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Alaska - Just Go! (part 1)

January 15th, 2012

Mt. McKinley from Talkeetna Overlook, Talkeetna Spur

Most of the continental U.S. has been manicured, bulldozed, replanted, or developed. The lower 48 states look nothing like what their first explorers saw.

Alaska is different. Its remoteness, cold climate and huge size keep it undeveloped. Even around the Alaska Pipeline, it’s remained mostly unchanged.

Fly-In and Drive - Anchorage

Alaska’s huge size invites a kitchen sink approach to travel. But we had just 15 days, so we chose bite-sized pieces around Anchorage, central Alaska, and the Kenai Peninsula.

We flew into Anchorage to spend a couple days before heading north to Talkeetna and Denali. It was mid-August, so the sun was setting after 10 PM. That gave us time to take a taxi to Enterprise Rent-a-car in Anchorage to avoid paying on-airport rental rates and fees, and discover the GPS we brought didn’t have maps for Alaska. Since we were driving around Anchorage and the Mat-Su Valley a fair amount, we bought another one at the local Radio Shack.

Bartender at the Bear Tooth Theaterpub and Grill, Anchorage

We didn’t want to wait 40 minutes for a table at the Moose’s Tooth Pub and Pizzeria, so we found the Bear Tooth Theaterpub and Grill instead. Cindy’s Rita was a very tasty drink, and the salmon tamales showed off creativity and fun in a traditional Mexican dish made with fresh local fish. I couldn’t pass up the Chocolate Ancho-Chile Brownie for dessert, either.

Chugach State Park

We spent the next day in Chugach State Park, on trails from the Eagle River Nature Center. Many Anchorage residents hike there with their dogs, since it’s only about half an hour away.

Due to Alaska’s short growing season, plants explode across the state in a vibrant green orgy of growth and pollination every summer. We walked through beautiful aspen forests, including some trunks with bear scratches, and wildflowers complete with pollinating insects. We also watched salmon heading upriver to spawn and die, turning more red as they went. Eagle River is also a popular area for moose, but watch from a distance.

Clear To McKinley & Funky Talkeetna

When you get a clear shot at “The Mountain”, take it. We’d had clouds and rain in Anchorage and Eagle River, but the cloudcover disappeared for our drive to Talkeetna. I’d taken some insurance shots at views farther away along the George Parks Highway, but the pictures from Talkeetna Overlook were the best.

Mount McKinley Summit from Talkeetna Overlook

Independent-thinking Alaskans move to Talkeetna to escape city restrictions, politics and taxes. It’s also the base for summit expeditions to McKinley during the early summer climbing season. For us, it was a chance to relax in an Alaskan small town, and try to see something on a flightseeing trip to Denali.

I have a problem with motion sickness. Riding in a small DeHavilland Beaver and banking to see scenery while trying to photograph said scenery at the same time probably wasn’t the greatest idea. But I wanted to capture my own ‘glacial river’ shot in the Alaska Range’s glacier maze, so there I was.

We had hoped for a glacier landing and views of McKinley, but the cloud deck hung below 12,000 feet. That eliminated both possibilities. Even that low, views were spectacular.

Southern foothills of the Alaska Range

I turned very pale by the end of the flight, and was lucky to have the provided air sickness bag. But photographing from that eye-in-the-sky vantage point was worth it.

Shot Notes

I left the Leica at home this time, opting instead for Canon EOS 5D mark II and EOS 7D. They both use the same small battery, so I could take one charger for batteries in both cameras. I also left my tank-like EOS 1D mark II at home. Its batteries and charger are very large (and heavy), and it has less resolution and lower picture quality than the newer cameras.

I used a Gitzo 1625 mk II tripod with Wimberley Sidekick gimbal head. This is a wildlife rig, but it works fine for nature / landscapes if you’re used to it.

Two of my Leica lenses sport maximum apertures at f/2 or below, very useful for isolating a subject with shallow depth of field. But f/2.8 and close subject distances can also give you that effect with 28-50mm lenses. I didn’t get the creamy out-of-focus background color I like with most wildlife pictures, but it was enough to lead a viewer’s eye to the sharply-focused subject.

Who says 500mm isn’t a landscape lens? I mounted mine for a summit view of Mt. McKinley at the Talkeetna Overlook. It’s a good thing too, since I had just one other opportunity to photograph The Mountain relatively close-in on a semi-clear afternoon.

