I remember when that eagerly-anticipated park was “under construction” – more than ten years ago! I must be getting old…in any event, Animal Kingdom is an interesting fusion of a zoo and a traditional theme park, with a heavy emphasis on conservation. Unlike Sea World, the animals are pretty much left to their own devices, and it’s up to park viewers to pay attention if they want a glimpse of the animals:

I might compare my life over the last few months to that of those Silverback Gorillas’ – laying about, looking for food, and looking surly at passerby, thinking about whatever it is gorillas think about. Very majestic animals, and quite gentle, despite their immense size.

The most fun part of the trip had to be the Kilimanjaro Safaris. The wait time was excruciating (lessed somewhat by having a FastPass), but it was so worth it – a ride through the animal reserve, getting to see animals in their natural habitat. Well, as natural as Kissimmee, Florida gets:

Being a theme park, the shops, restaurants and other buildings have a distinctly African flavor. The goal, I suppose, is to make you think you’ve stepped into an issue of National Geographic:

And of course, plenty of cast members to add local flavor:

Animal Kingdom’s a fun place – plenty of interesting critters to see, and a setting to excite the imagination. However, winter isn’t the best season to take it all in. It was a balmy 70 degrees, yes, but with a very early sunset of 4:45 PM, there was a bit of a rush to see everything before the sun went down.

Of course, what would any Disney park be without a parade or two?

Even if you’ve been to your local zoo a hundred times, you should give it a shot if you find yourself in the area. It’s one of those few destinations in tourist town Orlando that will actually leave you feeling a bit closer to the earth. Now if you’ll excuse me, I hear “Circle of Life” playing in the background…

Sea World

Make no mistake, Sea World Orlando is a tourist attraction first and foremost – think of it as a curious fusion between your local Aquarium and a Disney park, with rides and gift shops only footsteps from live animal shows and exhibits. Not to mention the ground is literally crawling with hordes of screaming children, putting eardrums and patience to the test! Still, when it comes to excitement, nothing beats seeing the majesty of dolphins…

…up close! These stills hardly do them justice – they can cut through the water like a dancer across a stage. As one of the performers explains, these shows are a delicate partnership between human trainers and these incredibly intelligent creatures – the dolphins are never “commanded”, but are “asked nicely”, and bribed with a fish or two! Kind of like myself as a young child, but moving along…

Of course, no visit would be complete without seeing the park’s mascot in action:

In person, Shamu is every bit as impressive as the ads, able to splash 14 rows of spectators with a single leap! This was the first time I’ve seen a killer whale up close, and a part of me envies the trainers and park staff which get to interact with these magnificent creatures every day:

Their Discovery Cove park actually lets you swim with dolphins, rays, and other delightful sea creatures, but at nearly $300 admission, such pleasures are beyond my reach at the moment. Not to mention I should spare Flipper the trauma of seeing this homo sapien in swim trunks.

Besides the animals, the park had several interesting stage shows, two of which we attended  that day. The first was “Allure: The Call of the Ocean”, and was a Little Mermaid-esque tale of a dashing bachelor of a fisherman and the fish-woman who inevitably falls in love with him. Apparently it’s hard to do dinner and a movie underwater, so when it comes to courtship, impressive feats of acrobatics will have to suffice:

Move over, Sydney Potier – it’s interspecies dating the kids are exploring these days. Of course, meeting the family is kind of hard when they have a sharp pair of fangs:

The second show involved dinner, so you’ll have to excuse me if I seem just a bit partial! The Makahiki Luau is a show highlighting Polynesian culture in all its flamboyant festiveness:

The only thing I couldn’t quite get over was the guilt factor. After seeing Shamu and friends frolic in the park all day, sitting down for a meal of Mahi-Mahi just seemed so…wrong. I had a good cry for all of two seconds about it.

My feet were practically numb by the time I got back to my room, but all in all, it was a fun day!

