We were lucky once again, and caught a good cab driver when we arrived in Mexico. This time the mission was the Chacchoben ruins site, located about an hour from the port in Costa Maya. It had been raining all morning, so many potential site visitors stayed inside and hung around the ship. No way I was staying onboard with those ruins out there calling to me.

As luck would have it, the sky cleared a little by the time we arrived, and we had the entire site to ourselves. What a break! Ben and I wandered among the various excavated areas of the site, took pictures, and enjoyed the outdoor solitude.

When we returned, we still had time for a beer and a basket of tortilla chips before reboarding the ship. As we strolled to the dock, I noticed this local resident who had been enjoying Mexican beers all afternoon. He was standing at the shore shouting at the cruise ship. I wasn't exactly sure what he was saying, so I created the title to this blog post myself.

We're back at sea now, and today is a teaching day for me. More to report soon.

Technorati Tags: digital photography, The Digital Story

One of the hardest things when visiting foreign countries is finding a cab driver who can communicate and is willing to drive you around for half a day or so. After many failed interviews yesterday, Ben, Andy, and I found the right guy. Don't get me wrong, we met many nice people. But three photographers are not your usual cab fare.

So we drove off into the hills of Santo Thomas in Guatemala, and an hour later found ourselves in the Rio Dulce area. In a nearby park, we stumbled upon a family gathering... complete with a great sounding Marimba. At times, there were as many as four musicians all playing their part in the lively musical arrangement.

The entire day was enjoyable, and it's left me with a very upbeat feeling about Guatemala. I wish you could hear the music in this photo.

Next stop, Costa Maya, Mexico. More to come soon...

Technorati Tags: digital photography, The Digital Story

Diving off the impressive coral reef in Belize was the first time I considered shooting landscape underwater. Normally, as you can imagine, the focus is on fish, rays, eels, and turtles. I saw and photographed lots of beautiful fish. I also had a glimpse at a green Moray Eel and captured some very decent shots of a Stingray... until he turned in my direction that is -- which caused me to turn tail. (Yes, I read the news headlines too.) I couldn't find him again once the coast was clear.

Speaking of clear, the water was unbelievably transparent. I had long views of purple fan coral, giant brain coral, and a host of other thriving residents on the reef. I actually started shooting landscape shots, and on first review on my Mac, they look terrific.

But, I had to be very careful while working. This is a very fragile environment. Not so much in terms of nature, but very much so in terms of mankind. It's so easily to carelessly catch a piece of coral with a flipper while treading water or shooting pictures. If you're lucky enough to ever visit Belize, please spread the good word among your diving buddies: keep a healthy distance from the reef. Our cameras are good enough that we don't need to risk the environment to get a good shot.

I recorded today's photo with the Canon SD700 IS in a Canon underwater housing. If you know this fish, please post a comment. He's beautiful I think, and he well represents the community I was so lucky to visit.

Soon, I head out to the ruins in Guatemala. Stay tuned...

Technorati Tags: digital photography, The Digital Story

One of the talents shared by the Holland America staff is the art of creating towel animals. Each night, a different creature is waiting on your bed when you return from dinner. I've had the most amazing critters staring up at me. Last night, my greeter was and elephant.

The cotton beastie was constructed out of three folded towels -- one for each set of legs, and the third for the ears, face, and trunk. There are no other materials are used except for a set of paper eyes. After admiring the creation, I gently pick up my bunkmate and move him to the table across the way.

For those who want to learn the fine art of making towel animals, you can even take a class on board while at sea. Imagine the smile you could bring to someone's face when they come home from a hard day's work and are greeted by an adorable terry cloth elephant.

Shortly I'll be jumping in the warm waters of Belize and mingling with creatures of a different ilk. More to report soon...

Even though I have somewhat of an internet connection at sea this week, I don't have enough bandwidth to publish a podcast. So, I'll save the show I have on hand and add it to our line up. The good news is that I'll have lots to report from this adventure, including new interviews and photography stories.

So stay tuned for more...

I spent the afternoon in Key West Florida. It was just a short layover before heading further south for more tropical waters. Key West is an odd and interesting place. First, there are chickens roaming the streets. It's true. No one I talked to knew exactly why, but each just accepted the fact that there are chickens everywhere.

Well, almost everywhere. I visited the lovely house where Ernest Hemingway lived and worked for years. Apparently, the fame of this location is shared among the legend of Hemingway and his 6-toed cats, all descendants of one white Snowball, who once ruled the Key West mansion with an iron paw.

Hemingway and Snowball have long since departed this earth. But there are nearly 30 descendants of Snowball still in charge of the Key West property, and half of them have 6-toes on their front paws. Interestingly enough, I didn't see one chicken on the Hemingway grounds.

