Posts Tagged: travel
June 12th, 2008
After last night’s glitches were ironed out by a moment of clarity, I can now happily report that my gallery of photos of Vilnius, Lithuania is now up and ready for your viewing pleasure.
I got off to a rocky start in Vilnius with a cab driver and B&B manager both ripping me off. That’s not so great when they’re really the first two people you meet in the country!
It was, however, smooth sailing after that and I gleefully wandered the fantastic medieval streets of the capital of Lithuania. The medieval old town held enough treasures for me to walk until very ugly things started happening to my feet. And then I walked some more. When I have a camera in hand and I’m surrounded by a beautiful city, I don’t notice so much.
In the interest of getting the photos online quickly, I have not yet provided descriptions and keywords for all the images. This will follow once more photos are online, but if you need any further information about any of the photos, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Enjoy the Vilnius gallery!
June 11th, 2008
Between addressing mysteriously non-functional contact forms on this site and pulling my hair out because of a massive amount of corrupt image files, I’ve managed to upload a group of galleries of photos from Vilnius Lithuania. There is plenty more where that came from and sometime tomorrow (depending on where in the world you are), there should be a complete set of my photos from that beautiful city.
For those of you who are curious, those corrupt files of mine are, in fact, my Baltics photos. All the RAW files that I had sorted seem now to have corrupt headers and Photoshop won’t open them at all. All these RAW files are saved elsewhere, but they are unsorted and unprocessed, so this glitch is more than a little bit irritating. What’s strange about it though: All the files still open in Lightroom. I guess I’ll be learning that app pretty quickly! So, the data is all there - it’s just some messed up header or something that’s preventing the files from opening.
The files seem to have gotten corrupted when I (and apparently, this was a foolish mistake) renamed my folder from “Baltics” to “Baltics sorted.” After that, every RAW file in there got sick.
I don’t know if this is related to the problems people are experiencing with OS 10.5.3 and Photoshop CS3, but it seems like it might be the case (even though I wasn’t saving remotely). Either way, for all you users out there who have this combination of OS and software: back up now! Now!
To top it all off, since the forms on my site aren’t working, (cross your fingers for a good reply from my host!), even if someone goes to my contact page and mails me a miracle fix, I won’t get the message! Best to leave it in the comments. Any happy thoughts are welcome too.
Update: Why didn’t anyone tell me to update my Camera RAW plugin? That fixed it all up. No corrupt files, just a messed up plugin. Too bad I panicked when I saw my files wouldn’t open and immediately assumed they were corrupted. Rookie mistake.
Oh well. All’s well that end’s well!
May 22nd, 2008
I’m back from my trip to the Baltics and I had a blast. My backlog of photos to be processed just got that much bigger…
But of course, I’m not here in Manchester for long. Tomorrow, I’m heading off to Calgary, my former home. I have a week there where I anticipate a much more relaxed than my trip to the Baltics. A lot of putting my feet up and visiting with family and friends is on the agenda.
In between heavy doses of relaxing, I probably won’t be able to resist the lure of my new photos and I’ll start working on them. Hopefully, they’ll start trickling onto the site sooner than later.
Just wish my ailing back luck on the long trip over the ocean! It was bad enough today to keep me off work, so I’m a little bit angry with it and it has to do some kissing up to me. I’ve asked it to play nicely while I go on holiday and I will reward it by not lifting anything heavy for a week (except large quantities of food into my mouth).
May 2nd, 2008
As of May 3rd, I will be away from home and travelling through the Baltic states. I begin my journey in Vilnius, Lithuania, then I head North through Latvia and, last but not least, I visit Estonia. I will depart from Tallinn and return home to Manchester on May 19th.
Once home, however, I won’t be staying long. After days after returning to my current home, I will be visiting my former home, Calgary. From May 24th to June 1st, I’ll be doing some catching up with friends and family and maybe even relaxing a little bit. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to both trips.
With these trips in mind, if you are interested in licensing any images from me, responses will be slower than usual and I expect I won’t be able to deliver digital files until I’m back in Manchester. If your project is on a tight deadline, you can find a large amount of my images through Alamy.
I hope your month of May looks as promising as mine!