Tags: Alaska, Alaskan Husky, Denali, Exit Glacier, grizzly, Kachemak Bay, Kenai Peninsula, McKinley, musk ox, travel photography, wildflowers, Wildlife
Posted in Alaska, Landscape photography, Travel, Wildlife, wildflowers | No Comments »

Cat Poop, Tidy Tips and Kit Foxes on Carrizo Plain

April 7th, 2011

Photographers shoot wildflowers for different reasons.

Some love the bright color splashes. Others enjoy crazy-colored carpeting extending into the distance. And some wait for an insect or bird to fly in for a drink of nectar.

Incredible Spring Flowers but No Services
About 90 minutes southeast of Atascadero, Carrizo Plain National Monument has one of the best spring wildflower displays in California. But you shouldn’t expect 5-star hotels and restaurants, or even potable water. What’s there is very alkaline and undrinkable. And for all you texting fanatics, sorry - cellphone coverage is spotty to nonexistent.

Know Your Motel’s Exact Location - The Internet May Lie
Carrizo Plain doesn’t appear on some maps, and when it does, it sometimes looks like there are inhabited towns nearby. When I searched for lodging online for the first night, I found a motel listing for Santa Margarita, which appeared to be close to the northwest entrance to Carrizo. So we booked for Friday night, when we would be arriving late from the San Francisco Bay Area. When we got to Santa Margarita and the last gas before Carrizo, we discovered we had another 45 minutes of driving down a twisty, dark road before we got to the motel’s actual location.

For the first couple nights, we enjoyed(?) that motel room in unincorporated California Valley, with embalmed cat poop in one corner, a stuffed 1/2 size horse, and a bar with carved camel heads at each end (but the room was otherwise clean and fairly comfortable). We had a much better time in a tent at Carrizo’s KCL campground with its nightly owl serenade, migrating cows, and nearby kit fox family.

Enjoy the Main Event
But Nature provided the real entertainment in the flicks of color from God’s own paintbrush in a daisy field extending to the horizon.

And insects enjoyed the display, like the little guy on this hillside daisy.

There were all the bright colors and sky reflections you could wish for.

Locals said 2010 was a much better year for wildflowers, but these looked pretty good to me.

Locals May Direct You to Endangered Wildlife
The unforeseen bonus was the San Joaquin kit fox family near KCL. Other campers alerted me to their presence, and I slowly approached with 700mm on a tripod. I could see the agitation in the supervising adult fox at one point, so I stopped. I was close enough to see that kangaroo rats were what’s for dinner.

On the way out, we stopped for a purple display of what looked like Perry’s mallow. Once upon a time, marshmallows were made from mallow plants and honey. Nowadays, they’re all corn syrup and food starch.

But the flowers are still pretty.

Shot Notes

This was supposed to be a wildflower shooting trip, but I brought the 500mm f/4 lens, 1.4X and 2X teleconverters, and big Gitzo 1325 Mk II tripod with Wimberley Sidekick just in case. A tripod was useful for shooting wildflowers in otherwise uncomfortable positions, and would have come along anyway. An EOS 5D mark II dSLR provided very vibrant colors and plenty of resolution.

Lens Tilts for Depth of Field Without Stopping Down
I also ended up wishing for my 24mm TS-E lens to get a deep plane of focus without stopping down. Lens tilts allow you to place the plane of sharp focus in a line from near the base of the camera to infinity. The price is that depth of field is quite narrow in the foreground near the camera, and needs to be checked to see that distant subjects still fall within it. The effect is used with the Lensbaby to get a focus ’sweet spot’ with adjacent areas out of focus. You can find a more complete description of tilt effects here.

My most-used focal lengths were 24mm, 48mm and 70mm on a 24-70mm f/2.8L zoom lens. As it was, I stopped down to f/16 and f/22 for some shots, compromising ultimate sharpness to get some sharpness through depth of field. When you stop down below f/11 with most large-sensor digital cameras, you begin to lose sharpness because of diffraction from the small lens opening.

Hold that Sky
I could also have used a half neutral density filter to hold back the sky for even exposure in many shots. These little gems cut the exposure by 2 or 3 stops over part of their surface, and allow full exposure through the rest. You can slide the filter up and down to place the exposure cut line where you want.

Instead, I used Adobe Lightroom’s 1/2 ND feature in the program’s Develop module. If your image has sufficient dynamic range and you haven’t blown out the highlights, you can darken an upper or lower part of your image in a similar way. You can also use this to selectively enhance contrast or sharpness, something you can’t do with the real filter.

I also used Lightroom’s ability to selectively darken certain colors to darken the blue sky and enhance cloud textures. The combination of these adjustments is like a polarizing filter with the 1/2 ND, but with much more control of what the final image looks like.

