It’s been a while since I’ve made a post here at FormerAirline.com. I, of course, had been busy preparing for the wedding. So much planning, so many details, so many things that could go wrong, so many guests, so much love and excitement. But that’s all over now, and I’ll link to images from that special day soon. The photographers I had brought in for the event did a great job.

But the honeymoon is now also over. We had a fantastic time on the Hawaiian Isle of Kauai. AKA Jurassic Park. The purpose of the honeymoon is to relax and have fun, and that’s exactly what happened. Photography was certainly not the focus, however NOT taking some photos would be missing a huge opportunity to capture images from one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Not wanting to lug around lenses and bodies, I just took my Canon s90. However I did get a 3rd party filter attachment (the polarizer did come in handy) and, more importantly, the WP-DC35 underwater housing made by Canon. Wetness and water is prevalent in Hawaii, and if you don’t have some form of water protection you’re missing a whole lot.

These photos are just a little sliver of time we can hold onto.  We had a wonderful honeymoon, and now we also have wonderful memories.

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Recently I bought a Canon s90 (well I bought it after selling off some photo equipment that was going underused). The features impressed me, as well as its compact size. I hate fiddling around with an SLR and various lenses so having a compact camera with a zoom lens has an enormous appeal to me - however their image quality is typically quite inferior to that of an SLR. While the s90 doesn’t deliver DSLR quality - it is a huge cut above normal compacts that I’ve had experience with in terms of dynamic range, and low-light performance.

With my old SD850 it just had a certain look that screamed POINT-N-SHOOT, but I don’t feel that with the results I got from my Thanksgiving trip to Arizona.

Let me state here that America’s National Parks are my most favourite thing about the country. They do a great job at providing information and access to some truly magnificent natural wonders. We only spent a brief amount of time in the Grand Canyon, and I kind of regret that. We got the bright idea that we should spend more time in Sedona which, I think, was a mistake but there wasn’t much to be done about that considering our time and hotel reservations.

Sedona does indeed have some great vistas - but you can only really see them from your car and very few mediocre scenic points if you’re not willing to dish out the dollars for a Jeep, Helicopter, or Balloon ride. The place also smacks of touristic cheesiness. It doesn’t approach the awfulness of Niagara Falls, but it’s getting there.

The first shots of this gallery are of Montezuma Castle. It was interesting to see these kinds of old Hopi settlements and I was impressed - that is until someone told me about Mesa Verde. This looks like small potatoes by comparison. Oh well, it was nice fall day and I enjoyed walking around in the park with my fiancee. The middle shots of the big canyon would be of the Grand Canyon, and the rest are basically scenes around Sedona. I included some shots from my Autocord as well.

All-in-all it was a nice trip. We did more driving than we would’ve liked, but it gave us a little taste of Arizona and I’m sure we’ll be back to the Grand Canyon one day.

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The first shots in the

There’s a tide pool on a beach called Crescent Bay, somewhere between Crystal Cove State Park and Laguna Beach. I like to go there because I can usually find parking pretty easily and it has some great local tide pools. Not as rocky as the one at Point Loma, San Diego, but it’s nice.

Anyway, I’ve been going there to snap some timed exposures of the waves. It’s a pretty messy business and I always end up wet or slimy. But I always have fun.

The first shot in this series was done a couple of weeks ago. I was unsatisfied with it to a certain extent because I felt it was a bit underexposed, and I wasn’t used to the developer (HC110). So I went back this past weekend to snap a few more shots with Pan F Plus (iso 50). I got even wetter and dirtier than before. That’s OK though, I liked a few of the shots. However, I did somehow make a nasty scratch into the emulsion of the first frame. Luckily, with the magic of photoshop, you can’t notice!

I have a Zero Image 135 pinhole camera that I bought on a whim appearing soon. My fiance had better come home soon from the east coast or else I may buy more camera gear to keep my mind occupied.

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Every year I have to renew my TN status in the US. To do that I have to leave the country in order to do so. This gives me an opportunity to go home and spend time with the family. Photographing family is great, especially my brother’s kids because they’re the only children I can photograph without fear of somebody thinking I’m some sort of pervert.

I brought only my Olympus 35RC and a few rolls of film. In order they’re Kodak’s new Ektar 100, Reala 100, Portra 160NC, and T-Max 100. See if you can spot which is which.

With the T-Max I used a yellow filter I got online. It was made of cheap plastic much to my disappointment, and I think it shows in how it kind of blurred the shots to some degree. I’ll have to find a better one but getting a 43.5mm filter is tough to come by.

All in all I was most impressed with the Portra, I saw the scans come out and I said to myself that this is what film is all about.

Next stop: Las Vegas. What film shall I stuff into my RC this weekend?

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Yesterday, my girlfriend and I paid a visit to the San Diego coast. Our first stop was La Jolla, a very pretty costal town with a lot of expensive real estate and terrible parking. We went to the La Jolla “Children’s” Pool. I use the quotation marks because it’s no longer for children. The Pool is essentially a sea wall that was built in 1931 to make the beach safe for children to swim in. Due to the calm seas behind the sea wall, a bunch of seals took over the area and humans were no longer allowed to swim there because of the bacterial levels due to all the seal poop. However the sea wall provides a great close view of the seals and pelicans. There weren’t a large amount of seals on that day however. But there were a number of sleepy seals on the rocks.

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After our visit with the seals, we went to Point Loma in San Diego. We had a great meal at Con Pane, Rustic Breads & Cafe. It’s so rustic that they only accept cash or check.

At Point Loma we walked along the Tide Pools. A very rugged and beautiful stretch of costline. I used the Hasselblad for this. Maybe I’ve inluded more photos that I should’ve in the following gallery but I don’t care. Like I said before, this sort of rustic photography is very satisfying.

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