Continuing along on our recent California trip (yes, I am posting in order now), we made a visit to Hearst Castle. I'm not going to go too in-depth as to what exactly Hearst Castle is all about, but suffice to say it is the result of someone (William Randolph Hearst) with ridiculous amounts of money and a bit of craziness... The place is pretty well over the top in terms of lavishness for even today's standards, and was started back in the 1920's.

As I usually do in situations like this (where crowds of people make it rather difficult to take photos of the larger setting), I tended to focus in on details and tried to eliminate random people in my photos. Add to that, any time we were inside, the conditions were dim and poorly lit with incandescent lighting, and then outside was a harsh mid-day light that made the contrast very stark.

I'm just going to give a nice little mega-set today to get through all of these photos in one posting. Enjoy...

The trip is far from over, so be sure to stop back again tomorrow. We go back to some marine mammal photos...

- Bill

It looks like we're sticking with that vertical format for today's photos... I tend to try using that format often, but for whatever reason, I used it to great extent during the trip.

Today's set comes from our second and third days in Bali. First, we have a Barong costume. This was from a Barong Dance that we attended. Barong is the king of the spirits and protects Bali from evil. After the dance, we went to visit another temple - Pura Desa Batuan. Pura Desa Batuan is actually two separate temples, and the grounds have a great deal of statuary. We also visited several areas to see different Balinese crafts, but I'll save that for another day.

The third day, we visited the Elephant Safari Park where we got to ride an elephant through the jungle.

I like the feel of the photo of the statue (second from top on left), with the just slightly blurred background showing more of the intricate stone carving without being distracting, plus the placement of the statue covering two thirds of the frame provides a nice balance to the photo.

Whereas the first photo of the temple (third from the top on left) is very symmetrical and is generally just a record shot, the second photo (bottom on left) provides a much more dynamic vantage point, and adds a feeling of drama to the scene. I do regret not including a tiny bit more temple and a little less sky in the shot, but I do certainly like how the darker exposure makes for a much more moody feel to the second photo as well.

For the elephant reaching towards the camera (second from top on right), I shot in rapid burst mode while holding a bit of food for the elephant below the camera. As the elephant reached for the treat, I snapped away. I have an entire series of shots from that, but this one was definitely the best. Unfortunately with the overcast sky and bright conditions, the photo is over-exposed (which seemed to be a typical problem for many of the shots from the trip, and I wasn't paying enough attention to fix it - shame on me!).

Lastly, the elephant statue (bottom on right) shot was taken by Anya, and despite it being over-exposed (again, my fault for not adjusting the camera's settings for the conditions), I absolutely love the perspective produced by this shot. Everything in the shot is placed perfectly in the frame, and the exaggeration of the elephant's trunk helps to contribute to it being a nice line to lead your eye through the shot.

Drop me a comment and let me know what you think, and be sure to tune in again soon as I'll be starting into the underwater photos from Wakatobi!

- Bill

I'll be deviating from the normal method of doing things for the photos from this trip. There are far too many photos and too much background information for each photo to try posting them individually. The posts will likely be longer than normal, but will likely contain more photos and less technical discussion (though there will still be some - this is a photography site after all!)

Our trip began in Bali, Indonesia after a total of 28 hours of travel time and a 13 hour timezone adjustment. We got into Denpasar in the wee early morning hours on Jan 22nd, made our way to our hotel - the Puri Santrian resort (perhaps more on that in another post) - and crashed for a few hours. We spent the morning and afternoon lounging around the hotel, some folks hopped into the beautiful pool, while Anya and I strolled the grounds taking photos (of course!).

Towards late-afternoon, we headed off to the beautiful Uluwatu Temple (Pura Luhur Uluwatu). Uluwatu is a directional temple in Bali's south-west region which is meant to guard Bali from evil spirits. The temple sits up at the very edge of a 250 foot cliff that overlooks the Indian Ocean.

One of the major residents of the temple are monkeys. And apparently, these are thieving monkeys. The general setup is this: Tourists come, monkeys steal stuff from tourists, tourists buy fruit from vendors, tourists bribe monkeys with fruit to get their stuff back. Luckily we didn't have anything stolen, though Brigette apparently almost lost a fistful of hair when a monkey attempted to steal her hair band.

After visiting the temple and taking in the view from the cliffs, we proceeded to the Kecak Dance (or Ramayana Monkey Chant, or Fire Dance) nearby. The Kecak Dance is kind of interesting as it was basically invented by a couple westerners as a way to present some Balinese culture in a way that would appeal to westerners' limited tastes.

As usual, mouse over the thumbnails for the larger image to display.