The program also allows you to adjust levels of shadow, darkness, light and highlight areas, so you have pretty good control of overall contrast.

Wildlife Approach - Back Off When They’re Bugged
For the kit foxes, I started my approach about 100 yards out. I had the 500mm f/4 and 1.4X teleconverter on an EOS 1D mark II dSLR, with its 1.3X crop factor. As I got closer, I carried the tripod with camera and lens in front of me to avoid the drop-from-the-shoulder move that wildlife always associate with hunters. I captured insurance shots from relatively far away, then moved closer, always at an angle to the foxes. I eventually switched to the 2X teleconverter to get usable shots, since the adult fox made it clear I made him nervous as I got close, and I stopped.

The next morning, I photographed a Say’s phoebe and other birds around the campground. Early morning light was so good that this was mostly a matter of waiting for subjects to look towards the light to give a good catchlight in their eye. I was blessed with some cloud texture to avoid a featureless gray sky, and part of an old barn as a perch for the phoebe and for an incredibly red house finch to give a sense of place.

Tags: bird photography, Carrizo Plain, kit fox, wildflowers, Wildlife
Posted in Landscape photography, Travel, Wildlife, wildflowers | No Comments »

Dog-Walking in a National Parkland?

March 11th, 2011

Golden Gate National Recreation Area is well-known for the beautiful landscapes it protects. Whether you’re walking along Ocean Beach or enjoying the peacefulness of Muir Woods, it’s gorgeous.

President Nixon signed GGNRA into being in 1972, collecting several parks in San Francisco and Marin counties into one entity. Additional properties there and in San Mateo County were added over the years.

Before creation of GGNRA, dog-walking on and off-leash was allowed on some of those properties. After 1972, dog walking continued largely uninterrupted, even though it was against National Park Service regulations in National Park properties. NPS recognized the issues but chose to allow the prior practices to continue.

GGNRA 1979 Pet Policy and 2011 Draft Dog Management Plan
In response to requests from dog walkers in 1978, the GGNRA Advisory Commission developed a pet policy for the park. It was adopted by NPS in 1979. The 1979 Pet Policy allowed a balance of on-leash and voice-control dog walking on specific GGNRA properties contained in the park at that time.

With additional population pressure in the San Francisco Bay Area over the last 20 years, there have been additional conflicts and lawsuits over off-leash dog use of GGNRA. This prompted the draft dog management plan of 2011, a two volume, 2,000+ page document that attempts to bring order and enforceability to dog-walking regulations at GGNRA. NPS has begun the public review and comment process for the plan with public meetings in Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties.

The San Francisco SPCA and other dog advocates charge that the draft dog management plan is overly-restrictive, a major departure from current use. Their complaint is that the plan would reduce off-leash dog walking below the less than 1% of park land on which it is currently allowed. They also complain that any type of dog walking would be prohibited on newly-acquired land in GGNRA unless the park service makes an exception, which they think unlikely. They see the 1979 Pet Policy as perfectly adequate, even though it has been difficult for NPS to enforce in recent years.

Explanations and Comments at a Public Meeting
I attended the public meeting at San Francisco State on March 5 to get direct experience with the conflict. I heard some grumbles that the NPS wasn’t allowing opposing groups the use of a microphone to address a public forum. And I found 12 helpful NPS staff members and rangers from GGNRA explaining the plan and the reasons behind the adoption of alternatives to attendees. Attendees wrote comments on large flip-charts or on forms provided. NPS announced an extension of the comment period from April 14 to May 29 the day before this meeting, giving the public a longer opportunity to have their say.

NPS appears to be fully considering public comments in the process of creating the management plan. They also have additional requirements imposed by the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and National Park Service Organic Act of 1916. GGNRA is home to 30 endangered species. Some, like the Western Snowy Plover, are disturbed by the simple presence of dogs, while others flee the barking or predatory scent. Pathogens in dog feces can infect wild mammals like foxes, coyotes, raccoons and skunks.

On the other side, I heard from groups who rightly point to the lack of off-leash areas for dogs in the Bay Area. GGNRA has some of the only unfenced spots where you can walk your dog off-leash. If you live in the South Bay like I do, you’re pretty much out of luck - there are no large, unfenced off-leash areas in Santa Clara County. You’ll end up in relatively small, fenced-in areas of county or city parks or municipal dog parks if you want to run your dog off-leash.

