I’ve been teaching myself photography in much the same way I explore new cities: I get lost and see where I end up. I start with some basic knowledge and then spend a lot of time seeing what works and what doesn’t.

This probably isn’t the most efficient way to learn photography, but it’s fun, and it prevents me from taking things too seriously. Writing is what I want to do for a living– photography is what I do for fun. (Although, come to think of it, this is largely how people learn to write, too.)

I’m much more of a nature photographer than a people photographer, and generally I prefer close-up shots to long distance. Mountains looming in the distance have a certain majesty that I’ve never seen recreated in a photo… not that this stops me from trying.

At Mukilteo, my favorite subjects were the birds and the waves. Since this was Puget Sound, and not the Pacific Ocean itself, the waves weren’t that high, but still– where a rock or a piece of driftwood jutted out of the water, there was a chance for some decent action shots.

Catching waves at the right moment is largely a matter of luck; I kept the shutter snapping through the action and hoped I got the exact moment when the splash was at its peak. Without a digital camera, I would have had to try and manually time it… egads!

Catching birds in flight worked on basically the same principle as the waves– keep the shutter snapping.

There was other wildlife, too, but it was harder to spot.

Looking in the opposite direction, the sky was an unusual color for February in Seattle, but nevertheless welcome:

Between Mukilteo Park today and downtown Seattle yesterday, it was a rather photography-intensive weekend. But it’s been a very writing-intensive week (and next week promises more of the same), so it’s been a nice change of pace.

If you’re interested in seeing the whole Flickr set from Mukilteo, here it is.

Our family lived in Tampa for two years when I was about ten years old, and much of my Mom’s family lives in the Orlando area, so I have a history with the state of Florida. That said, I don’t have any particular fondness for the state: it’s hot and humid, there are only three seasons (“early summer”, “dear god I am going to die”, and “late summer”), and so much of the state seems, well, artificial.

It’s tough to explain what I mean. When I drive through rural North Carolina, particularly the central and western parts of the state, I pass through series of individual towns and villages, each one with its own character, and each one usually containing a town center with a distinct history. In Florida, each town is indistinguishable from the other (often, it feels like there’s really one city in Florida, just with parts that are more and less dense), and no building that predates 1950, which the exception of certain parts like St. Augustine. In fact, most of rural Florida seems to be frozen in the 1950s, and I can’t help but wonder if most of the people who live there commute to the coastal cities and spend their days selling T-shirts to sunburned tourists and rich elderly retirees.

Maybe I’m being too harsh. But on this most recent trip, these impressions were reinforced when my Dad and I took a day to drive inland along the St. Johns River, to see what we could see. Dad had recently read a book overflowing with ornate language about the beauty and history of the river, and we were excited to explore and see what there was to see. The St. Johns is a massive river, up to three miles wide in places, fed by numerous springs along its length which are in turn fed by the massive underground Floridan Aquifer.

We found one such spring in a little green cove in a town creatively named Green Cove Springs. It flows at a rate of something like 1500 gallons a minute, which sounds impressive until you read the guidebook and discover that it’s less than half of what the rate was when the area was first settled. (Humans, it seems, are taking a toll on the Aquifer.) The water flowed about a hundred feet along a clear, peaceful creek that smelled strongly of natural sulfur, then emptied into the massive river.

Our goal for the day was the town of Welaka, about eighty or ninety miles south of Jacksonville. The guidebook described it as being located on a high bluff which overlooked the river, but when we got there there no evidence of a bluff, except for one place we could see where the ground rose maybe ten feet as it gradually sloped upward away from the river. I suppose ten feet is what counts for a high bluff around here– heck, the highest point in the entire state of Florida is only 345 feet above sea level. Even here, well away from the coast, the river was still a good half-mile wide, and amidst the 1950s architecture and mobile homes were plenty of decaying boats, sitting in old, rusty, broken-down boat docks that had apparently not been visited by humans since Ronald Reagan was president.

Feeling a bit let down, we drove back along the coast road, and consoled ourselves by staring at the miles upon miles of multi-million dollar mansions, immaculately kept but somehow even more devoid of personality that the miles upon miles of identical semi-rural towns that we had passed on the way down. Ah, the two sides of Florida.

