Category Archives: Tools

Cross Country – Things Learned Driving East to West (Parts 1 and 2)

Last revised 6/14/2019

San Jose to East Coast by plane and then driving back over 15 days

If you already read this and are looking for the rest of the article (parts 3, 4 and 5)… Look HERE.

Steven’s father passed away last December and the family decided to hold a memorial in Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia on Memorial Day weekend. Seemed entirely appropriate as that is when all of dads cross-country scattered kin could convene… that and dad also served in the Army during the Korean War era. What I hope to illuminate in this article are some of the considerations to consider to take a multi-day or longer car trip. In this case, we flew to Roanoke Virginia via Chicago (the upper line) and then drove my fathers car back from Smith Mountain Lake through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and finally California.

I’ve divided the discussion into the following sections:

Trip Planning Tools (Excel and Google Maps proved to be the most useful)
Supplies and Provisions
Booking Lodging and Excursions
Photography and Night Photography Considerations
Lessons Learned (What went wrong, what went right)

Trip Planning – Google Maps + My Scenic Drives + Excel

The way I started was simple: fire up google maps, enter my beginning city, added known stops (arranged east to west) and see what happened. To travel directly from Moneta, Virginia (Smith Mountain Lake) to San Jose mapped out as 40 hours of driving over 2722 miles. Since our actual mileage was 3982, clearly we did not take the “straight path” which would have been I40 nearly the whole way. One of the limitations with Google Maps is that you can have a maximum of 10 stops – unless you’re willing to do strange unnatural acts (or create your own map). But the key here was to see what the total distance was. Next I looked at breaking the trip up into digestible bits. The goal was to NOT drive more than 8 hours total in a day. And more significantly, to not be “on the road” more than about 10 hours including stops for sightseeing meals and potty breaks. Google maps was a bit unwieldy as I added more destinations and re-routed the segments to include driving to and through places of interest. One of the nice side benefits of using Google Maps, though, is that I could pull up the map on my laptop and send it to my phone directly. The phone then served as our GPS since the 12 year old navigation system in the car was clearly out of date.

One tool that I spent a lot of time on, and certainly helped was “My Scenic Drives“. The interface is a little clunky but My Scenic Drives can automatically divide up your driving based on time, but its method is not ideal. Indeed, the best use of My Scenic Drives was to “Find Nearby Attractions”. That proved to be it’s forte. “Avenue of the Ancients?” Why yes, thank you. “Valley of the Gods?” OF COURSE!, Chaco Culture, Mesa Verde, Bisti Badlands…. nearly all of these were suggested when searching in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. At one point I had at least 70 items “on the map” as potentials, and I paired it back to a mere 50. Reality eventually set it and I paired it back much further.

My Scenic Drives was quite useful for finding places of interest near or on the route.

I had a core list of must go places which included White Sands, NM; Monument Valley, UT; Lake Powell, AZ/UT; Lower Antelope Slot Canyons, Page, AZ; Toadstool Hoodoos, Kanab, UT; Valley of Fire State Park, NV. To that list there was a long list of LIKE-to-GOs that included Chaco Culture, Avenue of the Ancients, Mesa Verde, and many more. Since my wife traveled with me, it was also important to include stops and destinations that were of interest to her as well.

Ultimately the reality of the distances, vehicle choice and time constraints dictated what stayed in and what fell out of the plan. And THEN it got even tougher… Scheduling it on some days required to-the-HOUR timing. To be clear, not every day needed to-the-hour scheduling, but 2 of the 14 did… and that’s when I turned to creating an Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet helped in a number of ways: accumulating miles (and thus predicting fuel costs and tracking lodging costs), accumulating time, and also keeping a record of addresses, reservation numbers and status… and more. The reality of one of the days made me realize that from Farmington, NM to Monument Valley, AZ, it was just not possible to go through Avenue of the Ancients AND Valley of the Gods as well. The reason: I had booked an overnight photography tour of Monument Valley and HAD to be at the View Hotel in Monument Valley by 2:30 PM or the photo tour was in jeopardy. It worked out just fine, however, as the Mrs. wanted to visit Four Corners, so we timed our Farmington, NM departure to arrive around opening time at Four Corners (a Navajo nation stop) and then budgeted time at the additional stops. Fortunately we ended up about an hour ahead of schedule on that day, and were able to take a brief detour into Valley of the Gods.

