Well, yesterday Joel Wilcox and I got together with the purpose of keeping
the film manufactures in business.
I got up at 5:15am and made the trip over to Iowa City to meet him. I
pulled the Chevy Suburbabeast into his driveway and I think he was a bit
surprised since I told him I'd be driving the jeep. The Suburbabeast
worked well for us as my equipment took the back seat and his occupied
about 130 cubic feet of the cargo area. Good thing we have Olympus cameras
because if they were any larger, we would have required a school bus to
haul everything. <g> Actually, we were good doobies and limited our kits
each to a couple bodies, two tripods and a single bag. I think Joel had
another bag hidden away in the 30 gallon tuppewear box, but he didn't seem
too inclined to carry that into the woods on our hikes.
We drove a little ways from his house to a spot where we had to get
permission to trespass from this guy that spoke with his body language.
Joel, being the local, went and talked with him, but I was wondering for a
minute whether or not we needed to make a quick getaway. Fortunately, the
guy actually was friendly (just liked to scare people, I guess) and told us
where to park and hike. Unfortunately there wasn't any trail and
everything was a little soggy and overgrown. I suppose there was a trail a
generation or two ago. We got a few pictures before heading off to other
spots.
Oh, while looking for the first spot we went into a quarry. There were
these massive piles of "sand" which looked like cliffs. Zillions of
swallows were nesting in holes they made in these "cliffs". Really
interesting and we drove within maybe 30-40 feet of the closest nests. I
would have gotten closer, but I didn't really want to wash the vehicle
afterwards. The river was high (flood stage?) so we were unable to go
exactly where we planned.
We went to the Palisades-Kepler State Park and hiked a few trails. As the
day progressed, my kit adjusted. I started out hauling my camera bag and
medium tripod (Bogan 3001/w ball head) and ended up using my backpacking
tripod. Joel, who must apparantly be far tougher than me, was carrying a
3221 tripod. It wasn't even padded!
Joel was using this spotless OM-2S. I could swear that he must have taken
it out of the original shrinkwrap that morning. I vaguely remember mine
looking something like that many many years ago. In comparison, mine is
verging on "Columbo" status--especially with my duct-taped winder.
Throughout the day we did our obligitory "show and tell" routines as we
opened up our camera bags and pulled out yet another piece of Olympus
collectible. I guess my camera bag is getting pretty thin as I offered to
sell him something and he felt sorry that my bag was already down to
sub-minimums. I couldn't even con him into buying a varimagnifinder. The
ingrate that I am--I ridiculed his Sigma 21-35 zoom AFTER he gave me a roll
of film AND bought my lunch.
I did show him Vert and Toky. I guess he never saw a lens with a hunk of
bicycle innertube around it before.
It had been a long time since I went hiking with another photographer and I
really enjoyed it. For the past couple of years my cameras have been aimed
at subjects that "pay" and I've neglected nature subjects. If I could
recenter my photography back in nature (and it payed enough to warrent
blowing off weddings/corporate dodads/etc), I'd get an OM-4T and a couple
macro lenses and forget ever going autofocus. It was interesting seeing
how our shooting styles were vastly different. I never bracketed a single
shot, nor did I take the OM-2S out of Auto mode. I did goof and not take
the wobbly winder off the camera so my shots taken with the heavy lenses
probably had some motion in them, but I eventually migrated to my 100/2.8
lens anyway.
The Columbine were out in force and just demanded to have their pictures
taken. We did find Jack-in-the-Pulpit, but only one plant was suitable for
photographing. We each took our turns while the skeeters made great
inroads on making dinner out of us.
Ken
Kenneth E. Norton
Image66 Photography, Broadcast Consulting and Audio Engineering
image66@xxxxxxx
(515) 791-2306
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