Despite our underwhelming attempt at exploration, I still had a good trip. In the evening on the day I arrived, there was a cold snap, which meant the humidity faded and the temperatures were in the upper 70s for the most of the time I was there– perfect weather. I walked along the beach, dipped my feet in the still-cold Atlantic Ocean, had a few days of quiet time, and got to meet my stepsister and her husband, both of whom were great. So all in all, a good trip. I’m even the sort of weird person who can enjoy an 8-hour drive, as long as I have plenty of music and podcasts. But sorry, Florida, I’m still not a fan.

Two weeks ago I dusted off my backpacking gear, which has sat unused for over a year, and went backpacking on Shackleford Banks, a little island on the southern edge of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. It’s only about nine miles long by half a mile wide (if that), but it’s a cool little island.

Among other things, the island is home to a population of about 130 wild horses. No one knows exactly how they got there, although one of the more popular tales is that they’re descended from horses that survived a Spanish shipwreck, back in the 1600s or earlier.

The plan was to get ferried across to the island, hike along the beach a mile or so, then set up camp and spent the rest of the day exploring. That part went pretty much according to plan; it was a beautiful day, and the temperature was in the 50s. Pretty nice, considering just a couple weeks before we had a really bad cold snap that sent temperatures into the twenties and teens. So we set up camp behind the dunes, in a nice flat area of scrub brush, and set off down the beach.

The beach was almost empty, except for a few fishermen casting their lines from shore, and even they disappeared as we walked further down the island. My favorite part of the whole trip may have been the massive number of sea shells that littered the beach; there were piles of them freshly washed up, and more conch shells than I’ve ever seen. Most of those were broken, although even the broken ones were pretty in their own artistic-looking ways. Inland from the beach, separated from the pounding surf by a line of high dunes, little patches of forest and scrub brush were able to grow. We saw plenty of wild horses roaming here, and as it got late and we began to make our way back to camp, there were dolphins jumping twenty or three feet offshore, seemingly entire pods of them moving down the coastline and accompanying us the whole way back.

Things got more interesting during the night. Rain was expected, but we were prepared for it; what we weren’t prepared for was to wake up the next morning and find that a storm was incoming, with possible lightning and wind gusts of up to 45 miles an hour. Needless to say, it was a long morning; about half the tents didn’t stay up in the wind, and of those that did stay up, at least one had to be moved when about two-thirds of our campsite slowly transformed into marshland. Luckily, this was all around 9 or 10 am, so it was light and we were pretty well awake. My tent is an ultralight tent, and was one of the ones that didn’t survive, so I put on warm clothes, my rain gear and went for a walk. Heading inland, we found a nice area behind some trees that was pretty well sheltered from the wind. In retrospect, it would have made a nice campsite.

Finally, the rain stopped, and not long after, the sky cleared. We had a sunny walk back to the ferry point, where we were picked up about noon, and after lunch in Morehead City, headed home…the trip was sandy and wet, but fun.

I like getting away from civilization, and I don’t mean little day hikes into a patch of forest in the middle of the city (although those can be nice, too). I mean backpacking in and setting up camp, someplace where you can actually see the stars at night (we probably would have been able to on this trip, if not for the rain), and where you’re really out away from civilization and amidst nature. It’s a great way to focus your mind on something different and get a release from the mundanity of day-to-day work (which has been threatening to overwhelm me lately… stupid deadlines). I’ll definitely be doing more of this in the near future.

Actually… I can’t complain. Despite my Australia trip earlier this year, I had a lot of vacation time leftover at work, so I took the entire week of Christmas off. I’m just bitter today; having to go back to work after a long break does that to me.

It was a fun break from work, although they always seem too short in retrospect. I didn’t get as much writing done as I had hoped, but that’s mainly because I took a road trip instead. I knew I would have to be back in town for Christmas, but I still had a few days of my own to play with, so I loaded plenty of music onto my new Droid and hit the road. This wasn’t just a spontaneous, random trip: the idea had actually been bouncing around in my head for a few weeks. And I didn’t drive just anywhere; I had a specific destination in mind, namely, the Outer Banks.

