Galapagos Wrap Up

Day 7 and 8 – May 30 and 31

We are home from the Galapagos. Our day started in San Cristobal around 6:00AM MST (8:00 AM EST). We did not need to be up that early but we just naturally woke up at that time. We had breakfast, repacked our bags, and hung around the hotel till our pick up time of 11:30 AM MST to take us to the airport. It was a short ride to the San Cristobal airport, were we waited for our 1:30 PM MST flight back to Quito, Ecuador. We arrived in Quito around 5:00 PM CST (6:00 PM EST). We then had about a four-hour layover till our flight back home. Our flight to Atlanta left at 11:30 PM CST (12:30 AM EST May 31). We arrived in Atlanta at 5:00 AM EST, were we had another layover before our flight to Cleveland. I tried to nap in the Delta lounge, because I didn’t sleep on the plane. We left Atlanta on a 10:00 AM EST flight and arrived in Cleveland at 11:45 AM EST. After collecting our luggage and car, we ran through a drive-thru for lunch before picking up our dog Teddy from my mom’s house. From there we had a three-hour drive home to Dayton. We got home around 5:00PM EST. We went to bed around 8:30 PM EST. In total we were up for about 36 hours.

Overall, it was nice to go to the Galapagos once, but I don’t feel I need to go again. If I had the trip to do over, I would do the cruise route instead of the land tour. The land tour had too much wasted time in traveling to ports to get boats and the travel between islands. At least on a cruse much of the travel between islands would occur in the evening.

If you plan on going to the Galapagos here are a few things you should know. Remember you will need a lot of sunscreen. Jim and I used one full bottle of SPF 70 sunscreen between the two of us for 6 days. You must apply the sunscreen often. They get 12 hours of sunlight; in this case it was from 6:00AM to 6:00PM every day. If you do decide to go to the Galapagos remember to pack a roll of toilet paper for yourself, since most of the public restrooms do not have toilet paper in them. Also, you don’t flush toilet paper in the Galapagos, you through it in a trashcan in the bathroom/stall; because their plumbing can’t handle it. When you transfer between islands (boat or plane), your luggage is search for fruit, nuts, seeds, sand, rocks, and coral because they don’t want species of any type transferred between islands. They will put a special zip-tie on your luggage after inspection to show it was inspected. They also have contraband sniffing dogs at each port of entry to ensure nothing was missed. Finally, if you think you will have cell service or internet, think again. The cell service and internet on all the islands is horribly spotty and slow at best. And, no, internet is not better at the hotels, we were lucky if the Wi-Fi reached our room.

I’m glad I went to the Galapagos; it was an experience. I personally don’t think I have been that close to wild animals before, or near animals they just don’t really care if people are around or not. If you get the change to go, go but do the cruise.

The Pumpkin Barron

On October 12th, I had the pleasure of working with the marvelous SunnyRae . The general theme for the shoot was pumpkins but with coordination on outfits with SunnyRae theme evolved into official portraits of an 18 th century Pumpkin Baron. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 1 Westcott Strobe 1 rectangular soft box 1 strip box 1 6x6 silver reflector 2 C-stands 1 light stand Boom arm Color checker clamps Sandbags Backdrop stand Rough canvas backdrop Pumpkins Rough canvas drop cloth Flowers Old trunk Books Letters Wooden crate Fake leaves Chair Tri-level plant stand The set up I wanted to keep this set up a bit rustic yet give the feel of staged aristocratic painting of the time. I started with a plain rough canvas backdrop then placed an ol...

Night Queen

On September 28th, I did a session with May. This session’s theme was designed around a Halloween headpiece I made a couple of years ago but never got to shoot. The vibe of the overall shoot was dark queen. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 2 rectangular soft boxes grids 2 C-stands Sandbags Backdrop stand Fuzzy grey backdrop Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps 2 trilevel plant stands Fake candles Goblets Fake flowers Black fabric Silver fabric Large Styrofoam block Dowel Rods Skulls Fake moss Dry ice The set up I tried to keep this setup simple in nature. I started with the base of a fuzzy grey backdrop to which I added a “throne” made from a large Styrofoam block, some dowel rods, and a piece of black fabric. To that I added two flower pot hol...

Belle Island with Central VA Cosplayers

On October 19 th I drove down to Richmond, VA to attend a Central VA Cosplay Photoshoot meetup on October 20 th at Belle Island. I wanted to go to this event because it was in an interesting location, and I wanted to meet some new cosplayers. For this session I used: Canon R6 2 Speed light Trigger 1 Light stands 24 - 105mm lens Gels Camera Settings: For this shoot, I was transitioning back and forth between being inside an old, dark, abandoned building to bright, sunny woods. Due to the transitions, my settings varied greatly. I mostly shot at ISO 100 except for when I accidently bumped the nob to “Auto” and didn’t notice, so I also took shots at ISO 2500, 3200, 4000, and 6400. The shots at the high ISO actually look fairly decent, and not as grainy as one would expect. My shutter varied between 1/100s to 1/250s with the most common shutter speed being 1/250s. My aperture varied between F5 to F11 with the most common ap...

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