So what did I learn whilst away?...

Hi All!

So I realize I have been ridiculously absent since I came back from my trip. Main reasons being, getting back into work and the need to travel away from home the last few weekends (and every weekend in the foreseeable future at the moment).

I have a list of new videos in mind, it's just getting the time to do them. If I don't get one done tonight then we're probably looking towards Sunday or early next week but I will be doing them again for sure.

But returning to chat about my trip, there were a million different things I wanted to get pictures of and some pictures were a real challenge but I had successes and failures throughout - mega learning curve in terms of photography.

One thing I didn't manage during the trip, was a decent night time shot of the sky which was gutting because the sky was so clear. Some of the areas we stayed in were amazing at night. We stayed at this Navajo Indian site in Monument Valley and slept out under the stars in our sleeping bags.... what a view. I basically fell asleep looking at the stars. However.... it wasn't the best experience camera-wise as I managed to run out of battery and lose my spare battery (which I still haven't found!). So whilst I could have got some amazing night shots... I had no battery left.

I had a bit of a fight with CHDK while I was away too, I kept finding it made my screen go white when I activated it and I had to keep resetting the camera until it showed up properly. I don't know if it was something to do with the memory card, the version of the hack or the camera but I'm hoping it was the hacks fault!

As most Facebookers will probably know I also had a bad time with CHDK in terms of HDR. I took sooooo many HDR triple exposures when I was away and the RAW files were saved as CR2 files which don't open in photoshop... usually they do, but not when CHDK creates them for some reason. This was my fault as I didn't check what file type I was saving but it was totally gutting that pretty much all my HDR images are gonna have to be done with JPEGS now. Nevermind... we live and learn right!

One thing I did discover in my photography was a far nicer image ratio of 16:9. I always knew the camera could do this but I never thought to use it as I was always one to stick with a much more "square" shaped image.... no idea why really. But we went out one night, someone had got hold of my camera and accidentally changed the ratio to 16:9. I hadn't noticed for ages until a couple of days later I was in Bryce Canyon I believe and I saw one of my scenery images on the camera and realised that it looked much better than a lot of the pictures I had taken previously. The new ratio gave it a more widescreen look which seemed to get far more of the scene than I was expecting. I really loved the setting that I left it like that for the rest of the trip and was really happy with the results. Even the images of people and small objects were taken with that setting and they still looked good.

And now for my guilty confession.... I used Auto quite a lot when I was away :P. Whilst it was nice to work on my photography and mess around with the camera, for most places I was being hurried along by the group and leaders and just didn't have the time so sit down for some proper photography. However the pics I took on auto came out really well and those that didn't were an indication for me that I needed to switch to Manual.

I went down to Miami beach quite early on in the trip and had a great evening taking pictures down there. I did some 10 second exposures which came out really nicely. I had a similar experience in Chicago. The fountain there is absolutely gorgeous next to the harbour and turning around you just see this stunning city skyline. Chicago was certainly one of my favourite places. I took some pictures down by the fountain there and they also came out quite nicely.

So that's the short version of my photography experience. I'm sure you will hear more snippets about things I learnt in America/Canada but for now I won't chew your ears off!

I will post some pictures into this blog so you can see what I am talking about but they are at home at the moment.

Ciao for now :)