For those of you not familiar with North Carolina geography, the Outer Banks are a series of barrier islands that run along the coast. You can access them either via ferry or road bridge (although certain sections, like Ocracoke Island, are only accessible via ferry).

I knew it would be cold, windy, and out of season– the Outer Banks are very much a tourist economy, and the more remote sections pretty much shut down during the winter. But the probable lack of tourists appealed to me, and besides, I had an additional motive for going. The ocean plays a fairly large role in a few key scenes in my novel, and I wanted to refresh my memory of what it was like.

Despite living in a coastal state, I haven’t actually made it out to the ocean since a trip to Florida in 2006. I wanted to get re-acquainted with the smell of it, the sound of the waves, the taste of salt in the air, the feel of the sand between my toes… maybe not the feel of the water, though. That would be pretty cold.

I also needed to write a couple poems to use as song lyrics; in one of the scenes, a character from an oceangoing culture sings some songs around a campfire, and in my mind, it’s a great moment that connects the emotions of people from two very disparate cultures. But I haven’t actually written any poetry in years, and it doesn’t flow easily for me. Nevertheless, I hoped that by actually being at the ocean, I could get the ol’ brain cells firing.

It sort of worked. I jotted down occasional bits of imagery or description that came to me; I didn’t get any full poems written, but at least I have some starting points.

I also realized that part of the prologue, which I’m currently editing, rests on an invalid assumption. See, I had this image in my mind of the waves crashing one at a time. Wave crash. Silence. Wave crash. Silence. That repeating sequence of noise and silence was a key part of the scene, but when I stood on the beach, listening to the waves, I remembered that, in reality… the noise is pretty constant. Sure, you can pick out the sound of individual waves if you’re right by the water, but even then it’s really just a constant roar of water, punctuated at irregular intervals by crashing waves.

It’s amazing the sort of things that can slip your mind during the carefree crazy days of NaNoWriMo.

Other than that, I mainly just spent a couple days exploring. I spent the night in an oceanfront hotel that was so quiet I startled the desk clerk, who must have jumped a foot out of her chair when I walked in. After that, it took her a few minutes to figure out which buildings had heat and which didn’t, and she spent several minutes explaining how all the restaurants were closed, except for one greasy pizza and seafood joint. On the bright side, I did find a nice little diner for breakfast that did awesome pancakes.

The next morning I visited the iconic Cape Hatteras lighthouse, and from the nearby beach I could see a massive pod of dolphins swimming maybe fifty feet offshore. There were also quite a few crazy surfers catching waves (at least they had wetsuits). After that, I hopped the ferry to Ocracoke Island, found some hiking trails, and went for a walk on a deserted beach. It was fun, albeit cold and windy, and even though I didn’t get much writing done, I don’t regret having a little adventure instead. If you want to see the full set of pics from it, click here. (The Droid’s camera has gotten a bad rap, but I was fairly pleased with it.)

Now that I’m back, and Christmas is over, it’s time to get writing again. More on that in my next post.

Over the past 3 days I’ve been on a 25-meter boat with about 40 other people (in English units, this is “kind of cramped”), doing pretty much nothing but eating, diving, and sleeping. I could get used to that life, actually. These were pretty much my first ocean dives, so it took me a dive or two to feel comfortable with what I was doing, but after that it was a blast.

Scuba diving isn’t the most relaxing activity in the world; part of your mind always has to keep track of where your buddy is, and stay aware of your depth and your air gauge. This was particularly problematic for me because the air tanks came in multiple sizes, and by random chance I was assigned the smallest size, which was about a third smaller than my diving partner’s. This meant it was always me who was cutting short the dive due to lack of air, watching my gauge, and willing it to go down less slowly. Oh well. That’s diving for you. Some people snorkeled, but pretty much everything interesting was over 20 feet down– much easier to access with an air tank.

Usually when I told someone I would be diving the Great Barrier Reef, the comment I got was either “Watch out for sharks!” or “Watch out for jellyfish!” Actually, there are no jellyfish on the Great Barrier Reef (at least not box jellyfish, which are the scourge along most of the coast). The reef is several miles offshore, and the jellyfish stay further in… on top of that, it wasn’t even jellyfish season. As for sharks, they were actually the shyest creatures on the reef… they almost always swim away when you get close (close in my experience was “about thirty feet”). The best time to see sharks was on the night dives, near the boat, when you could just see their green eyes hovering at the edge of the floodlights.