Taking vacation photos presents some unique challenges. On one hand, as an aspiring photographer, you want more than simple snapshots – you want memorable pictures that convey the joy of being there. On the other hand, You probably don’t have Richard Branson’s bank account, and unlike the great Ansel Adams, you don’t have the convenience of a pack mule to carry all your gear. How do you prepare to capture Kodak moments of a lifetime?

After a few successful outings, I thought I’d share a few recommendations on what to take to strike that balance:

Introducing: Nigel’s Lazy Photographer Kit!

Whoever told you laziness is a not a virtue was clearly not into casual photography. Professional photography is a noble pursuit, but while on vacation, the goal should be to take great pictures with the least amount of effort. After all, you’re there to have fun, not on a National Geographic assignment (though the two are not mutually exclusive…):

Camera: Entry-level to midrange SLR (Nikon D40, Canon Rebel XTi, Doesn’t really matter)

Lens: 18-200mm zoom, 50mm f/1.8

Other accessories: Flash, 8 GB Memory card.

Pocket-sized point-and-shoots are always nice to have around, but I recommend using an SLR. These days, they’re not much bigger than high-end point and shoots, and not much more expensive (you can get a Nikon D40 for $400 – cheaper than some point and shoots!).

Furthermore, the lack of shutter delay on an SLR makes catching action shots much easier:

Yikes! I didn't mean it, Shamu, I swear!

And an SLR’s better light sensitivity means that your night shots are less likely to turn into a blurry mess:

Best of all, an SLR lets you change lenses to meet any photographic challenge. But most of the time, you’ll only be using two, as I explain below.

The 18-200mm Lens

The usual annoyance with vacation photography is that we can never seem to have the right perspective at the right time. For example, we might catch a stunning vista, and our camera can’t “zoom out” enough. Or we might spot a beautiful animal, but the 4x zoom on our point and shoot is nowhere near close enough. The 18-200mm zoom lens solves this issue by combining the “best of both worlds” – a zoom that goes from a very wide 18mm:

To a very close 200mm:

This is effectively an 11x zoom! If you’re a Nikon user, you’re in luck – Nikon’s 18-200mm VR lens is the undisputed king of the superzoom lens, and the lens which stays on my D90 95% of the time. If you’re a Canon user, Canon also makes an 18-200mm lens, though I personally haven’t tried it out. They both cost quite a bit of money ($639 for the Nikon, $549 for the Canon), but you can always rent them from a place like Lensrentals.com if you only need them for a short while.

With such an effective zoom range, is there anything these lenses can’t do? Both the Nikon and Canon superzooms are pretty “slow” (aperture 3.5-5.6) lenses – not an issue in the raging sunlight, but a problem indoors or at night. Though both lenses include image stabilizers meant to counteract camera shake at lower light levels (and slower shutter speeds), your best bet is to switch to this next lens.

The 50mm f/1.8 lens

Remember, the wider the aperture, the more light your camera has to properly expose a shot. And an aperture of 1.8 is as wide as it gets, which is why the 50mm f/1.8 lens is an excellent choice for low-light shooting. Combine this with a DSLR’s native low-light sensitivity, and you can practically shoot in the dark:

The other good thing about this lens? It’s pretty cheap. On Amazon, the Nikon version is less than $110, whereas the Canon version is only $85. It’s also weighs practically nothing, and is small enough to fit in your pocket (though I probably wouldn’t put it there!).

There’s no need for a separate camera bag – these items should easily fit into your messenger bag or knapsack, while leaving plenty of space for maps, souvenirs, Mickey Mouse hats – you get the idea. With only two lenses, you’re now equipped to expertly photograph just about anything that catches your fancy!

Having assembled your photographer’s stash, what comes next? Simply put your camera in Program mode (“P”), get out there, and have fun! If you’ve read any of my previous photography posts, you’ll realize one of the biggest mistakes you can make is focusing on your camera, instead of the place and the people around you!

I was going to indulge the writer in me, writing a protracted monologue about going on vacation, taking time off to rediscover myself, etc, etc, etc, but sometimes life offers you much better material than you can make up. I was on my way to see Sea World by the seashore when this…er…heavily customized vehicle pulls up next to me. I know that Florida has its conservative Christian elements, but…well, just look for yourself!

