Travel | Patrick Lynch Photography

Travel and Compromise

04. February 2016 · Comments Off · Categories: Philosophy, Photography, Travel · Tags: compromise, photography, Travel

Village rice terraces; a compromise photo

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” Mark Twain

What I have found, is that as a photographer, there are compromises that need to be made when travelling. The number of compromises increases with the number of people you travel with. The featured image above is an example; shot from the bus window as we were driving by. The photo required large depth of field, high shutter speed, which meant high ISO…Compromise. If I had been by myself, I could have stopped, set up the tripod and had a better image.

Sunset, a set of compromises.

The compromise is often around time, as a photographer, I need time to take photos, the others don’t want to wait, or can’t wait. Sometimes the compromises are with yourself; in the sunset picture the rest of the group was enjoying a cold one, or in the pool, I make the choice for the photo rather than cooling off. There were other compromises as well, no polarizer because of time and condensation. Not having enough time to deal with the condensation that makes the left part of the image soft.

I knew going in that travel would be a set of compromises, not enough time in return for having the experience. Compromise was forced on me in that my primary body was in the shop and I was using the backup body. And so, the list of compromises continues. There will always be compromises. Given that there will always be compromises, then the question becomes what choices do we make in the face of competing desires or goals, how do we choose between more than one goal with limited time and resources?

Rice paddies and mountains

With ‘Rice paddies and Mountains’ a different comprise; I was riding a bike with my camera in my knapsack, limited amounts of time to stop, no deviation from the route. Exceedingly well worth the the bike ride, and even the pack spill that I went down in. Lot’s of possible ‘IFs’, but if I was focused on what was not available I would not have been present for what was available.

Tanah Lot is incredibly popular as a world heritage site. In this photo there were folks on both sides of me and behind me all jostling for an opportunity to take this photo. How do we deal with others that may have goals that are different than mine?

Photography, like life is learning to choose and live with compromises.

For more pictures of Bali, visit my Bali Album

Tanah Lot

Too Perfect?

26. January 2016 · Comments Off · Categories: Philosophy, Photography, Travel · Tags: philosophy, photography, Travel

“Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.” Salvador Dali

I was sharing with a friend photos from Bali. He surprised me and said the pictures were too perfect ! LoL

Are these photos too perfect?

Everyday beauty, Common offering of flowers in Bali

Sunrise and fishing

Sunset

Rice paddies and mountains

I would argue that they are not too perfect, but rather their imperfections are not as glaring as the typical travel point and shoot pics. No, not too perfect.

Let’s look at each of these photos and see what might have been done better.

The bowl of flower petals, gorgeous bowls made every morning. In the photo the upper rim of the bowl is slightly out of focus. The red was more vivid than the photo. And there is a glare reflection in the center of the bowl. If I had been using a polarizer, the the colors would be better. A tripod and greater depth of field would have helped the upper rim. No not too perfect

Looking at the sunrise photo, a nice photo, one of the best from the trip. My timing was slightly off, the boat needs to be slightly more to the left. But worse, is that the horizon is not level. I should have caught that imperfection in post processing. Again, if I had had a polarize on the colors would have been more vivid. No, not too perfect.

The sunset photo although eye catching has many goofs that the trained eye will notice. First are the awful spots, worse than zits on a face, on a face you don’t get a lot of choice, in a photo you do. Also the horizon isn’t level. But there is another problem with this photo over on the left edge, notice the softness in the water? Our rooms were thankfully air conditioned to about 70 with much of the humidity remove. Outside at 90 to 100 and 75% humidity was a different story. The issue was, taking the camera from the cold room outside promptly caused LOTS of condensation on the lens. This needed to be carefully wiped away to take a shot until the camera warmed up and it was good for about 10 seconds. Again, a polarizer would have made the colors more vivid still. No not too perfect.

The water temple is nice, but notice the lens flare above the fountain? Taking time, with extra shading from a hat would have prevented the lens flare.

The rice paddy with mountains; see the glare in the water? That would have disappeared with a polarizer, and the polarizer would have made the sky darker more contrasty.

Conclusion, no not too perfect. However, there are several vastly more important lessons to be gleamed here. There isn’t really perfection, it is a journey as we become more perceptive to nuances. There is a prayer that I love that speaks to learning to live with imperfections. “God, I humbly ask you to remove all of my shortcomings that get in the way of me being of service to you” notice not all the shortcomings, some of the ‘shortcoming’ might just be needed even though we may not like them. Photos like life are not too perfect, they are perfect they way they are.

Travels in Bali

19. January 2016 · Comments Off · Categories: Travel · Tags: Bali, Travel

Much has happened since the last post in September, including a computer crash and a trip to Bali, Indonesia. One of the most powerful characteristics of travel, is its ability to allow us to challenge assumptions about life and living that we take for granted. When a fish is out of water it suddenly notices the lack of water that it never noticed before. The featured photo is of Tanah Lot, Bali, which is a world heritage site. It is a Hindu Temple site, but Muslims and Christians as well as others visit it in peaceful coexistence. Besides a being beautiful, the rock has a fresh water spring welling out of it. In Bali, temples are built where there are unusual, auspicious things. In our western way what do we become jaded to? Why can’t we have coexistence and cooperation rather than one up, one down?

On this trip, I went with Spirit Tours. Usually I travel on my own without the pampering that I received from this tour. However, more importantly, this tour encouraged me to examine my beliefs and grow spiritually as a result. In Bali, there are statues EVERYWHERE! Here are some examples. The statues always seem to have a cultural/spiritual reference. I guess this isn’t surprising; statues always seem to have this, or at least historical significance. The statues everywhere reflect the cultural importance of religion in everyday life.

Carved in the rock

Pool at first hotel, the elephant a figure of wisdom in Bali

Another character from the Ramayana, as depicted in Bali

Rama and Sita, in Bali

Gryphon in Bali

Similarly, everyday, offerings of flowers are made. What would our culture be like if we lived it with a spiritual perspective pervading all that we did?

Everyday beauty, Common offering of flowers in Bali

Common offering of flowers in Bali

Bali is caught between the old and the new. Tourism is 70% of its income, however about half the population is still rural subsistence farming, as seen in these photos.

Rice paddies and mountains

Otherwise a typical scene in Bali

Terraced fields in Bali

Village fields in Bali

Typical house and plot

Getting ready for planing

As a tropical location with all of the humidity, there are beautiful sunrises and sunsets.

Sunrise and fishing

Sunset

Sunrise

For more images of Bali visit my Bali album.

Devil is in the the details

30. August 2015 · Comments Off · Categories: Fall Colors, Locations, Taking care, Travel · Tags: details, devil is in the details, planning

ADHD makes details difficult, luckily meds make a huge difference ! Never the less, the devil is in the details 🙂 Several things have been reminding me of this lately; some post processing work I have been doing, and planning the Columbia gorge trip with others.

The featured image of the Canadian Rockies was originally to dark and the clouds were blown out. I had it on my home page after fixing the too dark, but the clouds still bothered me because they were blown out -one of those details I had not taken care of….. This in turn had me looking at other photos from that trip (honeymoon) and finding more. One of the other details that I found was halo’ing on the sky-mountain edges. This in turn required me to revisit several other photos to deal with the halos. In the photo below, notice the halo in the sky along the mountain top.

Canadian Rockies

At least for me, it takes time and practice to notice the details, (and usually a goof or two as well). The fall colors to the Columbia gorge looks like it is a go, and I was talking with some of the others about it. In the course of the conversation, lots of details started popping up that need to be thought about.

rain cover for the camera
wool socks because our feet are likely to get wet, and wet cotton is awful
towel for rain, mist (from sky or water fall)
alarm clock to make it to sunrise on time
battery charger
which rental car agency so that we can have 2 drivers per car
AAA maps
which flights
where to stay for Silver Falls State park

And the lists go on. But if there is a list, I am more likely to get taken care of than thinking of it, and then forgetting.

The grizzly below does not have a catch light in its eyes. Compare the difference in feel between the image without the catch light and the one with the catch light. The catch light is a small detail, but has a big impact.

Waking grizzly

Waking grizzly with catch light doesn’t seem as formidable as without; a warmer friendlier photo.

Everything in its time…

01. July 2015 · Comments Off · Categories: patience, processing photos, Travel · Tags: patience, Time Management

Escalante – Lower Calf Creek Panorama

Looking out the window

Decades ago, in grad school, I took a class on the economics of software development. In that class we had to read a book, The Mythical Man Month by Brooks, which is the source of the quote ‘nine women and a month don’t make a baby’. As much as I would like to hurry things along in photography, there are things that take time.

I think printers were put into this world to teach us patience ! For the last several months I have been having problems getting people’s faces to print correctly (landscapes to a lesser degree). I have profiled everything several times. I have checked and rechecked everything. I ran out of ink and had to wait for the new ink to arrive, a little better, but not great. Then I noticed that on one of the endless printer quality runs that I was missing the light gray swatch. Now it was waiting for the new print head to arrive and time passes. Finally, new print head, and voila (calibrate, and profile) – the faces are starting to look better.

Panoramas, although not as frustrating as my printer problems take time. I have 2 different programs that will stich a set of images together to build a panorama; Photoshop & PT Gui. The one on the the left is a combination of 31 frames. The one above not as many. The programs are relatively quick, but there are an interesting series of issues that show up when building panoramas.

-Often there are gaps in the panorama where there is not a frame for a spot. Then you have to fill it in with Photoshop work.

