Author: Tom (Admin)
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Madagascar’s Saha Forest Camp: an Eco-sperience! Part 1.
A couple of hours north of Antananarivo, at the end of a rutted, slick red clay road that meanders for about 10 kilometers eastward from the town of Anjozorobe, where the winding rice paddies finally end in a jumble of primary forest, Saha Forest Camp is perched on a hillside. We arrived at a clearing…
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Found Film in a 100-year-old Camera I got for Christmas
So my parents gave me this old camera for Christmas – a large, worn leatherbound aluminum case with shiny nickel fittings, that concealed intricate, shiny brass knobs, dials and gauges, along with a set of pristine red bellows. As my mom put it, it was a bit “like a Chinese puzzle to open,” but I finally…
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Madagascar’s Mantadia National Park: the Lemurs
Normally when we go on a trip somewhere, we end up with 6-10 really good photos worth sharing, which give an overall impression of the experience. But I have been stalling on this post because the number of close-up lemur photos we got is pretty overwhelming. So I’m just going to post a bunch of…
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First Photowalk in Tana
We’ve had a few weeks to settle into the groove here in Antananarivo (pronounce “tananarive” but more frequently shortened to “tana”) and so we figured it was high time we got out and about with our cameras. There is so much going on, and so many fascinating street scenes to photograph here – but we…
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Madagascar: Paying Attention to the Little Things
Walking through the jungle in Madagascar in search of lemurs, it’s easy to overlook the little things…and trample them underfoot. Bugs, tiny plants, lizards. There are upwards of 100,000 species of insects in Madagascar. We didn’t see the long-necked giraffe weevil, but we saw lots of other interesting creepy crawlies. For instance, this little guy,…
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(Re)introducing Madagascar: Golden Hour in a Roadside Village
So it was our first “real” weekend (i.e. the first during which we were not stumbling around in a jet-lagged haze) and we decided to head out of town. We decided to return to a destination we had visited on our vacation trip in 2012, and a place many visitors to the country go and see…
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24 Hours in Paris
When moving to a new home, as we’ve done every 2-4 years for the last 25, we’ve always traveled with pets. When we were traveling with a 100-lb dog requiring (due to his size) a separate booking on a cargo flight, the object of the game was to get to our destination as soon as…
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…and we’re off – to Madagascar!
When we were posted in Namibia, we took a trip to Madagascar. The thought was, “when will we ever have this opportunity again?” because plane tickets from the U.S. are wicked expensive. How ironic that a few short years later we should discover that we will be posted there for a two-year assignment (extendable to…
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Photo Assignment: Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial
Given that a trillion photos were snapped in 2015, the odds of snapping an “original” photo at a tourist attraction or monument/memorial in Washington are ridiculously low, but it’s fun to try and see what you can accomplish. The Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial is one of my favorite places to visit in Washington. Compared to the…
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Testing the Aires 35 V
I found this rangefinder at an estate sale in Virginia. It’s a heavy, solid camera and it came with a second lens, and despite never having heard of its manufacturer, I decided to add it to my collection. Being from a different era, its previous owner had engraved his social security number in the back…
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Washington’s Cherry Blossoms
The last couple of weeks, the National Capital Region has been all abuzz about the annual return of the cherry blossoms. I blogged about it the last time I was in the area for a few months, back in 2011, and so I thought it would be good to check it out again this year.…
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Flying Solo over the Shenandoah
When I first saw footage taken on DJI’s new consumer drone, my response was, “MUST HAVE.” I’m now on my second camera drone, the 3D Robotics Solo, and I’m still in search of the elusive magical footage – soaring over the Okavango Delta as a herd of Wildebeest run from some unseen predator, flying in…
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Testing the Mansfield Skylark
Funny story about how I ended up with this one. When you bid on high-priced items on eBay, it can be useful to decide the most you intend to pay, and then submit that bid just before bidding closes. There is always a chance your internet connection is not working, or that you’re confronted with…
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Testing the 1964 Minolta Minoltina S
There’s not a lot of information on the ‘net about it, but the Minolta Minoltina-S, marketed upon its release in 1964 as the world’s smallest rangefinder with a built-in light meter is a solid little camera with a fast (f/1.8) 40mm lens. Mine came to me in a box of random vintage-camera-related junk I bought…
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Found Film: Safari!
This latest roll of found film is a 35mm roll of (I think) slide film. I say “I think” because I actually developed this some time ago and have been carrying the digital versions only. They were pretty dark and I had to use a homemade lightbox to photograph the negative, invert it and change…
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3DR Solo: Droning in the Snow
I love these camera-toting quadcopters. Partly because it’s just fun to fly stuff around (yes, I’m still about 12 at heart) but mostly because of the new opportunities they offer for photography and videography. After seeing the first few videos people had made with them, I was hooked. The problem is, the technology moves so…
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Testing the Minolta SR-T-101
Awhile back, I posted about the Petri 7S, one of two cameras my mother-in-law had passed along to me. This post is on the other camera, a Minolta SR-T-101. This Minolta is an SLR that first appeared on the market in 1966 and continued to be manufactured until 1975. From this website you can figure…
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Doing My Bit for Science
You never know where your pictures will end up! So far people have been pretty good about asking for permission (as far as I know). About four years ago I was experimenting with macro photography, taking pictures of odd bugs I found in our back yard in Namibia, when I came across this odd black-and-yellow…
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Rediscovering America: Shenandoah
In a long(er) blog post in October, I wrote about the benefits of a career that takes you all over the world, and highlighted the fact that being away often helps us better appreciate the natural beauty of our own country – which, ironically, we don’t get to experience all that much. After spending some…
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Autumn
We haven’t really seen any real “autumn” to speak of for a number of years, so it has been refreshing to re-experience those surprisingly brisk mornings, doing those runs where the cold air tears at your lungs a little, and the smell of wet leaves… I keep telling myself to bring a camera to capture…
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Remembering Sierra Leone
Today Sierra Leone was officially declared “Ebola-free”, having successfully gone 42 days (two incubation periods) without a new case of Ebola. In neighboring Guinea, where the disease outbreak began, health workers continue to struggle for its eradication, working to save patients only a few miles from Sierra Leone’s border. When I was in Sierra Leone…
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Rediscovering America: Oregon
The last four years have been given us amazing travel opportunities. The world is full of interesting things to see; wonderful people to meet and get to know; and of course this all translates to great video and photo opportunities. Not only have we been able to experience the vast deserts, wilderness and wildlife of Namibia, but…
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Washington, DC by Night
Washington, D.C. is an interesting place to photograph, but it goes without saying that it’s completely different from the photography environment we had gotten accustomed to in India. A couple of weeks ago we became aware that there was going to be a “supermoon” – a larger (closer) than normal full moon, and via Meetup.com…
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Stars over Shenandoah
It’s Labor Day weekend in the Shenandoah Valley and it’s packed with tourists escaping to the country to enjoy the fresh air, nature and sunshine. I wonder how many of them noticed the night sky? I used a low ISO to cut down on “noise” – but this means a 30 second exposure. The…
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Found Film: Kodak Hawkeye Instamatic II
I ordered one of these for a few bucks on eBay because it combined two things I like: old cameras and found film – i.e. an undeveloped 126 cartridge was still inside the camera, according to the seller. The Hawkeye Instamatic II was one of many “instamatic” cameras sold by Kodak in the 1960s and 1970s.…