This week we chased storms to Summer Lake Wildlife Refuge and spent the day watching birds as well as weather. The time-lapse footage is shot with iPhone’s app as well as FilmicPro and edited on an iPad using Lumafusion. This is the first movie we’ve done using Moment’s anamorphic lens .. really kind of like the wide screen look for these landscape shots.
Plotting an escape
I wonder if anyone remembers when getting lost didn’t involve losing cell coverage? The smart phone has become more than a communication link, it is also a navigation tool. How easy is it to just email the directions for Google and have turn by turn navigation to nearly anywhere?
The trouble with this method of way-finding is a matter of screen size, well, and the need for a cell connection. We are rarely on the road without at least one paper map. Free highway maps from AAA are standard, as is a USFS Forest map. And when there’s a hike or off road we also have the USGS Quad handy.
We love maps and have quite the collection. Paper maps offer big picture views that don’t exist on a phone screen, don’t require cell reception, and can hold pencil marks and sticky notes from past adventures.
Recently we added a handheld GPS to this navigation tool set and have been enjoying the planning process even more. With any GPS system you can track or set waypoints, making getting to a spot really easy. All of these resources together have made it easy to plot an escape.
If you want more info, this is a list of the apps and web sites we use regularly:
Gaia GPS – online and app to plan routes
REI’s National Parks – An iPhone app with guide info to national parks
Hiking Project – find and keep track of trails and hikes
Outlay – Nice resource for dispersal camping and you can get a free one year sub right now, this is also an iPhone app, but there is a web component
USFS Forest info – online maps and info about any national forest, we still get specific forest maps but this is a great resource for planning out of state trips
Rec Gov – Bookmark this link, it’s the place to make camp reservations
Garmin Basecamp – Specifically aimed at Garmin GPS devices, this is a cool piece of software to map out routes for uploading to or saving from your GPS.
Tiny Macro World
You take a picture to capture the moment and share it. The images hold a story, or at least you hope they do. We’ve recently begun attaching lenses to our smart phones and have discovered a passion for the macro lens and the tiny world it reveals.
You start with broad strokes or in film parlance, establishing shots. These set the stage to which you add detail with close up shots.
Macro photos give the viewer a very different prospective on the subject matter and require a different approach to taking pictures.
This tiny macro world shifts attention to parts of a scene that were always there, just tucked in small nooks and crannies.
It starts with a shift in approach to a subject. When you twist on that macro lens you are now going to spend some time crawling around on your hands and knees. We always shoot a variety of different images and then edit for the blog page. The addition of these extreme close shots offer punctuation to the story our establishing shots are trying to tell.
A whole new world lies below our feet. There have been some surprises along the way, i.e. the ferocious, gruesome world of insects AND a desperate need to beef up our flexibility exercises. But that said. we love the dynamic perspective this lens gives our photos.
Coming up in July a collection of macro photos will be featured in the photo essay.
A closer view, literally
I think the saying goes, “the best camera is the one you have in your hand.” For must of us, it’s now our phone. Paired up with the Internet, smart phones have forever changed picture sharing.
Over the 30 years we’ve been in the media, field production tools have evolved … a lot. Nothing compares to the shift that took place in just the last five years.
For blog images and YouTube videos we use a combination of DSLR and iPhone. This month the phones got updated and that gave us a much better camera. To this we’ve also added lenses specifically designed for smart phones.
Moment is a Seattle based company that started as app developers and their focus on mobile production tools brought about the development of a set of lenses. Three different focal lengths, wide angle, telephoto and macro.
It’s the macro lens that has really captured our attention. The shift in subject scale is a dramatic change to prospective. We are starting to look for photo ops a bit differently.
JQ started with plants and flower images and I put it to use on some aquatic insects. You’ll never look at a river quite the same after watching a caddis nymph harass a mayfly.
Better than boots