-There is too big a dynamic range in the photo, and so work needs to be done.
-There may be waves that span multiple frames that don’t line up that require careful editing in Photoshop.
– The is bigger than 2GB, and so is a .PSB file that is not recognized by Lightroom.
-It may be under the 2GB limit, and so can be a .PSD file, but the pixel count exceeds the current maximum pixel count in Lightroom.
-Once you have the file in a workable size, printing it becomes an issue on several fronts, the one on the left is 24″ wide and about 7.5 long; what do you do with that?

Having a big beautiful print is a great joy, but there are only a limited number of places you can put panorama. Not to mention the mounting costs….

Putting in the time to build and print a small copy of a panorama is extremely rewarding, but it is an exercise in patience.

To see more panoramas visit and let me know if you want one.

From Whidbey Island

Off of Conway Summit

Wallowa – Whitman

07. June 2015 · Comments Off · Categories: Travel · Tags: mountains, Travel, Wallowa-Whitman

This is a travelogue for Wallowa – Whitman. The first time I was here was in the late 1970s. My favorite uncle talked my wife and I into backpacking in this place that no one had ever heard of in North East Oregon, Wallowa – Whitman. I fell in love with the place, it reminds of the pictures of the Alps and the movies Heidi, and Sound of Music. The second time, I took my sons backpacking there, during the late 1990s. This last time was car camping as I only had Memorial day weekend, and once again, I see why I love the place.

The mountains rise dramatically above the surrounding wheat fields.

Wallowa-Whitman Mountains above wheat

This year, we were early, and the back country is not yet open as can be seen in the photos with all the snow. I traveled with my cousin Julie and her husband Pete (seen below). He is a willing model as he practices on his mandolin, and so photogenic !

Cousin Pete while camping at Wallowa-Whitman

Wallowa-Whitman has more to offer than spectacular mountains and camping in good company! Even this early in the year, there are wild flowers.

Wild Camus

But the quaint old towns along the way have a special nostalgic feel to them.

Old General Store

Union Market

Old Canisters

There are also some fun and funky places for coffee and other things.

Dragon in the town of Joseph

Oregon is a place for active people, and they are proud of it as seen in the photo in front of a micro brewery.

Bicycle Oregon

The set of photos though, that I am most proud of are this eagle who was kind enough to pose for quite a while as I shot these out the van window. The eagle was across the river.

Cooperative Eagle

See more photos on my website

Re learning Old Truths

27. May 2015 · Comments Off · Categories: How to, Taking care, Travel

“Repetition is a mother of learning”

Russian Proverb

“Live for a century, study for a century”

Russian Proverb

re learning about shutter speed & depth of field

A while back, I bought a Sony NEX 6 (Amazon). I have been learning the in and outs of it with sample photos. Or maybe I should say that I am relearning old truths that have been forgotten.
The first truth is that it is better to have a high ISO with some grain or noise than it is to have a soft or blurry picture. The top picture here of scarves is the crispest one of a set, and it is still too soft and blurry. I would have done better to increase the ISO decrease the shutter speed. In this case ISO 800 shutter 1/6 sec. Since I was in walk about mode, there was no tripod.

The on camera flash for the NEX 6 reminds me of ET. It does not work very well with the lens that I have on the camera.

Sony Nex -Lens blocking flash

That big black blob in the bottom left is the lens blocking the flash. I need to add an external flash . And from the awful (at left) pic of my lovely wife, that on camera flash is AWFUL.

The next truth that I am re learning is that smaller sensors have greater depth of field, which sometimes you don’t want ! An aperture of 7 needed to be much more open.

I very much do appreciate the higher dynamic range of the NEX 6 compared to the Point and Shoot.

Finally, re learning, that all cameras and all photography are a set of compromises. Each camera, each lens involve their own sets of compromises and that part of the learning / re learning is to become aware of these.

What have you forgotten that you need to re learn?

The day after….

20. May 2015 · Comments Off · Categories: Argentina, Preparation, Travel · Tags: learning, New Camera

Canon 5Dii w/ 70-200mm f/2.8, Sony Nex 6 w/ 18-104 with lens shade, Vivitar 285, lens shade for Canon

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things” Henry Miller

“No photographer is as good as the simplest camera” Edward Steichen

Previously I had written about the pros and mostly cons of a point & shoot (P&S). Out of that I did some research and bought a Sony Nex 6 for about the price of a nice lens on my Canon system. I am looking forward to experiments and trying it out…. Here are some of the lessons learned the day after.

