I just saw a commercial on television (between war coverage stories) about a car rental company that lets you pick your own car. Had I been asked which car I wanted when I arrived here in Kona, I would have asked for the car without cockroaches in it.

We putted around off the coast here for ten hours today, and didn’t see anything other than a bunch of breaching whales, and those didn’t even start “going off” (as they’ve been saying here) until 4pm. That means that we motored around aimlessly for eight hours before seeing anything interesting. Even though I’ve been (mostly) trying to avoid the sun, my face has started to peel a little. I’m going to look like a burn victim again.

I took an 8mm circular fish-eye lens with us on the boat just in case we had some time to kill, so there are some fun photos today. It seems silly to post “fun” photos when we are less than 48 hours away from war. Every morning, we leave the world of media influence for la-la-land on a boat. I feel some guilt for not taking a more active interest in what is going on. I’m not sure what to do about that guilt, though. Our administration is going to do whatever the hell it wants to do, regardless of what I think. It’s frustrating to feel so helpless. I certainly didn’t vote for him. [see some photos]

Douglas and I are sitting here in Watt’s office, glued to our computers. We have just returned from a Thai restaurant, where we had a nice dinner with Masa Ushioda. You should go check out his photography (click on his name in the previous sentence). It’s absolutely incredible, and I have been admiring it for a long time now.

We went out in search of oceanic white tip sharks during the day, and after failing to find pilot whales while cruising around (they are often found together), we drifted aimlessly for hours with a small crate of bait and Douglas’ “Mako Magnet” device hanging over the side of the boat. Nothing showed up, except for a few rough-toothed dolphins, which we were unable to convince to come near. Douglas is becoming more and more similar to a cooked lobster as the days go by, but by the end of our time here he should have a nice tan to show for his sun-cooked weariness. Jim eventually became rather bored (and we, wind-whipped and sun-scorched) and we called it a day at around 4pm. This was unfortunate; Masa reported to us later on that all of the whales in the area began to breach just about the time we pulled the boat out of the water. The almost full moon lit the breaching whales as the sky became dark.

Jim gave us a nice tour of Kealakekua Bay (from the water), complete with a short history lesson about Captain Cook and where he died. The bay is beautiful, probably because it’s difficult for humans to access. Jim says that a resort is paving a road directly to the bay, which may spell ruin for its nice reefs.

I have a few photos to show, but I’ll put them up tomorrow when I have more energy (no worthwhile marine photos today!).

We just watched the old movie, “Inherit the Wind,” which was wonderful despite my unfortunate aversion towards old American movies. I guess I’ll have to give the rest of the lot a fighting chance now that I have seen two that I like (the other was “Roman Holiday”). Perhaps I will even grow to like the genre! Although, the very old-American music in “Inherit the Wind” was terrifying (it may cause nightmares tonight), and there is currently only so much of the old-movie shouting/no-breaths-between-sentences/hyper-dramatic acting I can take. Douglas insists that much of the closed-minded mentality exhibited in the movie is still pervasive among Americans, but I’m going to pretend that isn’t the case. :)

During the middle of the movie, a large spider crawled across Jim’s rear projection television. This was mildly amusing until we realized that the spider was crawling on the inside of the TV, after which we became afraid. “It’s normal. We’re in Hawaii!” Jim says.

the best breaching shot ever. err… of mine, i mean. :)
Earlier today we were floating along in the boat watching some distant whales on the surface when suddenly, a humpback whale breached very close to the boat. I nearly broke my back trying to get my five-pound 1Ds + 100-400L IS lens combination up to my face! (Jim and I both missed the shot. Douglas managed to snap off a couple.) It was ok, though. The whale breached a second time, and I shot probably the best breaching shot I will ever shoot. Watt threatened to kill me when we returned to his house and verified that it was, in fact, an epic shot. :) [see some photos]

To give you an idea of how large this 1Ds’ image size is, I’ll show a 100% crop (true pixel size) of the original file from the camera. It’s been sharpened slightly. Also visible are horrendous jpg artifacts (not visible in the original file) which are present because I have to keep file sizes small for web publication.


a 100% (true pixel size) crop of the humpback’s head
Oh yes. I am becoming old and senile. Douglas found my sunglasses, which I had “lost” at the gas station. They were on my face. [see some photos]

I learned two things today:

1) Applying SPF45 sunscreen once doesn’t do much if you are in the sun for nine hours.

2) A hat does nothing when ultraviolet light can reflect off of the surface of the ocean.

It was a little strange today: we came across a 7′ hammerhead shark on the surface while motoring around. We didn’t have anything to entice it to stick around, but we did follow it for about ten minutes to shoot photos from the surface. He just sort of sauntered about, ignoring us, for the most part. We also took shots of whales and spinner dolphins with our three identical, huge lenses.