Fear the Jesus Car! But considering that I’m in the home of Disney World, Sea World, and Universal Studios, this kitschy approach to devotion may not be so out of place…

As you may have heard, in my infinite intelligence, I left my USB cable back in New York – meaning that I had to go for two full days without downloading (or backing up) my precious Shamu pictures! One (expensive!) trip to Best Buy later, I can now show you faithful readers exactly what I’ve been doing in the Sunshine State. I’ll post more photos when and if I get the time – and if the free Wi-Fi still works.

Until then, cheers, everyone!

True to Chima’s mischievous style, he decided to make the occasion truly memorable. Driving her back to their school (Queens College), they reminisced about the first time they met – in a lecture hall, waiting for class to begin. Returning to said lecture hall, he got on his knees, locking his gaze with hers, and asked the age-old question she’d been yearning to hear.

“Will you marry me?”

She said yes, though not before making him “sweat a little bit”, he says. But he wasn’t done yet! Unbeknown to her, he had arranged an intimate engagement party with both their families, set for that very evening. Blindfolding her, he claimed to be taking her to a fancy restaurant in the city. But when they “stopped by” his aunt’s house, and we turned on the lights, her reaction was priceless:

Well-done, Chima! And congratulations, you two! Keep reading for some more pictures from the event:

Some more pictures from the party:

[Show as slideshow]

Seedy detectives, beautiful femme fatales, dark subplots…I happen to be a fan of film noir for all the right reasons, but what I love most is the cinematography – the foggy, soft-focused, phantasmagoric city full of mystery and danger. I decided to break in my new computer by dusting off one of my old images in Photoshop and seeing if I could achieve that same look. Keep reading to see the original, and a few of the techniques I used.

I started with this picture:

And from there, creating the effect was pretty simple. It goes without saying that I did all of my operations on separate layers so I could tweak them layer.

1. B&W/Sepia Conversion – I used CS3′s Black and White conversion tool (Layer-> New Adjustment Layer -> Black and White…). From there, I toned down the saturation of the Reds and Blue, and darkened the platform a bit. I also ended up using the default tint (sepia-like), as seen above, and boosted the tint saturation a tiny bit.

2. Curves – Contrast – From there, I wanted to further bring out the shot’s contrast, so instead of using the built-in contrast control, I created a Curves adjustment layer (Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Curves), and pulled down the darker colors for a more striking effect.

3. Soft Focus – From here, I copied all the previous layers into a new layer which I called, appropriately enough, “Soft Focus”. On this layer, I applied a Gaussian Blur (Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur) of 50 pixels. Then I changed the layer blending mode to “Screen”, and lowered its opacity to 60%.

If it looks too bright, you can try duplicating the blurred layer, changing the new layer’s blending mode to “Multiply”, and adjusting its opacity until it looks just right.

4. Film Grain – This was simply done by using the Noise filter (Filter -> Noise -> Add Noise), setting the noise distribution to Gaussian, 3%. Anything higher than that, and the grain loses its pleasing subtlety and becomes a nuisance.

5. Vignetting – The darkened corners add a bit of character, as if the shot was taken with a Holga (or any lens that does not fully cover the film/sensor). Photoshop has a filter designed to remove these, but you can actually add them. Simply go to Filter -> Distort -> Lens Correction. Under “Vignette”, adjust the “Darken/Lighten” controls to darken/lighten the corners, and the “Midpoint” controls to increase or decrease the width of the image’s corners.

These are actually fairly simple changes in Photoshop that can breathe new life into old images (this one was taken last summer). The trick is knowing what each of the filters and image adjustment layers do so you can improvise, and figure out what needs to be done to match your imagination with what’s on the screen.

