Click here to see part of what I did with my weekend (hint

Saw a very interesting Loop on FilmLoop tonight, and it turns out it led me to a more interesting project called Heaven, Earth, Tequila, and the website of the same name.

Working on a little project for an acquaintance who needs photo holiday cards to send out to her clients.  Just so happens I had a gallery of high-res photos I’d taken over the past couple of months that could apply, she had a few others, and the plan came together.  The business has a variety of aspects, so it was hard to come up with a single photo to promote with (i.e. what they did last year), so I whipped up with a little photo-grid layout, added a some text and their logo *poof* there was a card cover, just like this…

The fun part, though, is going to be having the cards printed.  Last year they used CardStore, where they uploaded a photo, added a message for the inside of the card, clicked a few buttons and there you had it.  This year, I think I’m going to recommend ShutterFly, which has a few design options CardStore doesn’t, and is just a little cheaper.

If you’ve had a horrible experience with ShutterFly for printed cards, I’d like to hear it.  If you’ve had an incredible customer experience or outcome, I’d love to hear that too.

Its just amazing to me how digital the photo world has gone.  Granted, digital cameras and online prints have been here for a while, but it seems like the average consumer is now the primary target market, rather than the techie or the afficianado.  Interesting shift… long way from the days I used to shoot B&W architectural photos at night in Vermont.  Wonder how all that would have worked if it had been digital rather than analog…

Broke down and bought the Tamron 18-200 Canon-mount lens this week for my Digital Rebel XT.  Its awesome… much better than the Canon kit lens.  I do business with Dennis and the gang at Stuart Photo on these kinds of items – I might spend a few dollars more than buying online, but the customer service is amazing.  If I have a question or concern, or want a hand sorting out what to buy and what not to buy, I always get honest advice.  They’ve been in Stuart forever (since the early 70’s, at least), and have an amazing reputation – way beyond the small amount of business I do with them.  If they don’t have it they can get it, and the price never seems to be more than a few dollars above the cheapest online price.

This lens should be a great asset on the next Costa Rica trip, but also for my work and for all around shooting.  With an effective range of around 28–300 mm, I don’t expect it to come off the camera very often.

Off to do a little testing, run by Lowe’s for some home project supplies, and then I can see a cerveza and pool duty in my near future…

Adios.

Here we are… its Sunday morning, and we’re steaming out for the last outing of the trip. Its a bright sunny day with just a bit of morning cloud cover in spots, which will probably move on and burn off before long. The seas are calm, and we just passed the rock outcroppings that ring Bahia Portrero, where the town of Flamingo is. We call the rocks “Seahenge”, since they look a lot like Stonehenge when you pass them.

On my first trip to Costa Rica, a couple of years ago, we spent a few hours riding around the bay and got close to the rocks. They’re huge - one of them looks just like a mountaintop sticking 300 feet or so out of the sea. Which, when you think about it, it is. The other rocks are smaller and dispersed over a half mile area, and when you’re close you can see all manner of caves and cutouts, some cutting all the way through the rocks, and big enough to drive a tractor trailer through.

The last day of a trip/vacation is the hardest, I think. Its hard to keep thoughts of “the world” from creeping in and stealing away part of the fun. Back to work thoughts, the stuff to do at home, touring colleges for Leeann… its all waiting for me when I get back. The travel day never seems as bad to me for some reason - maybe because I expect to be thinking about all those things. But, the trip doesn’t end until tomorrow, so today I’m taking photos, editing a slideshow of stuff I’ve already shot, and working on redesigning the Jungle Rules website. Should be a fun day…

In case you’re curious what we’re fishing on, this is the Jungle Rules. Built in Costa Rica, the boat belongs to Keith and Lauren Carroll of Stuart. Very pretty boat – great to fish from. Much more comfortable and practical for sportfishing than Keith’s previous Costa Rican ride – same manufacturer, but it was a few feet smaller in length, and laid out entirely differently.