In the evening a bunch of Jim Watt’s friends came over for pizza, beer, and red wine. It is now far too late to be up for the types of days that we will be putting over the next week! I’m going to bed. [see some photos]

As usual for the evening before boarding an airplane, I did not sleep last night. Jim Watt picked me up from the Kona airport at 1:30pm (an hour late), and three hours later (after eating — I went back to the Korean BBQ place I frequented last year when Kenny Liu an I were here), we drove back to the airport to pick up an extremely tired Douglas Seifert, with his requisite three large check-in bags. Jim drove home while Douglas and I wandered around Costco and Walmart looking for necessities like cat-5 ethernet cable, power strips, and individually-packaged dried seaweed. “I flew for the entire day to go to Costco,” Doug lamented, but he perked up when he discovered that stores like Costco sell strange Asian food-stuffs in places like Hawaii.

I dragged Dave Patchen out — jetlagged, but still a good sport — to hear me speak at the COBA meeting tonight. There was a good turn-out, and it seemed like people enjoyed themselves. The 24×18″ Pictopia prints were certainly a big hit. As usual, people were amazed by the quality of the prints. I wasn’t sure how much detail to get into during the talk, so I stuck with very high-level slides (e.g. “this is an underwater housing”). I’m sure there were some underwater photographers in the audience who were bored. :) [see some photos]

Check out this footage of a group in Florida called the “Marine Safety Group.” They have caught a shark with rope, and proceed to shoot it with a handgun several times — in the presence of a small baby. One of the guys calls the shark a “Bii-aaatch” (which is just too funny!), and their boat is called “Sea Kill.” The story of how this tape was acquired is interesting too, but you’ll have to ask Jim, if you ever see him. I’m not sure that I’m allowed to tell it myself.

There’s a raging debate going on at Wetpixel about baiting and feeding sharks. It seems to me that people who are in favor of shark-feeding bans do so only because they “feel” like it’s wrong. There seem to be no real facts that absolutely correlate shark feeding with danger to humans. (read more »)

Uh, like, this is a test and stuff. Hey, cool! It works! And now, I sleep.

I went out this late evening to see Bowling for Columbine with Jeremy Henrickson. I thought the film was definitely worth seeing: an interesting commentary on American culture, a bit contrived, but extremely well made to induce a specific reaction. Ironic that it used spectacle while commenting on spectacle itself. I wonder what a gun-toting dude in Michigan’s reaction to the film would be? I’m so far from that person in so many ways that I can’t even imagine… Frankly, my gut reaction after seeing the film was to move to Canada. :) While I was in Sydney a couple of months ago, I saw an ad for Bowling for Columbine that probably wouldn’t have been popular, had it been posted in the States.

It was nice to hang out with Jeremy. It’s rare these days that I’m out until so late. Two nice policemen came in to Denny’s (hadn’t eaten there in a long, long time!) to investigate a group of six kids who had left without paying. The waitress told us that they walked out, one at a time. When we were seated there were only two or three left in the booth.

Hmmm. I tell stories, and they go nowhere! I should have something witty or extremely analytical to write at the end of every story. Oh well — maybe next time. :)

Also tonight: I sent Andy Manson and his lovely wife Carrie to see Livia perform at a black tie event in Fairbanks Ranch. I wish I could have gone! I hear that she kicked butt both tonight, and in La Jolla the night before! Even though Livia has performed many times at my place, I have not actually ever seen her play with a live orchestra.

I’ve picked-and-plucked the foam in a Storm Case model iM2500 (the largest carry-on size allowed in an airplane. it’s actually smaller than the bags that many people carry on, but I decided to be conservative, adhering to airline-published dimensions.), and it fits all of the non-housing camera gear I need for a typical underwater photo trip!

Packed Storm Case iM2500
In the case, I can fit: Canon EOS 1Ds body, 2 x Canon D60 bodies, 100-400L IS, 15mm full-frame fisheye, 50mm macro, 100mm macro, 28-70/2.8L, extra 1Ds battery, two extra D60 batteries, and a CF card case.

Not bad. I’ll have to carry a flash, lens cleaning supplies, and chargers separately, but I had to do that previously with the J-1 as well. Now I can carry all of my stuff onto a small boat without worrying that my equipment will be destroyed. :)

Oh, and I highly recommend Cases4Less.com. They will beat any advertised price by 5%, and I have had nothing but excellent service from them.