Is it a painting? A photograph? A photograph of a painting? I personally think this is the most unique image I’ve ever taken – the blurred flower petals (yes that’s what they are) look like soft brush strokes on canvas. Not our usual idea of how a photograph should be (sharp and in focus), this picture reminds me of the efforts of pictorialists, who believed that photography should emulate painting.

But unlike so many of their efforts, no soft-focus lenses or special filters were used. Heck, I didn’t even Photoshop this, other than adjusting exposure and contrast. The technique’s not an exact science, but here are a few things that contributed to this effect.

First, I used a very small aperture: f/25 (anything smaller than f/16 should do). At such tiny apertures, diffraction effects (from light entering an extremely small area) are clearly visible on the image.

Secondly, I used a very high ISO (at least 1600, 6400 in the image above). Because this image was shot at night, with a very small aperture, I needed to push the ISO to get a shutter speed less than ten seconds – the longest shutter speed I’m comfortable hand-holding. Plus, high ISOs add a nice grainy effect, which I think enhances the picture.

Thirdly, I shot with a Nikon VR (Vibration Reduction) lens. Without its stabilizing effect, the flower’s shape would be unrecognizable; the whole shot would be a blurry mess. Of course, there is no way a VR lens can make a ten second handheld exposure sharp, but this is not the point. The corrective power of VR helps the flower keep some of its form through the long exposure. Canon users can use their IS lenses, of course.

Creative photography is a fusion of technical knowledge, experimentation, and artistic vision. Artistic vision to visualize a interesting image, experimentation to try new techniques, and technical knowledge to understand why they work. Keep shooting and you’ll never know what you’ll find.

I’ve been told by various Manhattanites that my neighborhood resembles a quiet country village. In Queens, no less. Still, I can’t help but to be pleasantly shocked and amused by some of the wildlife that calls my backyard home. For instance, I was taking out the trash when I ran into this critter. The above photo is only a slight exaggeration – he (she?) was pretty big! The web was about half the size of a newspaper, spun in the corner of the outside of our screen porch – I nearly ran right into it on my way back inside.

Charlotte didn’t look like she was going anywhere, so I grabbed my D40 and flash, taking careful aim. I actually not a fan of bugs – I don’t run screaming like certain other…female friends I know, but I usually keep my distance. This turned out to be another case where my love of photography overrode my natural apprehension.

Who knew the camera could make me a brave man?

I begin with a quick disclaimer: Though I’ve been taking casual snapshots for years, I myself am very new to serious photography. How new? If you browse to the end of my Flickr photostream, you’ll notice that the first shot I considered good enough to upload was taken a little over a year ago. Not long after that defining photo, I bought a dSLR, a stack of photography books, and threw myself into the craft with an abandon which had some people questioning my sanity!

To this day, I don’t really consider myself an Ansel Adams or Cartier-Bresson, but I do believe I’ve gotten better with experience; to the point where I’ve fallen in love with some of the shots that have come out of my camera. But of course, I didn’t get to this point without quite a few hard, expensive and/or frustrating lessons. Talking to other photographers, both in person and online, quickly showed that I wasn’t the only one who learned these the hard way:

Not Taking Enough Shots

Taking Too Many Shots

Failing to Pay Attention to Your Surroundings

Thinking: “I can fix that in Photoshop”

Buying Too Much Equipment  

And now, without further ado…

Not Taking Enough Shots 

Repeat after me: Storage is cheap!

Don’t believe me? A 4 GB memory card can be had on Newegg for under $20. On my Nikon D40, this translates into more than 530 RAW shots, or well-over 4000 JPEGs! The moral? Take as many shots as you need to get the one. And even when you’re sure you’ve got it, take some more for good measure– it’s not killing trees, putting mercury in our drinking water, or overcrowding our landfills.

Don’t always trust your first shot. Those LCD screens are great little liars – telling us we’ve captured something magazine-worthy when blurry areas, blinked eyes, compositional errors, or exposure issues we can’t see on a thumbnail actually make it a mediocre shot, or just plain bad. And the Universal Law of Irony dictates that you will realize this only when you get home and open them up. 