What I had forgotten about is all of the other stuff that is needed to go with a new camera…

Camera bag of some form to carry it
New strap to replace miserable out of box strap that all new cameras seem to have
Spare batteries
Battery charger (it only came with in camera charging)
Arca-swiss plate for tripod mounting
SD cards
SD card holder (I have one for my CF cards for the Canon)
A circular polarizing filter, and UV haze filter for each lens
A filter holder / wallet
Nex 6 flash adapter so that I can use flash
A new large speedlight (possibly)
Adapter for Canon lens onto the Nex 6

All of this needs to learned anew. How to use the camera in manual mode with and without a flash. How to change lens quickly and easily. What is it like on a tripod?

Then there are all of the reasons for moving away from the P&S.

Better image quality, no more barrel distortion
higher dynamic range
Enough pixels that the photos don’t look grainy to my eye.
Decreased chromatic aberration

All of these things will take time to validate or learn. And it all takes time and practice. I guess I should not plan on shooting a wedding with the new camera. What will you learn the day after?

Using a Point & Shoot -Traveling Lessons

13. May 2015 · Comments Off · Categories: How to, Locations, Photography, Travel, Uncategorized · Tags: lessons, Point and shoot, Travel

Lake Traful, Argentina

“No photographer is as good as the simplest camera.”

Edward Steichen

I am in Patagonia (Argentina) for 10 days. I debated taking the Canon 5Dii, but decided not to bring it because it would be a tempting target for thieves. Instead I opted for taking a Point & Shoot (P&S). Below are my pro and cons around using a Point & Shoot.

Reasons I don’t like a point and shoot

No tripod – a tripod would have helped, even in the wind I could hold it down
It was windy
No polarizing filter; the sky has big beautiful puffy clouds that just are not coming out
More resolution; to allow for cropping
Sharper lens. There is a distinct curvature in the P&S images that is annoying. Lightroom lens correction helps, but it is not enough. (see the image of lake Traful, Argentina)
Can’t hand hold something that light in the wind steady. Yes, I could/should bring a tripod and put a plate on the Point and shoot, but the tripod ball head is practically as big as the P&S. A tripod by itself would have done nothing given the high winds that were blowing us people around. However, putting my weight on the tripod would have done better than me swaying in the 40 mph winds.
Lower dynamic range (see waterfall photo). This is particularly an issue when traveling when it is harder to get the morning and evening hours of low light that decrease the contrast. HDR helps, but it is not enough to compensate for the very high contrast environments.
Have to have higher ISO with more noise to account for the hand held aspect.

Reasons for using a P&S

Less likely to be mugged when travelling abroad because of big expensive camera. This was the primary reason for bringing the P&S versus the Canon big glass. If it is stolen, then less loss.
It is lighter and easier to use (not true) when traveling. Yes it is lighter, and smaller which is a big plus. But in the wind, and for the shots I want, it did not produce them.
Why take a tripod for a P&S (oh how foolish am I).
- With a tripod it is easier to take exposure bracketed frames to increase dynamic range.
- Not have as blurry a photo.
- Use a lower ISO that has better noise characteristics.

So the conclusion is….

I need a new small, doesn’t look like big glass, lighter solution. So, for the price of a single big glass lens I can get a body and lens. I got a Sony Nex 6,

Spring break

06. May 2015 · Comments Off · Categories: Philosophy, Photography, Travel · Tags: Prepare, Spring Break, Travel

“Spring is nature’s way of saying, ‘Let’s party!’ “

Robin Williams

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

Terry_Pratchett

For college kids Spring break is PARTY TIME! (sorry no pictures of cute gals in bikinis and buff guys), but for me it is an opportunity to travel and photograph new things, or try and get a better shot of something that is compelling that I am not satisfied with.

Campfire on the beach- Spring break

A destination during Spring break

What do you do with your Spring break? Do you give yourself a break? We travel during Spring break.

This year, we will travel to the San Juan Islands for our week. Usually we go to the southwest, but this year, Spring break comes late for us, and we are heading North instead.

What goes into travel? So much has been written. For me, I have to recognize my expectations; do I want to sunbathe all day? or ride a single track all day or something in between ? I am looking forward to getting great photos of harbors, coasts country side, quaint shops, bald eagles, and maybe some fishermen. Hopes include Orcas up close, and a good kayak paddle.

OK, so what am I going to do, to help fulfill my expectations? I have acquired (thanks Amazon) several guide books and maps. Now I just need to read them. Taking the time to read them helps me prepare so that I know places to go to get the shots that I want to get, otherwise, they just make the suitcase heavier. And then there is the camera gear. I will take the rain covers for camera and lens, as well as a poncho and rain jackets. Not sure what else yet (hum, not prepared?).

And I am looking forward to returning, refreshed with LOTS of photos.

Patrick Lynch Photography

Travel and Compromise

Too Perfect?

Are these photos too perfect?

Travels in Bali

Devil is in the the details

Everything in its time…

Wallowa – Whitman

Re learning Old Truths

The day after….

Using a Point & Shoot -Traveling Lessons

Spring break

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