Applepie

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Finally completed 1 week of cycling

My cycling season got off to a slow start this year, but I was finally able to complete 1 week of "training". Since I have been off the bike since March, my focus has been on rebuilding my base instead of working on any specific skill. Time on the saddle is more important now than speed. Consistency is critical, and "days off" to recuperate is crucial.

Here is my cycle log for the past week:

Fri, July 14th -- 20 miles, 1h 30m
Sat, July 15th -- 20 miles, 1h 15m
Sun, July 16th -- 31 miles, 2h
Mon, July 17th -- rest day
Tue, July 18th -- 31 miles, 1h 55m
Wed, July 19th -- 40 miles, 2h 30m
Thur, July 20th -- rest day

7 days, 142 miles, 9h 10m riding.

I plan on keeping a similar schedule for the next 4-6 weeks, maybe increasing my long ride to 50 miles instead of 40.

The World's Healthiest Foods

Along with resuming my cycling regiment comes the need to eat healthy -- check out "The World's Healthiest Foods" web site for a great list of healthy eats!

Trivia question: What fruit is this? It has a higher water content and lower calorie content than many other fruits (a whole cup contains only 48 calories), it delivers more nutrients per calorie - an outstanding health benefit!

.... Watermelon.

Good Luck STP Riders - I wish I were there...

Good luck to all who made it to this year's STP event. Wish I could be there...

First training ride...

I finally had a chance to ride again. After taking 3 months off the bike, I went out for an easy 20 miles ride today.

How things change, at this same time last year, I was in top form, able to complete a 200 mile event in 10.5 hours.

Today, 1 year later, all I could do was 20 miles in 1.5h. It is a long road to getting back in form, and shedding the extra pounds, but the summer is still young, and the sun rises at ~5:20 am every day!

I noticed that RSVP (ride from seattle to vancouver and party) is already sold out - bummer. But RAW is still open - 400 miles in 7 days... hummm

It is good to be back riding again.

Seattle Sushi Bars

The Seattle Times today has a review on the best Sushi bars around Seattle - Sushi patrol: What floats a "fishionado's" boat?. Worth a read if you, like me, seek out sushi restaurants in every city you visit.

Two of my favorite Japanese cuisine restaurants in the east-side are:

Kikuya - great for bento boxes

Nara - create sushi bar.

Black Rhino

The BBC is reporting that "The West African black rhino appears to have become extinct, according to the World Conservation Union"

Burke Museum: Wildlife Photographer of the Year: Exhibit

The Burke Museum at the University of Washington is Seattle is now hosting an exhibition with 92 photographs from the "Wildlife Photographer of the Year" - this annual international wildlife photography competition is sponsored by BBC Wildlife Magazine and the Natural History Museum of London and features nearly 100 prize-winning photographs in a broad range of wildlife categories.

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibit runs through September 4th, 2006.

The Burke Museum is Open daily, 10 am – 5 pm. General Admission is $8, $6.50 seniors, $5 students and youth (5 & up w/ID), FREE to Burke Members, children 4 and under, and UW staff/faculty/students

On the first Thursday of each month, the museum stays open until 8 pm—and admission is free.

Photograph by Cris Pierry
Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

Butterfly

Woodland Park Zoo

EOS 5D, EF-24-104 f/4L at 105mm,
ISO 400, Aperture Priority, f4, 1/1600 sec

High Dynamic Range (HDR) Images

NatureScapes.net has a tutorial on HDR images: "High dynamic range (HDR) in photography means representing the full range of tonality present in the scene with high perceptual faithfulness. Most HDR techniques currently use software to combine several different exposures of a scene into a single file that maps the full range of luminance at every pixel."

Mahesh Thapa has some of the best examples of HDR photography that I have seen -- he mastered the technique as is able to create fantastic landscape shots. Check out some of his recent pictures here they all use the HDR technique. While you are at it, visit his gallery web site for even more great photography and great examples of HDR at work.

Adjusting Capture Date/Time

Until now, I haven't found a Mac tool that enabled me to batch correct the capture date/time for when I forget to reset the camera clock to the correct time zone. On Windows, I always used Breeze Browser to correct the date/time, but this feature was lacking on every Mac photo tool that I had tried.

Of course, I forgot to reset the clock on my cameras since my return from Tanzania. I finally realized that the clock was wrong when I was reviewing some of my firework shots, and noticed the July 5th date. It looked like that I was going to have to dig out a Windows PC from the garage to correct my exposure date/time. Before heading to the garage, I took one final look on my Mac tools to see if anyone had added this functionality.