See something interesting, but don’t believe you can capture it well? Shoot anyway, because as the New York Lottery Dude would say: “Hey, you never know.” Some of my favorite pictures are ones I took casually, with no real hope of getting anything good.

Don’t be afraid to pull out your camera. I’ve been teased by people who’ve called my enthusiasm obsessive – only to marvel at my pictures later. Remember – photography is about expressing your vision as an artist, and not pleasing others – don’t we do that at work or school every day? I’ll bet my Nikon on this – you’ll kick yourself a lot more for the image you didn’t capture than for the shot you tried and failed.

Taking Too Many Shots 

“Hey Nigel, make up your mind!” you might be saying. “First you say it’s a mistake not to take enough shots, and now you’re saying it’s a mistake to take too many?” The problem is that sometimes we fail to think in between shutter presses. Ask yourself – why would I want another picture of the same subject?

A sports photographer might say: “The action is unfolding even as I take the picture, and so I’ll grab a whole bunch of frames to make sure I walk away with the best shot.”

A portrait/model photographer might say: “Slowly but surely, my subject is relaxing as the shoot progresses – the pictures are starting to look more natural. Let’s take a few more…”

Someone like me might say: “Yuck – she blinked her eyes. Reshoot!”

The point is, between frames something is changing – either the subject, or the photographer’s technique. Shooting multiple frames in which both subject and technique are entirely static is usually a waste of time. If you see something wrong in your shot, fix it in your next ones – don’t just hold the shutter and hope that everything will work itself out.

You’ll come away with a higher percentage of “keepers”. And it’ll save you a whole lot of time sifting through crummy duplicates later.

Failing to Pay Attention to Your Surroundings

or:

Seeing with the Viewfinder, Instead of the Eye

Our cameras are fascinating devices, able to isolate, focus on, and capture subjects with the twitch of a finger. I’ve seen a few people with their eyes glued to their cameras, as if a peep show were playing in the viewfinder. They stand a better chance of seeing, (and thus capturing) the next Kodak moment, right?

Not quite. God (or evolution, or karma, or whatever you believe in) actually gave us a far superior viewfinder – our eyes. Counting our peripheral vision, we have nearly a 180 degree field of view, and the wherewithal to realize when something interesting (and possibly photo-worthy) is going down in our vicinity. To use these gifts, however, we have to be willing to look up from the camera once in a while.

John Mayer fans should be familiar with this caveat – his early song “3×5” talked about  not having “a camera by my side this time, hoping I would see the world through both my eyes.” Well, John, I don’t think we have to go that far, but yes, involving yourself in the surroundings is always a good idea. Not only will you find more interesting things to photograph, you’ll enjoy your shoots a lot more. After all, there’s a lot more to Central Park than a few great landscape shots, right?

Don’t miss the beauty of the world simply because you were trying to capture it as a JPEG.  

Thinking: “I can fix that in Photoshop” 

Besides cheap storage, the other advantage of digital photography is the ease of which images can be improved. With a few clicks in Aperure, Lightroom, or Photoshop, you can eliminate red-eye, fix exposure, change colors, crop to fix composition, put Sarah Palin’s head on a pit-bull…Some professionals complain that this ease of manipulation discourages people from taking good pictures, since they can be “fixed” later.

While I’m no authority on a digital photographer’s work ethic, I can say from experience: it still pays to get it right the first time!

First and foremost, Photoshop cannot fix everything. Camera shake, out of focus subjects, subject movement, etc, are all extremely difficult, if not impossible, to repair in post-processing. Even if you are able to repair some serious flaws, making the fixes look authentic is another exercise in patience that quickly becomes annoying.

Secondly, do you even want to Photoshop everything? If you’re taking advantage of the digital medium as you should be, you’ll likely have dozens, if not hundreds, of shots by the time you get home. Fixing every one of them can take hours. Aperture and Lightroom have tools to automate this, but you’ll still spend a lot less time at the computer if you get your shots right the first time.

