Note to Self: Stop Showing Off!

Cabo San Lucas is a pretty amazing place. Whale watching, margaritas, balmy weather, awesome food, friends and family, boat trips, you get the picture. However, I did leave out one small detail, which would be crashing your drone while showing off. I'm guilty. 

We were on an excursion to go snorkeling, whale watching, partying, and the like, and of course, I brought my new drone. I couldn't wait to fly it off the boat and get some awesome shots of The Arch, the emblematic rock feature where the Sea of Cortez meets the Pacific Ocean. 

Everything was going great, and everyone was having an awesome time. We all got snorkeling gear and mini-submarines to scoot around underwater, and we got to do some reef diving where we saw all sorts of amazing marine creatures. The Sea of Cortez is known as the "Aquarium of the World," replete with sea lions, humpback and gray whales (it was calving season), moorish idols, parrotfish, tangs, eagle rays, and many more!

After the dive, everyone got back on board, we refreshed our margaritas and cervezas, had lunch, and cruised some more on the Sea of Cortez, whale watching. We weren't disappointed, they were everywhere! 

One of the crewmembers was a photographer, and I was happy to share with him how the drone worked, how it took both still photographs and movies, and especially, how fast it would go in "sport" mode. This was the showing-off part. I had forgotten that in "sport "mode all the safeguards were turned off, and after a few minutes, I decided to get a low-angle shot of everyone at the front of the boat. 

I steered the drone lower, and lower, and lower, thinking it would stop above the waves, but since I had turned off all the safeguards, that didn't happen. It went into the ocean. Everyone on board groaned, but then as if by magic it rose from the waves to a chorus of "oohs" and "aahs"! I frantically steered it back towards the boat, thinking I had dodged a bullet. It was about 25 feet in the air and almost on board when it flipped over, gyrated uncontrollably, and crashed into the deck of the boat, almost at my feet. Props and arms went flying everywhere, the whole front of the drone was trashed, but thankfully, no one was injured. 

A lesson learned? Maybe not. I sent the drone in for repair, and the engineer called me amazed that it had suffered so much damage. I gritted my teeth and paid the invoice because I had also declined the insurance. Yikes! Looks like pb&j sandwiches for a few weeks. 

The drone arrived today via FedEx, and I opened it to see if all the battle scars were still there. To my amazement, they had sent me a brand new drone, in perfect condition. I'm taking it out to the park to fly it tonight to see how it does. Have I learned my lesson about showing off? Ummm, maybe.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

I wasn't worried about scorpions, rattlesnakes, or tarantulas. Why not, you ask? Mainly because I didn't even consider them. Teddy Bear cactus and jumping cholla, sure, those are painful. Critters, not so much. You get the idea. Actually, what I wanted to see, and record, was the Milky Way. I had loaded up some fast primes, three tripods, and a star tracker, jumped in the car with my faithful Blue Heeler, Stella, and headed out to the Western side of the Superstition Mountains to capture the Milky Way, that glorious and amazing band of stars that rises like Venus on the half shell out of the Eastern sky in the summertime if you happen to live in the Northern Hemisphere. 

 In order to get a good shot of the Milky Way, you need several things: A sturdy tripod, a good camera, a fast lens, a rudimentary knowledge of astronomy, some spit, baling wire, and duct tape. Actually, anybody can take a bad picture of the milky way. Trust me, I have hundreds. Star trails are a no-no, so depending upon the focal length of your lens, your exposure will be limited to about ten seconds or less. If you set your ISO too high, you'll get so much noise that your image will probably be unusable. Again, trust me. You need a dark environment because light from the moon or the lights of cities will probably give you disappointing results. Some people use a star tracker, which mimics the earth's rotation, so you can take longer exposures at lower ISO's without star trails. They have to be aligned with Polaris, the North star. Also, you can take bunches of images and stack them in software to reduce the noise in your final image. 

Some folks really love pictures of galaxies in space, nebulae, star clouds, and the like, but that's not what I'm after. I want a horizon line of some sort in my images, which means that if the image is going to be compelling, then you have to have something in the foreground that is compelling. Oh, and clouds and dust, high winds, etc. are probably a no-no, especially if you are going to stack your images. Plus, you probably want to do a delayed exposure, because you can't have any camera shake during the exposure, so your tripod has to be rock-solid still, which means you probably want to remove your camera strap so it doesn't flop around in the wind and jog your tripod, ruining the shot. Finally, with all of the above critical conditions met, it helps if you have a bit of luck and patience. Shooting the milky way is pretty much a solitary affair, and sometimes you don't really know what you got until you get home. 

On my last trip to the Superstitions, I had everything going for me. Clear skies, a new moon, a good idea of where the Milky Way was going to be, a great camera, fast lenses, tripods galore, and canine company. However, my plan was missing one critical component: it was all going to happen way past my bedtime. Yeah, I did it right, pretty much. Yes, I was set up and ready to record some compelling images with a great foreground. I took about a hundred shots and realized that I was too early, the galactic core wouldn't be above the Praying Hands for at least an hour. So, I went back to the car, turned the heater on, got comfy, and fell asleep. By the time I awoke, sadly, the perfect moment had passed. The Milky Way had shifted around to the South and was so high in the sky that I couldn't use my 24mm 1.4 lens to include both the foreground in the Milky Way. 

Being stubborn, I took quite a few more shots, hoping I might be able to pull something out in post, but it wasn't what I had hoped for. As my fishing buddies say, "You should have seen the one that got away." Next time, Red Bull, or a nap.