Great Quote

I just finished posting the river stuff, and I lay down on the couch to kill some time with the endless magazines that somehow make their way into our mailbox. I can across some remarkable photos in Wired by Rick Graves. He is shooting NASCAR with a modified Hasselblad which freezes the cars at 200 mph. Anyway, he had a quote that applies equally to freezing fast cars and blurring water and athletes.

"Failure is a necessity and a lot of times, success is luck."

Rivers - British Columbia

Lara and I flew in from Vancouver on Wednesday night. It was a great trip to Whistler to see Dave, Mom and Dad. Everybody came from a long way away for an unfortunately rare, complete Calver reunion.

Lara and I stayed in Dave's cosy apartment and our Whistler days were filled with good food, long walks or runs on the trail, and catching up. We filled his tiny living room with our duffel bags and my camera gear, but it was for me a crowded reminder to use the equipment that I lugged across the country. I always feel that some of my best photos come out of personal trips, and I was looking forward to getting in a river with David.

We scouted the Calchec on Thursday night and returned on Friday to shoot. The river seemed to offer a lot of what we were looking for ... reasonable access for David, reasonable water flow for a swimmer, and reasonably good waves for a kayaker. I was a little worried about the water temperature ... a chilly 5 degrees Celcius. But it turned out that my 5/4/3 with a hooded vest was the right suit. Good thing, because I would have felt cold and dumb with a thicker suit hanging in the closet in Miami!

The water level was such that I could crawl and walk through the river to a cluster of rocks where David could make repeated runs in his kayak. I shot my 20mm in a dome port but had all kinds of problems with water drops. No matter how many times I rubbed spit over the acrylic, the river would throw little drops of water up on the dome, and there they would stick. I really need to find a solution to this problem.

Things were much better when I switched to the 24-70 behind a flat port. Of course, the flat port is much smaller than the dome, but it also got rid of water much much better. It made me really want a flat port for my 16-35 instead of the dome and extension ring that I bought. (I have not been making the most informed gear purchases lately.) I shot the flat port on the opposite side of the river from where we started. There was a big-ish hydrolic that Dave could surf in and I could stand close to. This is where I got the best shots of the afternoon. I tried a mix of slow and fast shutter speeds, and liked the look of the water motion from the slow shutter speed, but liked the recycle times on the strobe better on the fast shutter speed. I had tested these shots a lot in Miami before the trip, but I did notice one big difference in the river. With a lot of white water and spray, I think it fooled the e-TTL into not putting out as much light. Yes, I should have been shooting on Manual, but that is a lesson learned for the next trip.

Anyway, here are a couple of images from the Calchec river. This was probably the highlight of the trip for me. There is a good feeling that getting into the water produces, and a good feeling to working with your brother. I was happy to combine them.