!!!!!

Katsuren Castle

The weekend went by fast ! Cloudy and cold, but not too much rain. So, I got out and did some Castle shooting. The idea is to try and catch each major Castle in the right light and at the right time of day so I have Postcard perfect pictures of every one of them. It didn't turn out that way, but I got alot of practice in and even managed to catch a few wildlife shots while I was at it.

Tourists sometimes get in the way when you're trying to get the perfect shot and it used to drive me insane. Now, sometimes I let them in the picture, but I wouldn't want it hanging on my wall and nobody would probably want to buy it except maybe the tourists in the picture. Hey, that might work if I could squeeze a small printer in my camera bag !

The lenses I usually use aren't really the best for trying to shoot a humongus Castle and the grounds around it. One of these days I'll have to break down and invest in a really expensive wide-angle lens and leave the bazookas I usually lug around for shooting wildlife at home.

But, then what happens when you're out somewhere on a nice sunny day shooting Castles and along comes a bunch of wildlife ? Just hafta get a bigger camera bag, more cameras and lots of lenses. Or quit trying to shoot the dumb Castles. Just buy Postcards and Calendars like everybody else does ! And shoot the WILDLIFE !!!

Bullfight

After the Crab and Bird got flushed down wherever things go after you empty the Recycle Bin, I decided to go have a beer last night. It all started off innocently enough, until I ran into another cameraman; then it turned into a few more beers and some Karaoke. Soon it was 1:30AM and I wandered on home, knowing my plans to catch some sunrise shots were probably doomed. But, the good news was, I had written a note to myself and stuck it in my cigarette pack; something about a total eclipse of the sun 22 July, this year. A potential MILLION DOLLAR PHOTO ! And I was invited to go shoot it up in Kyushu, Japan.



Lots of things are done differently here: People drive on the left side of the road, Take a shower before they get in the bathtub, Get their butts washed while they're sitting on the throne, and conduct important business in bars after working hours ! And the Bulls fight each other instead of some guy with a cape and a dagger. But, that's not what this POST is really about.



Some nice lady in Colorado emailed me this morning asking me to sign and return Copyright papers for publishing this and another photo along with a story about Okinawan Bullfighting (of course not this exact photo, but one like it). As soon as I see it, I'll believe it and tell you where to find it and I hope NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC finds it, too and asks me to go to Kyushu and shoot the total eclipse of the sun ! I'm done feeling crabby, now; think I'll go home, take a shower, take a bath and crash early to see if I can catch the sun come up tomorrow.