TSA employees should come to Dominica for pat down and bag search technique. Very thorough! #
@lightroomblog Sean -checkbox for removing all non-essential interfaces would be a great. want to use for trip reports and single galleries. in reply to lightroomblog#
Dominica: hey, might as well do a second security check in case we spontaneously sprouted something dangerous while in the waiting area. #
The entire plane load was moved to a tiny holding room! We're crammed in here like sardines. This is totally bizarre. #
Overnight in San Juan. First ice cream since sailfish in Mexico. Yummm… #
"Politica de Devolucion" sounds so much better that "Return Policy". #
Hung out with @andybiggs last night. Was great to see him! Also met @heygrover and Tom Jow. #
Tony Wu and I have had a few articles appear in the UK press over the last couple of days, and while it is always fantastic to get news out to the general public, I’ve been extremely disappointed by what seems to be a growing global sentiment equating Japanese people to whaling.
Our article in the Daily Mail about Andrew and Scar
If you look at the comments in the various articles that have appeared — or, indeed, in pretty much any article about whales in the last couple of years — many seem to be about how evil Japanese people are and about how whales need to be saved. (read more »)
Over/under image of a juvenile sperm whale in Dominica (Physeter macrocephalus)
We have finished our 6 days on the water here in Dominica, and will be headed home later on today. Our last day was probably a rather typical winter day with the whales here in Dominica, which is to say that we weren’t dropped into a social group within an hour of leaving dock (as we have been on previous days!). We went around the south part of the island into unprotected waters and watched whales from the surface, but were not really able to work with them successfully.
Tony and I were interviewed for local TV last night, and I stressed that Dominica’s healthy reefs and clear water will probably not be seen by underwater photographers (other than the cruise ship happy-snappy people) until the transportation problem here is fixed. American Eagle has strict limits on baggage, and leaving here requires an overnight in San Juan. It takes me longer to get to and from Dominica than it does for me to get to Bali, and even if it were possible to get dive gear and camera rig here via indirect international check-in, it might be impossible to get the gear out.
Group photo at dinner: Ricardo, Cor, Julie, Tony, Emiko, Curt, Rhona, me, Gabriel and Andrew
Tonight, our hosts Andrew and Rhona Armour invited us to their lovely home in Dominica for a farewell barbecue. Everything here on the island is built on beautiful mountain-side coastline, so their house (which is “in the bush,” Rhona says) is nestled in lush greenery sandwiched between breaking waves and towering peaks. The sky was as dark as I’ve ever seen it, and even Andromeda was clearly visible as a little smudge next to a bright red celestial body (probably Mars).
Rhona had whipped up an incredible feast during the day, which turned out to be the best meal we’ve had since arriving in Dominica. We sat out on the patio in near darkness enjoying great food and company. Peggy Oki, Elisa Buller, and Caleb came out from across the island for dinner as well.
I have to thank Andrew and Rhona Armour and crew members Ricardo Barrett, Captain Curt, and Joel, who were all collectively responsible for getting us in the water with the magnificent sperm whales of Dominica. I really hope to be able to return to see more of the island; Dominica’s undeveloped beauty rivals any other place I’ve been in the world.
I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to have met Scar, a 10-year old male sperm whale in Dominica. Andrew Armour has befriended Scar and has known Scar since he was a newborn calf.
Here are two photos of Andrew interacting with Scar. (read more »)
A sperm whale calf in Dominica.. Photo taken under permit.
Day 5: yet another fantastic day on the water! We spent most of the day swimming with whales, and all of us have aching muscles. Scar came around for a bit but didn’t seem to want to play. Although we saw groups of up to 8 sperm whales at once, only smaller groups (2-3) seemed to be socializing at the surface. We spent a lot of time with a calf, who let us hang out with him for about twenty minutes.
It’s getting harder and harder to choose images to post because there are just too many! I know — it’s a tough problem to have. :)
AT&T for iPad? Noooooooo…! At least there's no contract, and it's unlocked. And keyboard dock? Finally! #
@sterlingz Yeah. Would prefer Bluetooth keyboard, but then you need to stand the thing up. I'll prob get Wifi version and use with Mifi. in reply to sterlingz#
Hah! RT @alexkingorg: My call to AT&T to cancel my service, using my iPhone (before wiping it), was dropped. #ironicbutnotsurprising#
Getting SMS spam from DCCC.org. Not appreciated. #
We saw fewer whales today and spent most of the day looking for whales that might tolerate a human presence in the water. A cute little calf (we’re told it’s Enigma’s baby) was accompanied by up to 12 larger sperm whales, but none of us were able to capture all 13 in one frame. (read more »)
I’ve been shooting lots of timelapses recently. I typically shoot them with a Canon 5D Mark II in sRAW (small RAW: a lower resolution RAW file) because otherwise I end up with thousands of 21-megapixel images to store.
My timelapse workflow involves bringing all of the images into Adobe Lightroom, setting white-balance and 16:9 crop on all images, and exporting as JPG to be opened as an image sequence in Quicktime 7 Pro. I noticed yesterday that one of my timelapses had a jump exposure in the middle of the movie. Upon close inspection, I discovered that the change in exposure was due to Lightroom treating RAW files differently than sRAW files! I had forgotten to set my camera to record sRAW images and ended up switching to sRAW in the middle of the sequence. (read more »)
Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) rub up against each other while socializing
After yesterday’s incredible encounters, we left dock (late — island time!) and ventured north, where we were told sperm whales had been sighted. After an hour and a half of cruising, we spotted a tight bunch of whales on the surface, and when we dropped in, we discovered 11 sperm whales! 9 of them were clustered together in a tight ball, and 2 were off to the side a bit. (read more »)
What an incredible first day! We’re all pretty much wiped out, and I can’t think well enough to try to put the day’s experiences into words. Instead, I’ll leave you with a bunch of sperm whale photos, which I posted to Flickr.