Jungle Rules - 42′ Gamefisherman in Flamingo, Costa Rica

Its an operation to get a boat from Florida to Costa Rica. From Palm Beach the boat went to Fort Lauderdale, where it was floated onto a specialized freighter for the trip down. The freighter is outfitted with ballast tanks that allow its deck to be sunk, boats floated onto it, secured to the deck through welded supports and then refloated, drying out the deck/hold. Sounds freaky but I guess it works. A couple of weeks passage down to and then through the Panama Canal and the boat winds up in Golfito, Costa Rica, where the deck is again flooded, boats are floated off, and the freighter back on its way. Would have liked to have seen that maneuver…

Now that its down, Jungle Rules will stay in Costa Rica for a while - as much as two years, perhaps. Since the boat is privately owned and American flagged, it won’t be chartering in Costa Rica, but Keith will send down a few guests – he knows a lot of people through the insurance agency. Can’t wait to go back…

Its Thursday evening, and its been an exhausting but exciting day. All I can say about the fishing is “Wow”!

Today, as in our past trip to northwestern Costa Rica, we hoped to have an opportunity to do something many will never do. In sportfishing, catching a Grand Slam on your own boat can be a once-in-a-lifetime deal. The species vary, but in Costa Rica, an offshore Grand Slam is catching three fish of differing billfish species. The candidate fish are Sailfish, Blue Marlin, Black Marlin, Striped Marlin, and theoretically Swordfish, but they’re apparently pretty rare here.

So we start the day off by catching and releasing a Blue that Jamie estimated at 250 lbs. What an amazing bite - the fish’s whole head basically came out of the water, slashing Keith’s pitch bait and it was game on. After about a half-hour fight the crew brought the fish to the side of the boat, cut the leader and the fish swam off healthy. Got some good if not great shots of the fish jumping near the boat once hooked, but no really good release shots. Maybe next time, I figured.

Then, fishing slowed down like it has a tendency to do through the Noon hour. Saw a few sailfish, a couple came up on the teasers and we caught one or two. Then, around 2:40, all hell broke loose.

“Fish on the left teaser, left teaser! Its a Sail!” When billfishing in Costa Rica, spotting the fish early is imperative, as seeing the fish drives what rod & reel combo and more importantly what bait will be “pitched” or presented to the fish. With Pacific Sailfish running up to 150 lbs or so but Blue Marlin running up to or over 1,000 pounds for the luckiest of anglers, you can’t very effectively use the lighter tackle on the heavier fish. It can be done, but its much harder…

So, Keith pitches a bait to the Sailfish as it moves from the left side to the right side of the spread, bill and dorsal fin plainly visible. We’re trolling teasers at about 20 feet and 40 feet from the transom, so when the fish shows up, you know it. Its actually sight fishing, which is one of the reasons I love it.

As Keith is setting up for the strike on the Sailfish, two more fish show up in the spread, all over the teasers. Two fish are hooked, both on light tackle - Shimano TLD-20 reels and 20# mono. Having a triple on is a dance at best, and during the fight one of the fish was jumped off, the line retrieved and the rod stowed. Keith finishes up with the first sail, and then starts fighting what he expects is the second sailfish. All that went by the wayside when the fish breached fifty yards or so from the boat. “Its a MARLIN!” was the call, and it was game on.

Got lots of photos, but the fish stayed away from the boat if it was up top, and sounded about a dozen times. We were fortunate to have been fishing in only 300 feet of water, so the fish couldn’t go down where it normally would - like a thousand or more feet down if it could get there.

Marlin Motoring

Long story short, Keith fought the fish for an hour and a half, and on much lighter tackle than you’d normally use for Marlin. And, the fish turned out to be much bigger than originally thought - over 600 pounds. Got the fish to the boat, leadered it up to the transom and then released. Its hard to describe how big the fish was but I’ll give it a shot. First, from the tip of the bill to the tip of the tail I’d say the fish was 10 feet long. Around its shoulder, maybe 4 feet, and with big dorsal fin and bigger tail. Simply amazing.

Funny thing is, this might not have been a Blue, but a Black Marlin, given its markings and the way its pec fins looked in most of the pictures. It doesn’t really matter since we didn’t have time to catch a Sailfish, which would have given us the Grand Slam. Next time…

Man, do I love my Canon Digital Rebel XT camera. Its been an invaluable tool on this trip. I have to admit I still have a lot to learn about it, though. Like many tools, you can pick it up and use it without a lot of research or reading, but to understand its capabilities I really have to stick my nose in the book.