I'm back on board and heading south to Belize. More to report soon...

I'm on a plane this morning to Tampa, FL where I will then board a Holland America ship for the Western Caribbean. I'm going to have lots to report from this trip. First, our stops are at Key West, Belize City, Santo Tomas, and Costa Maya. I hope to find some interesting photographic subjects at these destinations that I can report back to you.

I'm also teaching a week long digital photography course with Ben Long as part of the Geek Cruises. I like this format because we're in class while at sea, then get to shoot when in port. I'll try to capture some gems from these class discussions and post them here on TDS.

So be sure to tune in this week to read the anecdotes and see the images from this adventure in the Western Caribbean. More to come...

Technorati Tags: digital photography, The Digital Story

I've discovered an affordable photo management/photo editing package that Windows users might want to investigate. ACDSee has bundled their manager/editor packages, and are offering the whole deal for $79.99 US.

The Photo Editor offers features such as: one-click auto color balance, auto levels, auto sharpen, or auto contrast; adjustment/filter variations display up to 8 different previews of your original photo; and how-tos that teach you how to be creative with your photos, step by step.

The Photo Manager also has a nice array of goodies including: auto categories that automatically match your photos into categories based on camera information like IPTC and EXIF metadata; print layouts reduce the complexity and confusion of printing multiple photos; and organize photos by date and event with the calendar events view.

With the holidays fast approaching, this might be a good gift to help your favorite Windows photographer get organized.

Technorati Tags: digital photography, The Digital Story

"The Kodak Easyshare V705 has a 7.3 MP megapixel, 1/2.5 inch CCD that delivers 7.1 effective megapixels," says the Photography Blog. "There are a range of image sizes (3072 × 2304, 3072 × 2048, 2576 × 1932, 2048x1536, 1200 × 900) which are recorded as JPEGs. The camera has two lenses rather than the standard one. The first is a fixed ultra wide-angle lens equivalent to 23mm on a 35mm format camera. The second is a 3x optical zoom lens equivalent to 39-117 mm. There is also a 4x digital zoom should you feel the need to use it. The camera has 32Mb of built-in memory, of which 28Mb is available for picture storage - it is not supplied with either a SD Memory Card or MultiMedia Card."

I've been curious about this little camera since it's been announced. Photography Blog gives it an overall rating of 4 out of 5 stars. But they do have a few notes about performance speed and image quality that you should read carefully before getting too excited about this stylish compact.

Technorati Tags: digital photography, The Digital Story

One of the most common questions I hear when teaching digital photography has to do with people wanting to serve their iPhoto libraries on the Internet. Now, thanks to Fastball Software, you can serve both iPhoto 6 and Aperture 1.5 albums on the web using the built-in Apache server in Mac OS X.

WebGem 1.1.3 is a nifty tool that you can download for free and serve up to 200 iPhoto and/or Aperture images. If you want unlimited photo serving, the registered version cost only $15.

Setup couldn't be easier. Download WebGem, add it to your Applications folder, launch it, open the Preferences to determine which iPhoto and Aperture albums you want to serve, set the limits on maximum image size you're going to make available, and click the Start Server button. WebGem uses your built-in Apache server and makes your albums available through port 9999. If you don't know what your IP address is, go to the Sharing Preference pane, click on the Services tab, click on Personal Web Sharing, and read your IP address at the bottom of the pane. It should be something like 172:18:1:4. All you have to do is add :9999 to that address, and you can view the shared albums on any Mac, Windows, or Linux computer. (That address is what you send to those you want to make these pages available to. For example, it could be http://172:18:1:4:9999).

If you want to make the full size version of the image available to viewers, such as clients for your photography, check the "Allow full size downloads" box in WebGem's preferences. A "Download Full Size Photo" link will be added to each photo page than enables viewers to grab the high resolution version.

Aperture 1.5 users can serve their images too, right along side the iPhoto albums. The key is to use the previews function in Aperture 1.5. Once you generate previews for the albums you want to serve, they are available through WebGem.

I recommend that you also turn on Mac OS X's Firewall if you're going to serve images from your personal computer via WebGem. To make sure others can access the photos (but not the rest of the information on your Mac), add Port 9999 to the "Allow" menu. Go to the Sharing Preference pane, click on the Firewall tab, click on the New button, add Port 9999, then turn on the Firewall. You can now safely serve photos from your Mac.

WebGem provides search (via keywords) and organization via your published albums. Users do have to use the browser back button to go from enlarged images back to thumbnails, but aside from that minor inconvenience, this application works great.

I think WebGem is one of those truly handy shareware applications for Mac OS X photographers. Who would have thought that photo enthusiasts would be able to set up an Apache server with a photo database backend in just minutes? It's a beautiful thing...

Technorati Tags: The Digital Story