To accommodate our desired focus points, we elected to “force march” from Raleigh, NC to Amarillo, TX with no sightseeing except for one lunch stop in Omni Oak Grove in in Asheville.

That’s nearly 2/3 of the total east-west distance, and we did it in three LONG days (each less than 8.5 hours of driving, however). I micro managed the stops. The locations I picked for lodging initially were Knoxville, TN, Little Rock, AR; and Amarillo, TX. But the Little Rock to Amarillo drive was almost 9 hours, and the Knoxville to Little Rock was similarly long. There was also the matter of potential rush hour traffic, so the plan changed to drive 40 miles farther west on the first day (Harriman, TN), and about 20 miles farther west the next day (Maumelle, AR instead of Little Rock). That evened out the driving a bit more and got us away from major cities during rush hour. Mind you I still had to find cities with decent lodging. While I might be willing to stay alone in a flea bag hotel for a night, that wouldn’t fly with the Mrs. Choosing better lodging made the trip better overall, anyway!

One thing I highly recommend doing is making sure to add in an extra day or two here and there for two reasons: one is to have a cushion in case you run into delays, or find places more interesting than you expected, and the second is perhaps obvious: rest is good! No sense hauling your luggage into and out of the car twice a day every day. We elected to stay two days in Albuquerque, NM; and three days on the Pacific Coast of California – the latter came about because Las Vegas was just TOO hot to stop, and we needed some cooler “wave time”.

What I wish I had done was to pick the same “chain” of hotels as much as possible. But my strategy of not booking everything in advance proved helpful for changing plans as needed. See the Booking Lodging and Excursions (part 3) for the rationale behind each.

Maps Can Lie – BEWARE!

One last comment about using any mapping software (Google Maps, for example), is to inspect the path carefully. I’ve seen mapping software make bone-headed decisions. On the planning for this trip, for example, it routed us over about 50 miles of dirt-road driving until I forced it to pick a different route by adding intermediate destinations. Once in California, the mapping software assumed that the East Pinnacles National Park and West Pinnacles National park were connected by a road – but they AREN’T. The best you could have done is carry your car about 3 miles over a foot path… And of course there are many examples where people have relied on outdated maps of places like Death Valley and ended up in a heap of hurt.

Supplies and Provisions

Because we were flying from the West Coast to the East Coast, we couldn’t possibly take all the provisions we would want on the plane. Some of the things that just were impractical to take included:

A cooler for drinks (plus snacks and ice)
A tow strap (in case we got stuck in sand or mud somewhere)
Bits of carpet for traction
Jump Start cables & jump start battery
Keurig Cartridges
Supplies, blanket / pillow
Gallon or more of water
Quart of the proper oil
Gallon of Bug / Windshield cleaner

And despite my normal camera-bag-full of equpiment (2 cameras, lenses, two tripods, etc), I elected to take ONE camera – the Nikon D600 – and ONE lens (24mm manual focus), and one tripod. I also took my Mavic Drone, but was only able to use it once… most locations prohibited drones, the wind was excessive in other locations, and a complication with the software made it impossible to use in one area that I wanted to use it… more on that in the Photography and Night Photography Considerations chapter.

My father’s car is an older model Lexus and so it wouldn’t be suitable for going down the bumpy off road areas where I might take an AWD high clearance vehicle like my Subaru. I also knew that some of the destinations included driving on unpaved roads. Indeed, some of the destinations that we removed from our itinerary were removed because of the off-road driving required. Since we clearly couldn’t take all needed provisions on the plane with us, and it was not clear that we would be able to acquire all that we desired, I used Amazon to order and have shipped to my father’s house the hard-to-find supplies that I needed. We figured we could pick up a cooler, snacks and drinks, water, oil and windshield cleaner along the way. Indeed, after we noticed that the first two lodgings had in-room Keurig machines, we bought Chai and Pete’s coffee cartridges. I am a Chai drinker, and my wife is a coffee snob. Only about 40% of the places we stayed had such machines, but when they had them, it meant we could enjoy our normal morning and evening beverages.