This trip I’ve been exercising the “Sport” program setting, which puts the camera into a fast shutter speed/multiple shot mode. Its worked well for shooting fish up for the bite or jumping - got some great stuff that way. And, I played with the Macro program a bit in Los Suenos, but I have to admit the manual features still largely escape me. Been years since I’ve had to do any “real” photography, so I think I’ll bone up on theory and practices as well as the camera’s features. Maybe even get back into the zone at some point.

Next trip down I’m going to bring some backup gear. I’m sure there are a load of guides on the Web about how to provision for a trip to nowhere, but here are a few of my thoughts. One, if you’re solely going to shoot photos, you need a backup plan. In my case I just threw the Rebel, the kit 18–55 lens, a UV filter, battery and charger into a bag and off I went. Not thinking to bring the 75–200 lens or D30 body I lent to a friend a couple of months back (for his Costa Rica trip, coincidentally), and not having enough time to get a circular polarizing lens (but thanks for trying, Leeann).

Next go around, I’ll bringing both bodies - the D30 just to back up the XT and probably to let others shoot with - and the 75–200 unless I invest in in the Tamron 18-200 lens (which I think nets out to around 28–300). A circular polarizing filter would have been awesome for in-water shots (the couple I got were OK, but they would have been awesome sans glare). Extra lens caps or a tether (lost the cap yesterday), maybe an extra XT battery. Couple of extra UV filters (in case I bang the filter/lens on the boat – nearly done that a couple of times). Probably covers things unless I think I can get away for a day, and then I’d add a light tripod to the mix.

All in all I’m very happy with the Rebel XT. I have a calendar project coming up at work that I used the D30 for last year, and I’m really looking forward to shooting it this year with it.

I’m officially a Rebel, in more ways than one (not including the Sweet Home Alabama way if you’re wondering).  The way I’m referring to at the moment is related to being the proud owner of a new Canon Digital Rebel XT camera.

I haven’t gotten to the camera yet, I’m still unpacking it, but first impressions being what they are, I thought I’d relate a couple of observations…

Number one, Canon could benefit from studying Apple in terms of the packaging experience.  I appreciate that shelf space is something a manufacturer has to factor in when planning and shipping the product, but their jamming this piece of art into a typical “squeeze all the space out of the package you can” box didn’t do anything for my chi.  The Apple experience is so phenomenal that its hard for anyone to meet/beat the expectation, but others do.  Tiffanys comes to mind, as an example.

Two – can we kill some more trees?  I can appreciate that you need a printed manual for the camera – and I want one – but the hundred or so other separate documents you include seem like overkill to me.  Consolidate, maybe?

OK, how about something to actually do with the camera?

Three –  “Canon – why’d you cheese out on the battery charger?”, one might ask.  First, there’s no cord – its a “plug me into the wall only” model (they could have done an iBook kind of thing and had both available, but just having a cord to put the charger on my desk would have been nice).  Second, it only accommodates one battery – in contrast to my D30 charger.  With the added battery capacity and improvement in energy management, I’m not sure I’ll need a second battery, but it seemed cool (and was useful) to have two slots with the D30.

More when I actually get to the camera.  Right now, I have real work to do.

Are any of you magazine collectors, like me? A magazine collector is someone who subscribes to magazines they’re really interested in, but then lets them sit around the house once they arrive rather than reading them. Until, you know, you sit down in a marathon session one evening or rainy Sunday and then just rail your way through them.

Don’t misunderstand… I don’t collect magazines the way you used to collect National Geographic. I just let them sit around until I can’t stand it any more and then I read, and read, and read, and read them.

Since I’ve succumbed to my technology/photography lust, I thought I’d start collecting (notice I didn’t say reading) a few Photo mags. I used to read Popular Photography maybe - oh, I don’t know - a hundred years ago, and thought it might be a useful source not only of digital detritus, but useful photo techniques. So I figured I’d subscribe to it.

The Popular Photography website looks cool, too. I’m trying to research some lens options to determine whether I get the Rebel XT with or without the "kit" lens. Who knows… maybe I’ll get good at this!