When Meghan and I were planning our trip to Africa, the one destination that I had on my list was Rwanda.  Mandy had been there a few years earlier and talked about visiting the mountain gorillas and how it was one of the most incredible experiences that she had had.

It was amazing.

After a hike up the mountain we stood in awe near a troop of gorillas for about an hour just watching.

Well, and photographing.

I took my share of photos (and a few videos) for sure.  I was primarily using the D300 with either the 80-400 or the 17-55 attached.  In this case I was using the 80-400 about halfway, to isolate the two.  I stopped down the aperture to isolate the gorillas a bit from the background but not too much as I wanted the entirety of these huge animals to remain in focus.

The lighting was great – a slight overcast that provided a nice even lighting across the whole scene.

I love how these two appear just like two friends chatting about the day’s affairs.  That’s essentially what’s going on, in their own way.

Hopefully one day we’ll get back to visit with these great creatures.

More photos from Rwanda can be found here and if you just want to see a few highlights from our Africa trip, this is your link.

Back in 2008 Meghan and I were taking a break from our African adventure off the cost of Tanzania.

We booked a couple of days on the island of Zanzibar so that we would have a few quiet days with nothing to do but lounge around.  We ended up getting more than we hoped for though when we arrived on an island with no electricity.  Apparently the undersea cable that delivered power to the island had been damaged and it would be another month before the residents had a reliable power source.

So we spent our days out along the beach, reading in the hammocks and spent the evenings carefully choosing our meals as the food wouldn’t be reliably refrigerated.  Yeah, we ate lots of fish and fruit.

This photo was taken while we were visiting the Sultan’s Palace – a museum of the old trading days on the island.  We were amazed at the state of disrepair of the Palace, though that was representative of the island as a whole.

I used my handy Canon G series camera for this photo (in this case the older G-7) as I didn’t always want to lug around the SLR.  And for a shot like this – just capturing the colors and the scene, the Canon does a fine job.  I like the details in the building’s surface – rather rough juxtaposed with the distant idyllic tropical seas.

Last year, we decided on a bit of a whim to get a dog.

A woman that Meghan worked with came in with a whole litter of puppies that she wanted to give away.  We ended up with this small guy with white paws.

I don’t have much to say about the photo I just like the shallow focus on the paws.

In 2005 I was wrapping up a trip to Vietnam, spending just a last few days in and around Hanoi when I snapped this photo.

What I like about this shot is how it captures so much of my trip to Vietnam:

There are bicycles everywhere.  They are a prevalent form of transportation and they are a great way to get around town – you see people carting groceries, their kids or their briefcases.  Kids use them to get to and from school, people of all ages are out and about, in the cities, across the countryside.  Most of the bikes you see are the older style in this photo.  Seldom do you see mountain bikes or racing bikes, it’s mostly just cruisers for getting around.

The streets are insane.  Traffic moves in every direction, all at once.  In this photo you can see the motorbike zipping just behind the cyclist and weaving behind that, another cyclist.  This is the way the streets work and there are shockingly few accidents.  There are also vehicles of all kinds – from ox drawn carts through bikes and motorbikes, to trucks, buses and private autos.  They each move at varying paces adding another dimension to the traffic flow.  Throw into the mix pedestrians and hand-drawn carts and you’ve got entertainment just sitting back and watching the streets.

There’s still a distinctly Asian feel.  Sandals are everywhere – women around town or construction workers, everyone wears sandals.  Face masks are worn all over, though not as much as other countries, it’s certainly more than you’d see in Europe, Africa or the Americas.  And other Asian (and Vietnamese) styles like the woven hats, patterned silk shirts are around.

I had decided I wanted to use blurred motion to help capture the essence of these hectic streets.  I tried different techniques and subjects, each with longer exposures.  This is one of my favorites.  There are a few others in the Hanoi gallery.

Back in 2004 a friend of mine, Erica called up and asked for some photos of redwoods.  She wanted to use them for a project – for a corporate client I believe.  I had already planned to take a day off from work just to relax and this gave me a fun project to work on during my 3-day weekend.

I started by heading over to Marin county on Thursday evening, to take some quick shots along Sir Francis Drake Blvd.  I grabbed my camera, several rolls of slide film, my tripod, and a couple of lenses and loaded up my motorcycle.  And this is how I spent the next several days.

Marin was the first stop, followed by the Santa Cruz hills early Saturday morning.  That pre-dawn ride on the motorcycle was c-o-l-d.

I wasn’t sure about the shots I was getting so after Santa Cruz I went back home, packed up some more equipment and rode out to Sequoia Kings Canyon National Park.  I arrived in the evening, set up camp and the following morning was out taking shots of the Giant Sequoias.  I drove home later Saturday evening.

This being 2004, my first stop was the photo shop where I dropped the film off for processing.  I had shot 4 rolls I believe.  It’s amazing how far we’ve come.  Up to this point I had no idea how my shots had turned out – couldn’t tell of the exposure settings, whether I was getting the shots I wanted or not.  There was no immediate feedback like there is with today’s digital.

This photo is from Santa Cruz.  It’s a bad scan but it’s all I’ve got left – after getting the film processed I sent them along.  I had low res scans that the shop made so that I could give Erica more immediate access to the images and that’s all I’ve got.  The greens are a little saturated in this shot but I think that’s just the scan.  I like the arrangement of the trees starting in the near left and curving off to the right with the trees shrinking in size.

I came across this photo while looking through images to post and it made me think of getting out on the motorcycle and going for a good ride.

This is a photo from last year. My parents were visiting town and we took the opportunity to check out the newly redesigned Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.  The building is really great to look at from the outside, including it’s living roof.  It’s not your typical science academy with its columns and marble..

Underneath that living roof is a large 4-story rainforest that reminded Meghan and I of our trip to Belize.  It’s a great exhibit with a huge variety of animals roaming about; from frogs to birds to butterflies.

I had my Canon G10 with me, not the larger Nikon set up but that little camera does a pretty good job considering how easy it is to carry it around compared to the larger DSLR with flash, macro lens, etc.,

For these indoor shots I had the lens wide open, both in an attempt to narrow the focus but to also bring in as much light so that I could freeze the action with a faster shutter.  I also bumped the ISO up to 400 which introduced a little grain in the image (this is one area where the Nikon beats the compact Canon hands down).  This all resulted in a shutter speed of 1/250 which was enough to handhold the shot and capture the subjects.

I like the bright colors of the butterfly but the focus does appear to be just a little off, just forward of the butterfly’s position.  I chalk this up to being in a hot, crowded space working with small objects darting around.  That and having to rely on the Canon’s autofocus unchecked, as it was not the conditions to muck around with small focus adjustments.

After this trip I decided I want to go back with my bigger setup but as of now it’s still on the future list.