In Case of Emergency

For our peace of mind, I purchased and activated a plan on a Garmin InReach mini. I had the device shipped to my home before we left so that I could make sure it worked, and the service was active. The Inreach mini is a portable satellite communication device that can be used to track your location –

indeed that device supplied the tracking information for the map presented at the top. One of the plans allows you to track your location every 10 minutes – you can see I turned on tracking somewhere over Nevada on our flight out. The mini can also be used like the SPOT emergency location device to send 3 different canned messages to pre-canned destinations. The mini is about twice the cost, but it’s bi-directional. The messages I chose were: All is well, just checking in when arriving at lodging for the night; Look what I found to mark a particularly interesting place for posterity; and Delayed, or rerouted to indicate we were fine, but not going to arrive as planned. The device also allows an SOS to be sent, and you can then communicate by text with the emergency personnel to indicate what your needs are, and they can text you to indicate their status. Fortunately we had no need of sending an SOS, but there were many areas where we had little and NO cell coverage on either Verizon or ATT (my wife and I have different plans on purpose), so the peace of mind was worth the about $50 of service… and no doubt I’ll use the $300 device in the future.

Enroute Planning

**Strorms Ahead**. (Actually the blue is from shooting through the screen in the top of the windshield ;-), but it did dump a heap of rain and hail on us just a bit father down the road in Oklahoma.

It wasn’t enough, of course, to merely plot out the path. We also had to be mindful of the weather and road conditions. I’ve written extensively about how I >> plan for weather << so visit that link to learn how I use Weather.gov to be aware of what is going on. On this particular trip, we drove through the middle of the country prior to and during tornado and flooding events. Without the maps, we might have ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. As it was, a tornado struck 1 mile away from our path two days prior to arriving (El Reno, Oklahoma) and major flooding was experienced in Little Rock and Fort Smith, AK the days of and following our trip segments there. Amarillo, TX and Roswell, NM were also hit with violent thunderstorms, and we used the forecast to refrain from heading up into Santa Fe, NM due to severe storm warnings. One Android tool I picked up and used was the NOAA Radar app. That offered alerts about nearby events – it was worth one month of subscription at $3 just to get those!

One of the other things that I discovered, but wasn’t aware of is that Google Maps in addition to notifications of slowdowns and road construction also has notifications about speed (radar) traps. We weren’t speeding anywhere, but the heads up certainly came in handy in case we decided to “blow the doors off a slowpoke driver” at an inopportune time.

Keeping Cool

Sugar free beverage + excellent “ice bottle”

We did acquire a decent cooler, small enough to fit in the backseat, but with a velcro latch so that it would be easy to open while underway. It had to be spacious enough to hold a half dozen drinks, ice AND chocolate. Since it was quite hot during our trip, even a short stint with the A/C off would result in a choco melt-down. I employed a trick I often use when hiking. After finishing an Ice beverage (sparkling sweetened drink), I rinsed it and refilled it with tap water. In lodgings that had a freezer component of the mini fridge, I put the refilled bottles in the freezer. Those frozen bottles then served as ice, and in a pinch, cold drinking water on some of our hot hikes. Do not try this with your average bottled water, however, they are too thin and flimsy to stand up to freezing.

It is also a good idea to buy a one or two gallon bottle of water that you can use for drinking (when the tap water is sketchy), and as an emergency source of coolant should your car need it.

See The Rest of the Article!

>>> Click here for parts 3, 4, and 5 along with many photos! You’re also welcome to use my excel planning sheet for yourself. The sheet contains links to the maps I used (divided into daily segments), a TODO list, as well as a heap of web references I used to select the events and locations I visited.

Basics: Setting Up Your Tripod

The Basics

Vertical: Your tripod should be vertical, specifically the center column (if you have one) should point straight up and down. The more vertical, the more stable the tripod is. By vertical, we don’t mean perpendicular to the ground – the ground may be sloping or irregular. The most common mistake people make is to set their tripods up so that it leans toward them. Before you put your camera on your tripod, walk around the whole thing (safely) to judge the verticality. You can even use a level (e.g. a smart phone app) against the center column to be sure it is vertical. Some tripods have a bubble level on the base – and some heads have a level on their base – that you can use to be sure your tripod base is level.