People, Dogs, and Wildlife on the Beach
After the meeting, my wife and I went to GGNRA’s Ocean Beach with our dog. We saw several other dogs on- and off-leash, all of them well-behaved. Of course, most marine species aren’t nesting for another three weeks at least, so impact was minimal.

Ocean Beach and the other parts of GGNRA are gorgeous. Should they be available to people and their dogs? Yes, with enforceable regulations appropriate to wildlife and human health protection. Will there be more arguments over what regulations are appropriate? Of course. People want to walk their dogs in a natural environment, especially near an urban area, and they always think restrictions are for someone else.

SHOT NOTES -
I used a Leica M8, mostly with Leica 35mm f/2 Summicron ASPH and Zeiss 25mm f/2.8 Biogon T* lenses. Maintaining sky detail while rendering texture in beach sand were my major exposure challenges, even on an overcast day. I underexposed shots with a lot of sky by 1/2 stop, and exposed for the sand in others with less sky. I shot mostly at ISO 320 to keep digital noise down, since I knew I’d be manipulating skies later in Lightroom.

The other challenge is always finding interesting features in a long, horizontal landscape like a beach. Fortunately, there were large groups of foraging willets doing their sewing-machine probing into the sand, along with people enjoying the beach with and without dogs.

I also liked black-and-white interpretations best for some images. If there’s not much color to begin with and lots of interesting textures, B&W works very well.

Posted in beach, dog walking | 2 Comments »

California’s Forgotten National Park

July 29th, 2010

Quick, name California’s most-visited national parks.

Let’s see, there’s Yosemite. Sequoia. Kings Canyon. Wait, aren’t those two the same park? No?

Death Valley. And Joshua Tree, isn’t that a new one?

Hey, there’s also Channel Islands. Redwood, isn’t that along the coast?

And Lassen. Say, where’s that?

Heart Lake, Lassen National Forest

Lassen Volcanic National Park is about five hours mostly north of San Francisco if you drive at the limit. For most Californians, it’s in that part of the state that’s ‘up there somewhere’.

According to the National Park Service, 365,639 people visited Lassen Volcanic in 2009. Yosemite got 3,737,472 visitors, over ten times as many.

Yes, Yosemite has arguably the best glacially-carved scenery anywhere, some of the best backcountry hiking, and great winter recreation on cross-country skis or snowshoes. Everybody knows about it.

And that’s the problem.

Lassen Volcanic National Park was created in 1916 following the eruption of Lassen Peak. The peak had been part of Lassen Peak National Monument, but the 1915 eruption focused the country’s attention on this volcanically-active area in the southern Cascade Mountains.

Today, most of the park is designated wilderness. That means no developed facilities, few trails, and signs and bridges only where necessary. It also means solitude for backpackers on the Pacific Crest Trail and other park trails.

Warner Valley is a hidden gem within Lassen. By driving a few miles of dirt road north of Chester, California, you get sparkling green meadows, lushly-carpeted mountains, hot springs, steaming rocks, boiling lakes, and enough sulphurous odor to make Dante happy just a short hike away. The National Park Service campground offers Douglas fir views through the top of your tent and sounds of a gently-flowing creek to lull you to sleep. There are also bear boxes for your food and toothpaste, very clean pit toilets, and friendly backcountry rangers like Chris Cruz who can suggest hikes to enjoyable destinations. You may also see Western Tanagers and other colorful wildlife.

Drakesbad Meadow in Warner Valley

I like quiet mountain scenery away from crowds and looking at thermal features, so my wife Pat and I hiked to Boiling Springs Lake and Devils Kitchen. We also walked up Flatiron Ridge on Warner’s north side for views of peaks and lakes in Lassen’s southern backcountry.

Devil’s Kitchen, Lassen Volcanic National Park

We wanted to walk to Bumpass Hell, the park’s signature geothermal area. But a trail blocked by shoulder-deep snow stopped us. We’d heard that the Lassen Peak Trail was closed for ongoing reconstruction. But we lucked out - the Lassen Park Foundation offered a Reach the Peak fundraiser at the trailhead parking lot the Saturday we wanted to hike, so the trail was open to the top.

Hiking above 10,000 feet is never easy even if you’re in shape. The panoramic mountain views and closeups of a recently-active volcano were worth the sweat and pleasantly-sore muscles. Hikers at the summit included a 76-year-old grandmother who showed all of us how it was done.

Southwest view from the Lassen Peak Trail

For our last day, we retrieved our dog from Almanor Animal Boarding and hiked the Heart Lake National Recreation Trail in Lassen National Forest, where dogs are allowed. Be prepared to get your feet wet in Digger Creek just before you burst out to views of Brokeoff Mountain reflected in this pretty lake.