Oh — check out that second shot. Scar has the end of a squid are stuck to his mouth. We pulled it out of his mouth and brought it back to the boat. I have pictures (for later).
Another day, another timelapse. Even though I was really, really tired after a full day of swimming with sperm whales, I dutifully set up my tripod and grabbed this sunset timelapse in Dominica. It’s on Vimeo in 1080p; click over if you want to see it in high-definition.
Scar, a 10-year old male sperm whale (Physeter Macrocephalus) in Dominica
We had incredible encounters today with up to 6 sperm whales at a time. We even met Scar, a personable 10-year old male sperm whale who nearly begs to be rubbed! Photos taken under permit. (read more »)
I just finished following various live blogs of the Apple iPad unveiling event at Yerba Buena (which is almost literally across the street from me). Regardless of your level of Apple fandom, the iPad is a groundbreaking product. There have been quite a few attempts at tablet devices in the past, but no one has ever put so much thought into usability and infrastructure.
I am a mobile device junkie, and have been long juggling Blackberry, iPhone, Droid, Kindle, Mifi and satellite phone in an attempt to find a solution that works best for me. I realize that I am not a typical user; I am always online, but I spend about half of each year out of the country in areas with poor connectivity. This instantly makes any device without an optimized, compressed wireless network nearly useless when I’m in the field (e.g. iPhone, Droid). Even if wireless networks were up to speed, the cost of international use would be outrageous. I took my iPhone to India a couple of years ago and chewed through my 50MB of allocated monthly data in a matter of days. A friend on a trip to Mexico last week went through his 50MB in 7 days — and that was with light usage during the day, plus a WiFi connection at night. So I stick with my Blackberry Tour and its fixed-cost, unlimited international data plan. It is the best of both worlds: Verizon CDMA in San Francisco (the only working network here) and CDMA / GSM / EDGE / 3G when I’m out of the country. Unfortunately, the Tour has a slow processor, which means > 5 minute hard reset times and frequent multi-second lockups, but there are no other options and I remain productive while using it. The trusty little Tour downloads 200 messages in a minute on EDGE while I drift by small Indonesia villages. Meanwhile, the iPhone can barely finish negotiating an IMAP connection, and the Droid is hopeless because it’s on CDMA.
In a protest against AT&T’s crappy network, I sold my iPhone and switched to Droid on Verizon. I like the potential of Android, but I’m finding that I only use the Droid as a fancy video player and alarm clock when I’m on the road. Because I don’t have time to watch TV or movies when I’m at home, most of my reading and video consumption happens from the comfort of tiny cabins on dive vessels. I read books on the Kindle because there is no Kindle app on the Droid and because I only need to charge the thing once a month. The Kindle app is the one thing I miss the most about the iPhone.
I think the iPad will change things, though. Its display is large enough for comfortable book reading and video viewing. It can be held easily while on the airplane and in situations where a notebook computer would be unwieldy. It will have more light-weight apps than one could ever hope for, is compatible with the iPhone apps I already own, and can beautifully display my photography and video portfolio.
I’m thinking that it will replace the iPhone / Android device in my lineup, as well as the Kindle. I’ll finally have one phone, one notebook computer, and an “in-between” device: Blackberry, iPad and MacBook Pro (plus MiFi). Now if I could only coax my Blackberry into creating a WiFi cloud…
As of today, Akismet has stopped more than 2.7 million spam messages from being posted on my journal. Installation and use with Wordpress is trivial, and the plugin works flawlessly.
Daily spam messages caught on echeng.com since July 28, 2009
Since December of 2007 on echeng.com: 2,727,362 spams caught, 5,329 legitimate comments, and an overall accuracy rate of 99.997%.
Timelapse of Tony Wu and me packing cameras and dive gear in Isla Mujeres (timelapse images taken with Canon 5D Mark II — 1 frame every 2 seconds. around 1750 frames in total).
3D (cross-fused) video tour of Isla Mujeres from our golf cart, taken with dual Canon 5D Mark II cameras and Canon 15mm fisheye lenses. Special thanks to Sterling Zumbrunn for his help, and to Tony Wu for the loan of a 15mm lens. The color in the videos is different because Tony’s lens is much older.
Sterling Zumbrunn, Tony Wu and me in front of our sailfish boat, the Lilly M (3D) - click image for larger photo -
I’ve been experimenting with shooting 3D stereoscopic images with the Canon 5D Mark II and discovered that it is a very limited platform for taking 3D images. When two 5D2 cameras are mounted next to each other, there is a minimum of 6″ between the center of each of the two lens mounts. This extreme separation produces a stereoscopic effect that is too pronounced when using normal lenses (20mm and longer) — unless you shoot subjects that are very far away.
However, I have had some success shooting 3D images and video using two Canon 15mm fisheye lenses. Subjects still have to be at least a few feet away, but at least it is possible to shoot close subjects. (read more »)
@gfmorris I can't travel with that, unfortunately. My lav mics take batteries as well, so I should be able to bypass phantom when using them in reply to gfmorris13 hrs ago
Tea with Jesse Lichtenstein, who is here interviewing notable social media and infrastructure companies. 13 hrs ago
USPS change of address online broken. Requires credit card with old address as billing address? Can't zone property as live AND work? #fail17 hrs ago
Switching to Zoom H4n instead of Edirol R-09 to take advantage of phantom-powered XLR inputs. Need to start doing interviews on the road. 17 hrs ago
"Adobe promises faster Flash on Macs" In the future, my quadcore Mac Pro may b able to play Flash video w/o stuttering. http://bit.ly/dsQc4217 hrs ago
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