Notice tripod in the distance is leaning to the right (click for a bigger view)? That’s wrong!

Level: For many reasons, you want the base to be level (perpendicular to vertical). If your tripod is vertical, the base will be level. A level base makes panning (and thus panoramas) more accurate. If the base isn’t level rotating the camera may change the center of gravity causing wobble – or worse.

Legs: There are two adjustments here: the leg length and the leg spread. DO NOT fully extend the leg lengths – unless you are on flat, level ground. Adjust the legs so the base is level.

When on a slope, put two legs on the downhill side of the slope and one leg on the uphill side.
Place two legs at the front (that is where the camera is pointing) and one leg toward the rear.

If these two goals conflict, prefer two-legs downhill. A single leg at the front may intrude into a wide-angle shot. Most tripods have adjustable leg spreads. Each leg can form a medium, moderate or severe angle to the base. On irregular terrain, you may find that stability requires setting one or more legs at a different spread and different lengths. E.g. one leg is kept short at 90 degrees to allow that leg to rest on a boulder while the other two are more vertical. In a multi-segment tripod leg, the wider leg segments are more stable than the narrower ones, therefore:

Extend the wider leg segments fully before extending the narrower leg segments.

TIP 1: We find the screw-type leg locks to be the most secure and easiest to adjust. What we do is to grasp and loosen all the leg locks at once by a quarter turn. Fully extend all sections. Tighten the top locks fully (and middle locks – if you have 4 segment legs), then loosely tighten the smallest leg locks. When setting the tripod down you can gently push down each of the legs until it is vertical and level, then fully tighten the lower leg locks. Minor fine tuning can be achieved by loosening the upper leg locks.

If in windy conditions, set the tripod lower than normal and spread the legs wider. Also weight the system more heavily (see Weight, below).

Center Column (and tripod height): DO NOT extend the tripod fully just because you can. Extend the column as little as needed. The center column is useful for fine-tuning the height of the camera, but it raises the center of gravity and makes your tripod less stable. Likewise making your tripod as tall as possible makes it easier for gusty wind or and inadvertent bump to topple everything.

Tie-Stake Useful in some terrains

Weight: We HIGHLY recommend adding weight to your tripod. Many tripods have hooks on the underside of the base or on the bottom of the center column. We regularly hang our camera bag from that hook. But beware: if your camera bag is too light or bulky, you may end up adding a sail that catches the wind and creates instability. Some people bring weights, or bags they can fill on site with rocks or sand. But there are yet two more tricks you can employ:

Hang your camera bag so that it nearly touches the ground (by using a lower tripod position, or a strap between the bag and the tripod). Then place rocks or logs around the bag to keep the bag from swaying. Add heavy things in to the bag if you need more weight.
Bring a tie-down stake and a bungee cord. Screw the stake into the ground below your camera and snug the tripod hook to the stake with a bungee cord.

Straps: If you have shoulder or wrist straps on your camera we recommend using removable ones OR use twist ties or velcro wraps to secure the straps to your tripod so the straps do NOT catch the wind (or nearby objects). Shoulder straps can become like sails and even if they don’t catch enough wind to topple your tripod, they can induce vibration. We really like OP/Tech products, by the way. They are well designed and have never failed us.

Tip 2: One way to practice setting up a tripod is to do it indoors. Create un-even scenarios by resting one (or more) of the legs on a chair, wastebasket, etc. Practice getting the legs adjusted in a way that keeps the center column vertical and the base level.