Brokeoff Mountain and Heart Lake, Lassen National Forest

The only problem with hiking Lassen’s mountains is that they, like the Sierras, will probably spoil you. Local hikes start to look awfully tame by comparison.

Shot Notes -
The best camera is always the one you have with you. Since we carried enough water to avoid purifying any from creeks, and I wore a 24-hour pack of emergency supplies, I wanted to minimize the weight of camera gear. I used a lightweight Leica M8 and four lenses, shooting mostly with a Zeiss 25mm f/2.8 and Leica 35mm f/2 Summicron-ASPH. Exposure was usually what the camera recommended. Compelling pictures of scenery require either a visually-stunning subject or a human presence. You want viewers to imagine themselves in the picture.

Tags: camping, geothermal features, Hiking, Lassen Volcanic National Park
Posted in Equipment, Events, Travel | 2 Comments »

Climbing’s Minor Leagues

June 6th, 2010

Talk to most rock jocks on big walls at Yosemite, and they’ll tell you they honed their climbing chops at Castle Rock State Park. Castle Rock has great views of Monterey Bay and the Santa Cruz Mountains, and it also has some of the best short climbs anywhere.

Four of us took up ropes course instructor David Aguirre on his offer to climb there. When an experienced climber provides the rope, anchor webbing, carabiners, figure eights, ATCs and knowledge, it’s a no-brainer - I’m going.

Goat Rock and much of the park’s exposed stone is Tafone Sandstone, so most climbing routes are full of bucket holds. Castle Rock Falls presents short walls with tighter edges and smear holds, so it’s probably better training if you’re climbing in Yosemite Valley.

I’m not, and was content with Goat Rock’s easier climbs. The ascents and rappels challenged me a lot. It’s tough to see holds when you’re tight against the rock, and relatively inexperienced. The views from the top were stunning, but I’m not ready to pull a Galen Rowell and photograph while dangling from the rope. Hmm, maybe next time.

Climbing provided a great excuse to have fun outside on a gorgeous day.

Shot Notes -
I used a Leica M8 with 35mm and 50mm lenses from ground level, pre-visualizing shots of climbers against a cloud-dappled sky. That’s a difficult exposure situation - you’re going to get either great sky detail and silhouettes everywhere else, or good foreground detail and blown skies.

I exposed for the sky and added or subtracted 1/2 to a full stop for most pictures, using the camera in manual exposure mode for everything. The flash I didn’t have would have filled faces close up, but it also would have given a different look. Had I been shooting editorial, I would have used flash on some pictures to give an editor more choices. My main goal was to tell the story of the day without breaking my neck.

Tags: Castle Rock, climbing, Yosemite
Posted in Sports | No Comments »

Hanging Around - Rope Rescue & Climbing

May 31st, 2010

It’s three stories straight down.

Yes, you’re tied in to the belayer’s rope, and you’re attached to a separate rappel rope with a brake rack or Figure Eight. Yes, you have great control with the brake rack’s friction on the rope.

But instinct screams at you to back off from the edge. That first time over the railing is the hardest.

Climbers, those folks who go up the faces of Yosemite’s El Capitan or Half Dome using their legs and hands, are usually a very safe group. Lead climbers will be roped and belayed from below by a follower. Every 5-10 feet or so, climbers hammer a new bolt into the rock and clip the rope to it, shortening the distance if they fall. Climbing ropes are dynamic - they stretch anywhere from 10-30% when they’re stressed by a falling climber, decreasing the shock. And belayers use simple lock-off devices to stop the rope in a leader’s fall.

Most of us shy away from the human fly routine. But what no one tells you is how much fun it is to defy gravity.

I’d done a little climbing at an indoor climbing gym, but that’s not the same as outdoor climbing. As part of an intermediate backcountry skills course offered by West Valley College, I was lowered near the base of the sandstone cliff face by the Falls at Castle Rock State Park. I didn’t know I was climbing a route rated 5.8, when the toughest one I’d done indoors was 5.7.

The hardest part was the scramble up the seemingly featureless rock face at the bottom, followed by sweat dripping down into my eyes. With some rope tension from above and using very small footholds, I pushed myself high enough to step into the next set of small edges.

Successful climbing requires you to see and plan your next set of foot-and hand-holds as you use your legs to push yourself up. You quickly discover your arms’ lack of strength to haul you up the rock. Handholds are best used for balance.