To my delight, Photo Mechanic now offers a method to adjust the capture date/time metadata -- this feature was not available in October when I last looked for it.

If you know your camera clock was off by some time delta (e.g. 3 hours since you changed 3 time zones), simply dial in the delta time in the Adjust Relative section.

To precisely adjust the capture times, use the Adjust Absolute controls to set the absolute time a photo was taken.

The only problem is that the Photo Mechanic software is not smart enough to realize when the date needs to be adjusted if a relative time adjustment crosses the midnight mark. For example, if I took a photo at 10PM on July 4th, but later realized that my camera was still set to EST time zone, the camera recorded the capture date/time as July 5th, 1am. Doing a -3h Adjust Relative operation should automatically cause the capture date to change to July 4th.

Breeze Browser does this perfectly on Windows, but Photo Mechanic leaves the capture data unchanged.

Oh well, I can at least manually force a new capture date now.

Chimping? Whom, me?

Oh oh, caught red handed! Chimping on Safari? I was just copying the "teacher"...

Photo courtesy of Steve Valentine

Check out sportsshooter.com for a proper explanation on chimping.

Tanzania - What did I see?

One of the many surprises during my Safari to Tanzania was the vast variety of photographic opportunities and wide range of wildlife. There was something for everyone: great landscape, flowers, lots of birds, big cats, huge herds, etc

Below is an incomplete listing of all of the animals we saw during our 2 week safari. (Note: * denotes animals that I was not able to photograph)

African Mammals (38 species):

• Bush pig*
• Warthog
• Hippopotamus
• Giraffe, (Masai race)
• Dik-Dik
• Thompson Gazelle
• Grant's Gazelle
• Reedbuck
• Waterbuck
• Hartebeest
• Topi
• Wildebeest (herds of 200,000)
• Impala
• Bushbuck
• Cape Buffalo
• Black Rhinoceros
• Zebra, Boehm's Race
• African Wild Asses
• African Elephant
• Rock Hyrax
• Yellow Mongoose*
• Banded Mongoose
• Suricates
• Spotted Hyena
• Leopard
• Cheetah
• Lion
• Side-striped jackal
• African Wild Dog
• Bushbaby*
• Vervet Monkey
• Savanna Baboon, Olive Race
• Savanna Baboon, Yellow Race
• Eastern Black-and-white Colobuses
• Savanna Hare*
• Cape Ground Squirrel*
• Grass mouse*
• Camel

African Birds (note: this will be the most incomplete section, there were just too numerous bird species to remember them all) - (41 different species)

• Ostrich, Masai Race
• Pink-backed Pelicans
• Gray Heron
• Yellow-billed Egret
• Little Egret
• Yellow-Billed Stork
• Marabou Stork
• Ibis
• African Spoonbill
• Lesser Flamingos
• Greater Flamingos
• Egyptian Goose
• African Fish-Eagle
• Black Kite
• Lappet-faced Vultures
• White-headed Vultures
• Black-breated Snake-Eagle
• Tawny Eagle
• Secretarybird
• Gray Crowned Crane
• Kori Bistard
• Crabplovers
• Black-winged Stilt
• African Dove*
• Fischer's Lovebirds*
• Verreaux's Eagle-Owl
• Pied kingfisher
• Malachite Kingfisher
• African Pygmy Kingfisher
• Little Bee-eater
• Lilac-breated Roller
• Crowned Hornbill
• Ground-Hornbill
• Crested Barbet
• Grosbeak Weaver
• Spectacled Weaver
• Lesser masked Weaver
• Red Bishop
• Red-billed Oxpeckers
• Yellow-billed Oxpeckers
• Helmeted Guineafowl

African Reptiles (6 species)

• Tortoise*
• Nile Crocodile
• Red-headed Agama
• Tropical Gecko
• Monitor Lizard
• Green Mamba*

That's a total of 85 species, and I am sure I have left out various others.

Probably the most impressive sighting was the 200,000 strong heard of wildebeest and zebras.

Serengeti National Park, Tanzania
May 31st, 2006 at 6:57am

EOS 1Ds II, EF 100-400 at 275mm,
ISO 800, Shutter Priority at 1/250 sec, A 5.6

Brazilian 2006 World Cup Soccer Team

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. The picture below perfectly conveys my sentiments for the Brazilian 2006 World Cup team.