Sailors: Timestack of 114 images during sunset/blue hour in Alabama Hills, California

Safety Checks

After setting up your tripod as described above, you can and should test the stability of your tripod/camera. WHILE HOLDING ON TO THE CAMERA STRAP(s) do each of these checks:

Pull down on each of the legs gently. Make sure they don’t collapse/fold.
After clamping the camera to the head and tensioning the head. Hold the camera snugly and try wriggling the camera out of the clamp. Watch carefully for wobble and hold on securely in case the camera does come out of the clamp.
Hold the camera, release tension on the head and let the camera gently flop. Make sure that when the camera flops the system doesn’t topple.
Leave the camera in its flopped state and rotate 360 degrees checking for wobble.
Repoint the camera, tighten the tension and gently bump the camera. Make sure there is no wobble.
Bump each of the legs. Make sure the legs don’t become dislodged and the spread doesn’t change.
Take one more lap around your camera checking for verticality and possible instability – e.g. a log, tree branch, stick or rock that could bump your tripod.

Is all of the above really necessary? Well, no. You don’t have to do any of that… unless you want to protect your equipment and take nice stable photos.

Here is my son with the tripod legs set wide, and the center column inverted to get the camera low to the ground.

Want tips on other gear to carry… see this article. Would you like to see all of our best tips in one place? Try this article. Have a great tip on tripods we should know? Please share it in a comment!

Exploring Night Photography: Lesson 6 BEST TIPS

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Band of Techies by Steven Christenson on 500px.com

Twilight Panorama of the San Francisco Bay

Last week we talked about photo processing. This week is the last week of the in-person course.

The topics covered in class included Astrophotography, suggestions on what equipment NOT to get for Astrophotography. We also discussed the limitations of Lightroom and Photoshop (see Lesson 5) because we did not cover them all in the last class.

To conclude our lesson series we present our greatest tips. Many of the tips you may be familiar with – especially if you have been with us on a workshop. Some tips will be a surprise.

Our Best Night Photography Tips

Shine a bright flashlight through your viewfinder at night and it will show you what is in your shot. Much easier to figure out where the edges of your frame are when it is too dark to see well.
A flashlight will not illuminate the sky where your shot is constrained by your lens, but a bright green laser through the viewfinder can accomplish that!
Put glow sticks or LED slap bracelets around your tripod at night. Not only can you find your gear easily, but others are less likely to trip over it.
Have a bluish LED light that you need to make less “cold”? Bounce it off the palm of your hand… or a warm colored shirt.
Want to see well in the dark? Don’t wear a head lamp! Shadows and contours are hard to see when the light is coming from close to your eyes. Instead keep a DIM light at waist level. Bright lights ruin your night vision. And headlamps make it painful to talk to one another… you ruin their night vision when you look at them.
Before you spend the effort traveling for night photographs, consult the weather and the moon phase.
It is astonishing how much you can pre-plan a shot without having to go the location… hint: learn to use Google Maps + Street View!
Don’t overlook the hundreds of tips we have for you here on this site… the search box is your friend.
Dark skies are good… but better is to know which direction you want the sky to be dark so you can make the right compromises.
Sometimes being behind a hill is a great help to prevent unwanted stray light.
Want to photograph (or see) the best part of the Milky Way? You need to know when it is up. A planisphere (rotating star chart) is your best bet.
Velcro is a great way to keep things handy and secure on your tripod. Velcro your intervalometer to your tripod.
Lens hood – use one all the time to protect your lens and prevent stray light from causing glare.
Do not use any filters – especially not a clear or “ultraviolet” filter. All filters make your image less desirable by causing extra surfaces that can reflect light and cause glare. Our only exception to this rule are 1: polarizing filters – which are useless at night, and 2: a filter to seal your lens in really nasty environments like rain and blowing sand.
Test your tripod stability before you move away from it. If your tripod is secure, take a few steps back and make sure the center column is vertical. It is common to set a tripod up so that it leans in a way that makes it vulnerable to a fall.
Another tripod tip: on a hill or slope, put two legs on the downhill side, one on the uphill side.
Short straps (or no straps) on your camera is better for stability if there is any wind at all. We have personally seen cameras thrown over by wind gusts.
Do not cheap out on a tripod. A sturdy tripod is more valuable for night photography than a “better” camera.
The histogram is your friend. Be sure to check it before you conclude your shot is a good one.
If your tripod has a hook below the center column hang your camera bag on it for even more stability. Be sure you’ve taken out all you need before you start shooting. Oh, and this may NOT work well if it is really windy or your pack is light.
Study the place you plan to go during the daylight. It is not fun falling in holes or stepping on nasty things while wandering in the dark.
Take a friend along for added safety, camaraderie and comfort. Also you do not have to outrun a bear, you just have to outrun your friend. 😉 [Do NOT try to run from a bear, by the way. That just makes you look tastier]
A ball head works a lot better for night photography than a pan-tilt head. But get a sturdy head! It is useless having a sturdy tripod with a head that can not stay put.
If there is anyone who may care: tell where you are going and when you expect to be back. Stick to the plan, too.
Do not assume you will have cell service – some of the most amazing places to photograph have no cell coverage at all. Oh, and your battery might die.
Overshoot. It is so much better to have two or three times as many shots as you think you will need than to find out you did not even get one quite right.
When shooting sequences or panoramas… use your lens cap between sets so you can figure out when one set ends and another begins. Take it one step further and do what we do: use your hand forming an E, N, W, or pointing down to indicate the direction you are facing when you take the shot.
Dark gloves make great “emergency stray-light reduction” devices – and they can keep your hands warm, too.
It will always seem colder at night than the temperature might indicate. Dress in layers.
Planning to leave your camera shooting for a long sequence and walk away? Use a GPS to record the camera location (you can do this using most cell phone map software, too).
Respect people and their property. Ask for permission. You may be amazed how much farther courtesy and thoughtfulness will get you than being an intentional trespasser.