I conquered my fear of heights with no apparent means of support during the next three days, at the California Department of Forestry’s training center near Ben Lomond. After you go over the railing for the first rappel and head on down, tying off the rope to stop yourself about halfway to the ground, the next time is easy and starts to be fun.

Ascending the rope from the ground using Prusik-knotted slings for each leg and your harness is a little harder. The trick is finding your rhythm - sit back in your harness, push up both leg slings, then step up and push up your harness sling, lean back and repeat. There’s a rush of accomplishment when you reach the top, thread your brake rack through the rope, and rappel back down.

Put this together with patient packaging and transport on titanium litters, and you have useful emergency skills. My class practiced lowering and raising patients on tree-studded hills, with a haul team pulling and litter team keeping the patient level. The litter wheel clamped underneath is the only way to make a five- or ten-mile transport down a trail without sore muscles.

When students asked instructor and rescue expert Kim Aufhauser about high-angle rescue and litter transport on rock faces, his answer was, “We cover that in 12C,” the next backcountry skills course in West Valley’s Park Management program.

So I’ll have to take that class for more hands-on experience.
Mark Bohrer with brake/rappel rack

Shot Notes -
For shooting confined to one area outdoors, you can meter and expose manually, since the light won’t change that fast. If you have a small point-and-shoot digital or film camera, use it. When you’re in a remote location and you can get almost as close as you want, lightweight, small equipment works best.

I used the smallest, lightest equipment I have - a Leica M8 with 35mm, 50mm and 90mm lenses.

I was shooting in the shadow of a building, or under heavy overcast, so extreme contrast wasn’t a big problem. There were only a few times when I had to choose correct exposure of a face and blow out some of the background. This is almost always the right choice - your viewers want to see your subject’s eyes and expression.

Tags: ascending, Park management, Rappelling, rock climbing, rope rescue, West Valley College
Posted in Outdoor Careers, Sports | 14 Comments »

Are You Ready For The Next Disaster?

April 27th, 2010

You’re sitting at your lab bench with a hot soldering iron in your hand. It’s almost quitting time, but you’re making some last minute changes to a test board you want to try out before you go.

Suddenly, everything starts to shake. You get up to walk to a doorway, and it feels like you’re surfing a rogue wave. You stumble across the moving floor, past shelves piled with oscilloscopes and other test equipment. Reaching the lab’s doorway, you see co-workers holding scared East Coast visitors in another doorway across the hall.

Finally, after what seems like an eternity, the shaking stops.

Will you be ready to help pick up the pieces?

That was the scenario at the disaster preparedness exercise held by West Valley College and the city of Saratoga last Saturday, April 24, 2010. Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) volunteers, Amateur Radio Emergency Service operators, Santa Clara County firemen, Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department officers, and officials from West Valley College and California state and local governments participated in this practice for a real disaster.

CERT volunteers conducted neighborhood damage assessment and reported to amateur radio operators at Saratoga’s emergency operations center. Then CERTs triaged patients, and transported those needing immediate care to the Red Cross shelter at Saratoga High School for treatment. Volunteers would be on their own in an actual event, with medical and ambulance services overwhelmed and unavailable.

At West Valley College, CERT volunteers did indoor search and rescue of patients in a close simulation of an earthquake-damaged classroom. They also received instruction from Santa Clara County fire department paramedic Rob Hecocks in fire extinguisher use, and got to practice putting out small fires.

In another drill, CERT volunteers practiced cribbing, a way to raise debris and free trapped victims. Using a lever to lift and place supporting 4×4s and 2×4s, a weighted wooden platform was lifted just high enough to allow a dummy victim to be pulled to safety.

A CHP helicopter crew answered questions and demonstrated patient loading for transport after landing their aircraft on campus. Helicopters may be the only way to transport supplies and patients requiring advanced medical care in an emergency, as the recent earthquake in Haiti demonstrated.

Many professionals and volunteers participated in the exercise. It was planned by West Valley College professor and former Federal park ranger Kim Aufhauser and Santa Clara County Emergency coordinator Jim Yoke, with input from Amateur Radio Emergency Service coordinator Don Steinbach, the Santa Clara Valley Red Cross, and West Valley College President Lori Gaskin. Paramedic Rob Hecocks and other members of the Santa Clara County Fire Department provided training and support. California’s DRCCC director of emergency preparedness Peter Wright and Saratoga City Council member Chuck Page represented state and local government.

With practice from exercises like this one, government and volunteer organizations will be better prepared for surprises during an actual disaster.

In earthquake country, it’s just a matter of time until the next big one hits.