The dance consists of a circle of men who chant all of the "music" for the dance (visible in the shot second from the left above). They repeat a few sounds over and over, sometimes alternating sounds between different sections of the group. There are no musical instruments or spoken words to the story depicted in the dance, so the chanting provides the rhythm and marks the important events in the story.

At the end of the dance, they set up a bunch of piles of what I thought was shredded coconut husks and set them on fire, and the monkey character then gets to kick them around (as depicted in the shot to the far right). It wasn't quite what I expected when I was told we were going to a "fire dance" - I think I was thinking of something more Hawaiian with a guy twirling a flaming baton, but this was still entertaining and impressive.

For the dance (and whole trip), I was limited in the lenses I was able to use. I switched between the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II and my new Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM. I wanted the wide apertures (f/1.8 and f/2.8) to help with faster shutter-speeds given the twilight and then dark conditions. Also during the dance, I switched to automatic ISO mode, to allow the camera to select higher ISOs to also allow for faster shutter-speeds. I found that I took a good deal of photos in a vertical orientation (see below) as a way to both capture more of the character's full costume as well as a way to eliminate clutter and unnecessary elements (ie: spectators). If you're interested in any of the specific technical data for any shots here, simply post a comment and I'll provide them.

I am not going to go into the roles of each character, but provide some photos of each. Above there is a photo with two characters who basically provided comic relief, and I swear the one looks like Predator! Others include the Monkey, a bird of some sort, and others (see below). The costumes were really interesting, and you can see my usage of the vertical format to be able to isolate a single character.

The last photo there - of the one female dancer - is Anya's favorite of this set. The wide aperture (f/1.8) on the 50mm lens used provides the nice soft background. Additionally, the vertical format allowed me to isolate the woman in the shot while she was flanked by tourists, all pushing to get their own photos alongside the performer.

Given the dim lighting and general disarray and constantly moving subjects, all of these shots came out fantastic. So remember the lessons here. Shorten your exposure time (faster shutter speed) as much as possible by (1) using as wide of an aperture as possible, (2) if your camera works well at high ISOs, switch to auto-ISO mode. Additionally, remember that sometimes the vertical format will help you to eliminate distracting elements from your photos, so rotate the camera and see what you can get.

- Bill

Ok - I don't know how many of these I will get around to posting (dive trips are always insanely busy vacations). So far, I've rattled off just under 3000 frames - granted, a large percentage of them will be culled, but it is still a lot of photos.

I'm six dives in with working with my 7D in the Ikelite housing, and I've been learning more and more each dive. I don't have an of those to share just yet, but for now, here's a couple shots...

Enjoy!

- Bill

Ok - so the posting frequency doesn't seem to be getting much better. I promise to continue trying to get better about that. Heck - I haven't even had much chance to get out and use the camera much either - something I definitely need to remedy.

This is another photo I was hoping to save for use later, but I really need something to get me going.

In one of my photography magazines, I had read about a technique called light painting. There are two forms of light painting - using a light source outside of the scene to 'paint' a section of the scene to highlight it, and using a light source within the scene to 'paint' the air to have a type of graffiti appear in the image.

I decided to try the former. By using different colored lights to highlight your subject, you can change its color dramatically...

Back in November, I went on a hiking trip on a section of the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail with some good friends.

While we spent the night at one of the adirondacks, I tried my hand at some nighttime long exposure photography and light painting. After taking a fair amount of good-natured kidding from my buddies about the extra weight I was lugging in camera gear for the hike, the photos I got really made it worth while.

Technical Data: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 18mm, Unknown manual exposure length at f/5.6, ISO 1600. No post production. Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail.

Why This Photo: I really wanted to try my hand at light painting, after a few other attempts that were coming out very nicely, I thought the blue light on the outside of the shelter contrasted with the red glow from the fire inside the shelter would do a great job of illustrating the cold weather (though it was unseasonably warm for November) with the warmth of the shelter.

What Works: For being basically a first attempt, this turned out well. I like the contrast of the red and blue lighting. Additionally, you can just start to make out the stars in the background.

What Doesn't Work: The framing isn't perfect as I think this might work better if the shelter were more off-center. I also should have selected a much lower ISO for this long of an exposure to help reduce any digital noise.

Surprisingly, this was a lot easier than you would think. Remember your tripod, and a remote shutter release is helpful (or use your timer delay, but that won't work for manual exposure lengths). Try different combinations - I'll share a photo later where I used red and blue lights to paint something purple!

I thought for sure I would end up with a bunch of junk photos, but a couple of these are among my favorite photos. Unfortunately, I have never made a point of heading back out to make some more of these photos.

Maybe it is time to schedule another hiking trip.

- Bill