March 14th, 2008
It’s time to continue some travels through Asia. When last I left you, we were in Ayuthaya. Well, we’re still there with the latest batch of photos to be added to the gallery.
This time I have uploaded photos of Wat Phra Ram, another of the fine temple ruins in the centre of the city. Go have a look!
February 23rd, 2008
One year ago today, I left my hometown of Calgary, Alberta, Canada to move to Manchester, England. It’s a Maniversary! I’ve made some great new friends, had some fantastic times and learned a ton. I’m happy to be entering another year here in sunny Manchester.
Cheers to everyone who has made this a good year. And another cheers to those friends of mine spread around the world - I miss you all and we’d be happy to have visitors in the Sawchuk manor.
January 1st, 2008
If you’re a photographer working in (or passing through) the US, you may want to take a look at this post on Chase Jarvis’ blog to find out more about a new regulation that has just gone into effect in the United States regarding the transportation of Lithium-ion batteries (the kind that may power cameras, flashes, laptops, etc.).
Long story short, there are now limits to how many spares you can carry and you will likely have to carry them in your carry-on baggage. The rationale behind this change is that if the batteries catch fire, they can potentially burn hot enough that the fire extinguishers in the baggage compartment may be insufficient to put out the fire and there are better systems in place in the cabin to handle such occurrences.
Flyingwithfish.com has some more information here and also has an interesting suggestion on how to carry more spares here: if the battery is installed it is not considered a spare. If the battery is in a charger, it is considered ‘installed.’ This may or may not get you through security with an extra battery or two, but it’s an interesting thought.
January 1st, 2008
Continuing on with more photos from Ayutthaya, today, I present you with a small selection of photos of the reclining Buddha of Wat Lokaya Sutha. Not much remains of the temple, but the Buddha is still an impressive sight. Each toe on the statue is larger than your head (tickling him does nothing in case you were wondering - he has achieved enlightenment after all).
See more photos here.
December 30th, 2007
In a constant struggle to organize, process, keyword and upload the thousands of pictures I have from Asia that still haven’t seen the light of day, I have made a small bit of progress by uploading a gallery of photos of Wat Phra Si Sanphet, the largest temple in Ayutthaya, Thailand. Now that I’ve made some headway on this particular location, my hope is that I can continue to upload more photos of the city’s many beautiful temples.
Ayutthaya is a wondrous place. The city cozies up to the temples as closely as UNESCO will allow because, well, who wouldn’t want a 500-year-old khmer ruin as the view from their window? Even though the city threatens to crowd out the history, there is a lot of peace to be found with the walls of the ancient ruins, on the back roads between giant Buddhas, and on the rivers that surround the city centre.
It’s an easy trip from Bangkok, but don’t be fooled into making it a day trip. There’s simply too much to see here before you have to get on a train to head back South. Give Ayutthaya at least a full day - it deserves it.
More photos of Wat Phra Si Sanphet here.
November 6th, 2007
Seriously America, stop it.
This one makes me sad. The short version: It’s a story about a Japanese tourist on an Amtrak train between New York and Boston. While passing some scenery and taking some photos, he is commanded by the conductor to stop shooting. Well, not speaking any English and not understanding what was going on, eventually the situation lead to him being escorted off the train by police officers at the next station.
Can’t security officials can exercise their judgement about what constitutes a security risk? I suppose that allowing a gray area could cause some problems, but really, is a helpless Japanese tourist snapping landscapes from a moving train really going to raise the threat level?
If not, can’t we expect at least a little bit of courtesy or perhaps some effort at crossing language and cultural barriers? That situation didn’t need to reach such an unsettling conclusion for the photographer. A little patience and courtesy go a long way when trying to communicate without a translator. I’m willing to bet that a couple of hand gestures would have gotten the “no pictures” point across without a fuss. Make a camera snapping motion then shake your head/wave your hands - he’ll get it. And if he doesn’t, politely try something else until he does. An extra minute of calmly talking would have spared countless minutes of the police and the passenger in the end.
Diplomacy isn’t actually that hard if you’re willing to try. Especially not when you’re just dealing with a confused tourist who will happily comply with you provided he can understand you.
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