Have a tip you think is really super helpful? Please comment below!

Last Week’s Homework

Photo edit a “better” foreground into a star trail image.

Final Homework

Comment below with what you’d like to learn about next.
Get creative and leave us a comment below with a link to your super image.
Comment below with the best tip you have learned about doing night photography.

Milky Way and Waterfall – we talked about how to get the Milky Way aligned where you want it.

Exploring Night Photography: Lesson 3 – Gear

What About Other “Gear”?

MiscGear
Here is what is usually in our bag besides the camera gear.

(H) Glow bracelet/stick to mark the camera location (we have just started experimenting with other methods, too, like the LED band (4).
Hand warmers (F and 5) and rubber bands (G) for dealing with dew formation
Creative lights – bulbs, keychain lights, and cord (3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9) Item 7 is a green laser pointer.
Insect Repellant (E)
Gaffers Tape – flat black duct tape (L). We don’t take a whole roll though!
A smart app that shows the positions of the stars, planets, and bright satellites. Also helps if it shows meteor showers.
A smart app that shows the location(s) of sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset.
A game or two on the smart phone to pass time.
An external battery to keep our smart phone juiced (5) and the appropriate matching cord.

Before We Leave We Also Use the Following

A star map (planisphere). On our desktop, we favor Stellarium, but it is a little geeky to use well. On iOS we like Sky Safari, Star Map.
Weather prognostication tool
Sunrise/set Moonrise/set predictions.

Last Week’s Homework

We asked you to pick a creative direction. Here are some shots our students took including “semi transparent” you, moving lights.

XNP_Alex_assignments Top: f/4 1/30, 500 ISO, 20mm; Lower photo: f/4, 1/4, 1600 ISO, 20mm. Bottom was from moving the camera body

XNP_Tracie_Assignment

XNP_Troy_assignment

This Week’s Homework

Use the light you were given in class to write a message or draw an image in light.
The moon is full, if you didn’t work out settings for capturing the moon. Now is another chance. If you did work out the settings, compare them to your last shot when the moon was half-full. Notice anything?
Find a way to make a strong white flashlight a different color. Use the colored light to illuminate your foreground. Your light may have to be really bright to compete with moonlight.
If you are using a “white” LED flashlight, you’ll notice it is significantly cold (blue). Can you think of a way to make it a warmer color?
Is there any “Other Gear” listed above that intrigues you? E.g. what can you use Gaffers Tape for?

Next… Lesson 4.

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Night and Low Light Photography Tips, Webinars, Field Events and Workshops

Category Archives: Tools

Cross Country – Things Learned Driving East to West (Parts 1 and 2)