Ah, yes, the night dives.. here the objective wasn’t so much to see cool stuff (although that was certainly part of it), it was also the adrenaline rush that comes from diving into a pitch black ocean 60 feet deep. Actually, it wasn’t totally pitch black… the area around the boat was illuminated with flood lights, giving it a creepy greenish tinge. When we moved away from the boat, we had powerful flashlights with could reach several meters through the water, and this was mainly how we saw stuff. Navigating via compass was the hardest part, once you were out of sight of the boat… luckily my dive partners knew what they were doing, because more often than not I got lost (my scoutmasters who taught me orienteering would be ashamed).

Despite the supposed dangers of diving the reef, it was those “dangers” that we all looked for. Sharks, stingrays, barracuda, moray eels… those would always provide the best conversation back on the boat, but they were few and far between. Mostly we got to dive around cool coral formations and see lots of different small fish (the most photogenic ones were always the quickest and hardest to take pictures of), and the most serious injury anyone suffered was sunburn.

So all in all it was a fun dive trip, and I was sorry to see it end on the third day, right when I had finally gotten the hang of ocean diving, and had learned to extend my dives from 30 to 45 minutes by being more careful with my air and staying shallow. I actually preferred shallow dives, not just because you use up your air slower, but also because the colors are better. Colors fade very quickly underwater, and red fades first, which is why the photos I’ll post later are extremely dominated by blue and green. Usually when you see professional underwater video or photography, the scene is either artificially lit (since if the light source is with the diver, there is less distance for colors to fade over) or are filmed with a red filter (basically a red-tinted monocle for your camera).

My only worry now is that having started my ocean-diving career on the Great Barrier Reef, other places just won’t measure up by comparison…. like starting your mountain-climbing career with Everest. But every dive is its own experience, and I’d love to dive in the Caribbean and see how it compares. North Carolina’s coast may not have coral reefs, but it does have plenty of shipwrecks, which is something I didn’t see on the reef.

That isn’t my main concern right now, though: having lived on a small-ish boat for three straight days, I’d really just like the world to stop swaying…

In this case, the name was given because the British officer who first met the natives here was impressed by how manly they were. More places should have adjectives for names: “Let’s go visit Awesome today!” “Nah, I’d rather drive over to Totally Kickass.”

Anyway, I was there to hike the Manly Scenic Walkway, a nine-kilometer (45 furlong) walk from the beach on the Pacific, following the harbor shoreline through various subdivisions a national park. It’s really a good way to get an idea of how absolutely massive Sydney harbor is. Most people who’ve never been here only see the pictures of central Sydney, with the bridge and the opera house, and think that’s all there is. I know I did. As it turns out, that’s just one little nook of the harbor, which is actually fairly far inland from the actual harbor opening. Most of the harbor has almost a Mediterranean vibe to it, with red-roofed houses intermixed with greenery along the hills of the shoreline. There are enough million-dollar homes surrounding the harbor to make Malibu blush, and it’s obvious why– virtually every view has me snapping pictures, and the water is remarkably clear.

The Manly Scenic Walkway winds along the edge of high-class neighborhoods, past marinas full of sailboats, then into Sydney Harbour National Park, a section of fairly unspoiled wilderness sitting smack dab in the middle of the bustling city, winding its way past empty, pristine beaches and culminating a climb up to the top, which gives you as close to a full view of the harbor as you’ll get. (There is no 360-degree view that lets you take in the entire harbor. It’s too big.) A lot of wildlife here, too… a Kookaburra sitting on the railing lets me get within a few feet, and several goannas sun themselves on the path. At the top, a black-and-white bird noisily insists that I share my granola bar with him, so I do.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a day. My only complaint is that the Welsh tourism board is apparently in charge of signage. (Not really; that’s an in-joke that only my Dad will get.) Suffice it to say, getting lost was a common occurrence, but hey, that’s what makes exploring interesting.