Story Notes -
The story at the start of this post came from my experience during California’s Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, when I was a design engineering supervisor at a Silicon Valley semiconductor company. Preparedness exercises will help prevent headless-chicken responses in an actual emergency.

Shot Notes -
When I’m shooting spot news in anything from darkened rooms to bright sun, I use flash. I’ll need the extra light indoors in the dark, but flash fill will brighten dark shadows on faces when there’s some ambient light. I set flash and camera for autofocus assist to get sharpness in the dark.

I always carry spare cameras. On this shoot, I accidentally dropped one camera on pavement - even though it was in a case, the metal body cracked. My backup Leica M8 gave me second-camera flexibility as I covered the exercise.

I’m not talented enough to be in two places at once, so I had my wife Pat photograph in the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) while I was shooting CERT neighborhood damage assessment. She also captured wider, establishing shots of scenes, letting me concentrate on close views of specific action. Between the two of us, we told a more complete story of the exercise.

Tags: CERT, disaster preparedness, emergency response, EMS, ICS
Posted in Events | No Comments »

Sports Photography - the Sea Otter Classic

April 21st, 2010

The pro mountain bike race season is officially open.

Monterey, California’s Sea Otter Classic is the first event of the pro racer’s calendar. You see competitors from Europe and Australia join the usual American cast for four days of racing in April. The event happens in rain, mud, high winds, blowing dust, sunshine, or wildflowers.

Some of the best years are the ones with crowds cheering mud-covered competitors as they pick themselves up from crashes and wearily crank to the finish line.

However, this year was unusually sunny and mild - shorts and halter tops were the uniform of the day, unless you were racing.

I’ve been covering the Sea Otter since 1995, when there were no crowds for what was a California event. In 2009, 47,000 spectators watched 8500 amateur and professional competitors.

To get close to the action, you need a media credential. This is especially important in dual slalom, where the action takes place away from spectators on a closed course.

Dual slalom is also my favorite event, and the Sea Otter’s course always has interesting turns for great shots of racers. The big news here was that the top-seeded male, 38-year-old Brian Lopes, crashed out early without even placing. 39-year-old veteran Leigh Donovan, who came out of retirement to race, took fifth place, a far cry from her 9 National Championships in the 1990s and early 2000s.

There was other action in short-track cross country and downhill. Short track was invented in 1998 as a spectator-friendly race. It’s an all-out suffer-fest for racers - the leader wins after as many laps as possible in 20 minutes. Last year’s winners were Emily Batty and Todd Wells, a well-known name in cyclocross. Wells won again this year.

The women’s STXC race went to Georgia Gould, 2006 and 2007 U.S. national champion, another cyclocrosser. Batty had to content herself with fifth, but she’s only 21 so she’ll be back. She signed autographs on young spectators’ jerseys after the race. Not only was it good public relations, it looked like she was truly enjoying herself.

The downhillers were also out in force. Originally thought to be too flat, the Sea Otter added downhill in the early 2000s. Crowds love the jumps and crashes in this race against the clock.

Downhill racers can’t just coast. They have to crank hard to win. You’re also faster if you stay on the ground - air time slows you down, though it can make you a crowd favorite like Jared Rando below.

The Sea Otter is a great excuse to be a part of something fun outdoors. If you couldn’t get there, it inspires you to go outside and ride!

See the other race images here.

Shot Notes -
For years, motor sports photographers used the 200mm as their standard lens. Today, I do 70% of my bike race photography with a 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom. I shoot the rest with a 24-70mm f/2.8. Wide lens openings are good, but you get more keepers using f/5.6 or so. You’ll still get some isolation from shallow depth of field at 100-200mm.

The other key is flash fill of racers’ goggled faces. Otherwise, you end up with them peering out of narrow black caves under their helmet visors.

AA-battery power is fine for one-shot flash fill. An external Turbo Quantum Battery gives you quick flash recycling for fast picture sequences. But it can also radically shorten flash tube life and cost a lot more.

Tags: downhill bike race, dual slalom, mountain bike races, Sea Otter Classic, short-track cross country, STXC
Posted in Sports | No Comments »

Is There Life Outside The Cubicle?

February 24th, 2010

If you could work outside the cubicle, what would you really like to do?

I’ve asked myself that question repeatedly. As a fresh engineering graduate in the late 1970s, my answer was playing music onstage. I wrote and performed alongside engineering jobs until the mid-1980s, when music got to be too much of a hassle. I still miss it sometimes, like an old lover.

Then I started looking for that ideal job. You know, the one where your staff always goes beyond what you ask for, and management approves your most interesting product ideas. I looked in Silicon Valley, and in Colorado near the Front Range. It took me way too long to figure out there’d always be non-ideal stuff to put up with.