Unrelated: Congratulations to Dave Patchen! His photo is photo of the day at Steve’s Digicams. :)

Oh. My. God. Old School was hilarious! (I went to see it with Dardy.) It was every bit as stupid as I imagined it would be, but while watching the movie I laughed harder than I’ve laughed in a long time. It is definitely worth seeing. :)

I had planned on driving home afterward, but instead I stopped by Stanford to see Elliot Sather and Mandy Knox. Things have been gloomy lately at the loft because of a faculty death; nevertheless, it was really, really great to spend some quality time with the two of them. [see some photos]

I figured out today why playing a 5th between the d and g strings on my cello was so difficult in the past. It was a defective/old string! sigh I had actually gotten used to the different finger locations necessary, so it will take some un-learning to fix me. It will probably never happen since I’m out of town all the time, away from my cello.

I’m going to leave the house tonight and force my brain to stop spinning. I have a bottomless list of little things to do! Oh — I’m presenting at COBA on Wednesday, so if you want to see a slideshow and an underwater camera housing for the D60, please come!

I’ve updated my digital photo page to include links to what I consider to be useful software tools and information sites out there. There is SO MUCH good, free information on the web about digital photography! Also, I am happier now because the fonts on my screen are now pretty because I enabled ClearType. Previously, I could not because the old version of BreezeBrowser did bad things with text overlays if ClearType was enabled; I just couldn’t be bothered to switch the thing on and off all the time.

Why have I felt such exhaustion lately? I have no real reason to feel this way, and certainly don’t feel like I deserve to.

I had a great time with my mom, sister, and other family this weekend; it distracted me from the other things that have been running through my mind lately. I’ve been having problems — I’m misplacing things, forgetting things, misremembering things… I’m hoping that sleep will “fix” me, as I am not myself these past few days. [see some photos]

hanging with eric miller - lunch with alex king - fun with newton, nash, and jeremy - mom’s visit - mountain view with heidi kim - tired. wanna go to bed.

[see some photos]

I’m still getting up early, and (gasp) I’ve been eating breakfast! Those who know me can attest to my normally nocturnal behavior, and eating breakfast is virtually unheard of. However, I’m up late enough that I may be forced back into my old ways. :)

I spent a few hours this late evening with Adam Tow, taking controlled photographs of Darth Maul with our digital SLRs for a comparison page that looks at the effects of focal-length cropping. Consider this entry to be a marker for comments about the comparison! [see the comparison] [see some photos]

Hey, this is cool! See a mpg video of me shooting this image of a reef shark. Watch for my strobes firing at the end of the clip. Thanks to Jim Abernethy for shooting the clip and for e-mailing it to me. :)

HEY FRIENDS! I lent my minidisc player to one of you some time ago, but I don’t remember who has it! It has got to be one of you musicians out there. Can you return it to me, or let me know that you have it? :)

Check out PBS’ “The Octopus Show.” They have footage of a giant octopus catching and eating a small shark! Neat-o.

Even though I didn’t get to sleep until 2:30am last night, I woke up, wide-awake, at 7:30 this morning. Something strange is happening! That never happens. :) I also forgot my wallet when I left the house, and I left my keys and sunglasses on the table at Livia’s place, which is highly uncharacteristic. I think I need to get some sleep.

Livia and I seem to be back to our routine of eating virtually every meal together. She came over again today to run some web errands; afterwards we went to Good Guys to get her a recording device for her rehearsals. John O’Conor was also at my place today giving Heidi Hau a lesson, using my piano. It was nice to have good live music to listen to, even if it was in the context of a piano lesson. I’m hoping that Heidi and I will be able to arrange a late-March date for a house concert here.

Uh oh. I’m going to get some attention here for this post. There’s a nugget of information buried within that only other geeks out there will find. Please don’t draw too much attention to it. :)

One more thing: my screaming turtle was farked today by a nice woman named Rebecca. It has an effect similar to being slashdotted, I hear. Hopefully my host won’t yank the plug…

I’ve been getting some much-needed friend time in, which has been very therapeutic. I hung out with Adam Tow this afternoon (we geeked out on the computer and ate lunch at Pho Hoa). Yesterday I saw Karine and Peter Kim for dim sum at Yank Sing (there was a wait. “Oh, hello, Peter.” we were seated immediately. very cool. :) and then had dinner with Mandy Knox and Elliot Sather at Burrito Real.

My mind is mush: mushy mush from having 20 little things to think about instead of just a few important ones. Heidi Hau generously gave me two tickets to see Andras Schiff play Goldberg Variations tonight, but the concert was cancelled due to sickness at the last minute. Instead, Livia Sohn and I went out to consume food and dessert in the Castro. Good food makes me happy. :)

[see the photos]