Photoshop is a tool for adding dramatic effects, compositing pictures, putting Sarah Palin’s head on a pit bull…creative stuff. Not things you should have fixed in-camera. And as our first lesson says, fixing it is often a matter of taking another shot!

Buying Too Much Equipment

If there’s one thing to know before getting into photography, it’s this – it’s can be a expensive hobby. In view of this, Nikon, Canon, and other camera makers try to design low-cost kits to draw in customers. Some of these kits are a great bargain, but it isn’t long before beginners find themselves up against their new gear’s limitations.

The first month I played with the camera, everything was wrong with my kit. The lens wasn’t long enough (it was a 17-55mm on a 1.6 crop sensor). The aperture wasn’t wide enough (Only f/4-5.6). It focused too slowly, and not at all in dim light.

With a little money in my pocket thanks to my new job, I paid a prompt trip to B&H. I bought a 28-70mm f/2.8 lens for nearly $500. Soon, I found my faults with it – it was a bit blurry at f/2.8, it was loud while autofocusing, focal length still wasn’t long enough…

Not long after, I returned to B&H – by now the place was so familiar that the bag-check guy smiled as I entered. I ended up buying a Sigma 18-200 f/3.5-6.3 for nearly $600, which I thought was pretty cool at first. But soon, I became annoyed by the way it handled colors in my pictures, the stabilizer didn’t always work, leaving some shots blurry, and the 6.3 aperture was way too tiny for any indoor work…

It was an annoying, impoverishing cycle. Instead of focusing on my photography and getting comfortable with my current gear. I simply blamed it, and focused on lusting after the latest, shiniest lens. That summer, I ended up spending several thousand on photo gear, and was entirely satisfied with none of it.

Furthermore, constantly switching lenses and equipment does your creativity no good. Why? Good photographers know their gear intimately – not in terms of technical specs and test charts downloaded from the internet, but how their eyes and their camera will see when pointed at a particular subject. This knowledge is instinctive, and will only come through hours of practice, and many, many, shots with your current equipment. 

Soon enough, you’ll start seeing pictures in the world around you, even if you’ve left your camera at home! As you expand into different kinds of photography, you’ll find that different lenses will give you interesting new perspectives. But it still pays to learn to make do with your current equipment first.

Falling into these traps isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you as a photographer. Not as bad, as say, dropping your camera in the Hudson or leaving your memory card in some bar in Hoboken. Still, photography became a much more enjoyable hobby as I learned these lessons over the past year – it is the start of working creatively, and less technically.  

For years, every time I watched the U.S. Open on TV, part of me smirked, knowing the action was just 15 minutes away from my house. And yet, it was only yesterday that I finally got to see a match in person for the first time (thanks Dave!). And boy did we get lucky – Monday’s night session at Arthur Ashe included the fourth-round match of none other than Serena Williams herself!

I could probably write a small novel about how awesome the evening was, but they say a picture’s a thousand words, so I’ll let my Nikon do some of the storytelling!

As usual, we were in the nosebleed section, but with every cloud comes a silver lining – I wouldn’t have been able to get shots like these if I’d been courtside! There was a great turnout, making actually getting to our seats a bit of an ordeal. One of our friends actually got dizzy, and had to find seats lower down (or so he says…)

Not surprisingly, Serena was in good form that night, easily defeating Severine Bremond 6-2, 6-2. That serve of hers is no joke!

When asked about playing against her sister in the Quarterfinals, Serena was frank in saying: “It sucks”. Supposedly the two are 8-8 against each other – a shame they’re meeting so early, but that’s the luck of the draw, I guess.

The grounds, as usual, were absolutely beautiful as the night fell. My friends were amused by my sneaking to the top of the stadium between sets to get this shot. Wish I had my tripod and all my gear with me for a proper night shoot, but the USTA’s pretty paranoid about bringing bags inside the stadium. Plus, lugging all that gear from the parking lot, up all those stairs would have given me a heart attack – sometimes less is truly more.

If you haven’t had enough, you can check Flickr for the rest of the album.