After my last design job ended in 2003, I started photographing wildlife. I went to places like Antelope Island State Park, Hardware Ranch Wildlife Management Area, and Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge looking for animal behavior to capture on pixels. After some print sales, a bunch of article rejections, and a few published pieces, including one in a national magazine, I decided to pursue plan B.

I started writing articles, white papers and other content for technical clients. Engineers, management and executives are too busy to write most of the stuff with their bylines. They hire people like me with technical backgrounds to do it for them. In between writing stories there was a stint as a software applications engineer. It reminded me of how much I hate corporate ego games, no matter how good the pay is.

The writing business began to dry up last year.

So I stopped and asked myself what I really wanted, after doing what other people wanted or expected of me for so many years.

That made me seriously consider escaping the office.

My wife pointed out that I sometimes know as much about National Parks and Monuments we’re visiting as the rangers do, and I love these places. After not taking her seriously for awhile, she convinced me to enter a well-regarded program in Park Management at Saratoga, California’s West Valley College.

Consider all the skills you need as a park ranger or wilderness tour leader. Navigating the territory is a small part. If somebody gets hurt out there, the ambulance may not arrive for days, if ever. You need solid wilderness first aid skills for anything from diabetic emergencies to full-thickness burns, frostbite, and arterial bleeding. You and your party may have to survive a midwinter night out if you get too far from camp close to sunset.

You may also have decide what to do about non-native plants the native animals have come to rely on, or how much restoration of cultural artifacts like ruins is OK. Maybe you’ll get to develop an interpretive program for visitors, and present it to them. You may also work a fire line, or report illegal marijuana fields in the backcountry.

It’s a lot more than wearing a uniform and Smokey the Bear hat. I hope for a job doing interpretation. Instilling respect for the resource is a must in today’s disposable, over-packaged world. But I also want to use my knowledge and career to advocate for a responsible answer to the question, “Where does it end?”

The good news is that the park management job picture, already pretty good due to the growing number of baby-boomer retirees, should be even better when I finish the program in two years. Meanwhile, I hope to build my skills and connections with summer work for local agencies.

Shot Notes -
I’d gone to Antelope Island to photograph bison in December, when males are playful and not fighting over mates. I was packing up when I noticed this group of shy pronghorn antelope munching sage and grass fifty yards away. I captured a couple frames with a 500mm f/4L IS lens and 1.4X teleconverter before they glided away. Equivalent full-frame focal length was 910mm on an EOS 1D mark II. Light was soft and overcast, so contrast was easily within the camera’s range.

Tags: outdoor jobs, park ranger, wilderness tour leader
Posted in Outdoor Careers, Wildlife | No Comments »

Some Beef In The iHype

January 28th, 2010

Apple’s products have been poster children for elegant design for many years. The iPad has several things an ebook reader, web surfer, and video appliance need, but some glaring omissions crash it.

Its 1024 X 768 screen isn’t natively compatible with 720p HD at 1280 X 720. For a device that’s touted as a deluxe video/movie/TV program player, that’s a huge oversight. Yes, you can play H.264 video encoded at 720p, but it won’t be full 720p resolution on Apple’s screen.

The lack of Flash support is also pretty bizarre for a web-surfing device like iPad.

There’s no word on compatibility with Kindle books or book files from Barnes & Noble, but I’m betting the iPad will only support downloads from the iBook store. However, I’m sure there’ll be a hack for Amazon and Barnes & Noble book files before too long.

There’s only indirect mention of networking compatibility with OS X and Windows computers, but this is a must for any machine with limited mass storage like the iPad.

Still, the UI looks very good - flipping pages with your fingers like a real book is cool. I guess haptic feedback on the touch screen was too expensive, and I agree an SD card port and user-replaceable battery would have been nice.

With handwriting recognition and audio recording, the iPad would become a must for any college student taking notes. I’m surprised a company like Apple with a historic presence in the education market didn’t see this and add those features.

As a lightweight laptop replacement for a photographer in the field, it may be a winner. If the software supports it, you could use an external card reader to upload image files to the iPad for later transfer to your PC. If there were a version of Lightroom for it, you could sort and edit pictures on it too.

You’ll at least be able to transfer pictures directly from your camera with Apple’s add-on camera kit.

It looks like this product announcement was an attempt to preemptively capture the market, though that’ll be tough for a device that won’t be available for 8 weeks.

Tags: image transfer, portable computer
Posted in Equipment, Travel | 1 Comment »