Colombia

Iara is from Colombia, and I had never been there, and wasn't particularly eager originally given the stories you hear from that country. But we had a small break together, and decided to go for it, being able to meet more of her family, and seeing what kind of environment she grew up in was going to be very interesting.

There are many cliches about Colombia, and sadly for me, they all appear true. Of course, I could have just been unlucky, and us losing our luggage also had to do with our stopover in mexico, but wow, I spent more time dealing with unnecessary aspects of travel (trying to retrieve said luggage) in this 6 day trip than in my entire world trip combined.

We had to deal with a lot of different people in different situations, but uniformly got the "I don't care, it is not my problem, go away you're ruining my afternoon nap" attitude. And not just implicitly, but in your face. Before I went, I felt that the "banana republic" jokes must be referring to the past, but what I experienced, it was very much alive. Good thing it was just my luggage, and not my personal security at risk, because that appears to be organized even less successfully in the country (there is hardly any real police around anywhere, just private security people who obviously care more for their employer than for you).

Colombia seems like a very fun country. When things go well.

That said, I had an absolute blast hanging around Iara's family (it made me understand her a lot better), seeing Bogota' (all the way from luxurious, european-looking neighbourhoods, old colonial areas to very poor parts of the city), and some of the surrounding country side (we stayed at her dad's farm house, which was fantastic, waterfall showers in the morning included). There is quite a variety of scenery to be had, and some great food (fruit in particular, there are endless new tastes, which inspired me to create some new cocktails ;)

Utah!

So yeah, the reason these pictures are so much delayed is because I bought a new camera with a crazy good fisheye lens, which take circular pictures (see previous post), and I had to write my own custom software to perspective remap them because no existing software does what I want (mine can blend any combination of stereographic, cylindrical and rectilinear projections).

The cool thing is that with this camera, I can stop worrying about framing all together, since every shot takes everything in, then at home I decide what kind of projection I want for it, and how to crop it (anywhere from square 1:1 to panoramic 4:1 or so). You'll see some example results below.

Our trip, well, what can I say: this is probably the most beautiful bunch of nature I have EVER seen! ("beautiful bunch of nature", see, I should become a writer). The weird shapes and colors of these canyons appeal to me way more than the usual greenery, and the best part is, that, well, canyons are like mountains, inverted. So whereas with moutains you're always looking at them from below and never get a full overview, canyons you often look at from above, which is way more amazing.

So we landed in Salt Lake city, and took a grand round tour through the national parks of Utah (and a bit of Arizona). We did Canyon Reef, Bryce, Zion, Grand Canyon north rim, Monument Valley, Goose Necks, Canyon Lands, Arches, in that order. We stayed in cute bed and breakfast places most of the way, and managed to find some suprisingly good food.

We had already attempted to see Grand Canyon on a previous trip, and failed because we didn't plan the trip there well, so when this time there was the densest fog ever that obscured it entirely, we were quite desperate. Luckily it cleared later that day, Hurray!

Anyway, enough blah, this is what y'all came here for:

planet dalhart

Happy Fisheye Days Are Here Again

As you all probably know, I am absolutely crazy for anything excessively wide angle, both in photography and computer graphics. In '97, I bought myself a Nikon SLR Body for the sole reason to stick this manual focus/aperture full frame fisheye lens on there. I then proceeded the next five years to capture all my holidays and everything else in fisheye glory (some examples of that still on here). Life was good.

But then digital photography happened, developing rolls of film became uncool, and my beloved fisheye started gathering dust. I bridged the gap with many pocket digitals, and resorted to my crazy floorplan compositions and recently, stitched panoramic photos, to satisfy my wide angle love. I shot my entire world trip with a really crappy compact camera, and besides the fun panoramas, I began to get very frustrated about the terrible lighting quality compared to my old Nikon.

This couldn't last forever. One reason I never made the plunge to digital fisheye, is that digital SLRs have smaller sensors than 35mm film, reducing all very wide fisheye lenses to "kinda wide", which is boring. But recently I have been doing a lot of research, and found a lens that is so crazy wide it will be wider than my old fisheye, even on a modern DSLR.

So, after 12 year, I am back to distort the world with fisheye, better than ever. I present to you, the deadly combo of a Nikon D90 and a Sigma 8mm f/3.5 lens. Funnily enough, for all the progress that has happened in the last 12 years, the D90 is surprisingly similar to my old F70 body, takes the same lenses, etc. But it takes (fisheye) video! and has all sorts of neat digital tools, of course.

The lens is wider than my old fisheye, to the point that it shows the edges of the lens horizontally (see first picture). This would have made it useless in the film days, but nowadays it is actually good, since I intend to transform and crop each picture on the computer anyway (this lens has no zoom :). The idea is to simply take in all the information, and then later decide what part you will use, and wether you want it to look more or less fisheye-y. See second picture for an example what it will look like once on the computer, using my patented "semi-stereographic" transformation (which looks nicer than pure fisheye, I think).

As for cropping, my old fisheye would always be a 3:2 ratio picture. With this one, I can choose to have 1:1, 2:1, or whatever cool ratio, while getting more angle than the old lens. I can take those panoramas I took on my world trip in a single shot now.

Me & Iara are off to Utah for the break, so good time to test this camera out :)

On a less fun note, some soccermum yesterday wasn't paying attention and rammed her SUV straight into my shiney new car. Sigh, Dallas never changes. Oh well, gain some, lose some.

Arizona & New Mexico road trip

I haven't used this blog since my world trip, but I reckon whenever I have a bunch of pictures to show to friends, I might as well use it.

So me and Iara did a road trip from Phoenix, Arizona, back to Dallas. Weather in Arizona was fantastic, just over 70 (21 celcius), and there's some gorgeous mountainous areas in arizona/new mexico before you hit the texas flatlands.

But hang on, you may ask... how do you do a 1 way road trip? and what the hell is that car in the pictures? surely it can't be...

Yes... I bought a 2006 porsche cayman s (doesn't it look less pretentious in all lowercase?)... the best deal I could find was in phoenix, so I thought it be the ideal opportunity to combine it with a road trip.

And no, I didn't buy it because I am a poser. I take my driving seriously, and I have test driven every possible alternative. I always thought porsches are overrated... until I drove one. This thing has the finest handling on the planet, and that's all I care for.

Also, no, I haven't struck it rich yet either. With the current economy, "luxury" cars have been in an even bigger free fall than everything else. This car is hardly more expensive than my past car, a nissan 350z.

And if you thought getting the car itself was crazy, let me add to that: my total experience driving manual transmission before I bought this car was maybe 20 miles. Now, 1300 miles later, I somehow got it home safely and am a bit more experienced driving manual (hurray for stop signs on steep hills).

In new mexico we drove through a cold front, and our nice 70 dropped to 32 (0 celcius) within an hour, and suddenly I was driving through the snow on mountain roads... a bit more adventure than I had bargained for :)

Total trip took us 4 days of driving... most of it fantastic fun... see pictures below: