I’m off to Norway in three days! Wheee!

I’ve now obtained a warm jacket (actually a snowboarding jacket — I’m so cool) and some very warm wool socks (again, snowboarding/skiing socks). Ostensibly, I will be walking — not a lot, but more than usual (i.e. more than none) — so the socks make a lot of sense. I actually need to get some new boots too — my current Timberland boots are 7 or 8 years old, but when a new pair cost something like £150 ($230), it’s hard to bite the bullet.

I have a scarf and hat (a deerstalker — still not sure about wearing it in public). The guys at the snowboarding shop said I should get a ‘buff’ — seriously, like a muff, but… buff. One of those neck warmer things. I don’t think it’ll be that cold or bitter in Norway though.

All that remains… is pants. I have none.

(Click for larger… though I can’t imagine why you’d want to…)

Both kinds of pant, British and American. I must buy some in the next couple of days (so that I have time to break them in). Do I go for the full, ‘long’ variety… or do I stick to boxer shorts? Do I wear denim and cotton (I don’t own jeans), or is there such thing as ‘warm’ trousers? I don’t want to wear plastic waterproof pants or trousers (for similar reasons). I have an old pair of wool trousers I think.

I mean, I have boxer shorts… not many, but some. A couple of pairs. And pants — trousers — I have… well, nominally two pairs, but I only really wear one.

This is the problem when I don’t go out much. It’s very easy to just whack on some underwear, slap on some trousers and a t-shirt, plonk myself down in front of my computers and while away 16 hours before reversing the process. Now that Norway is only a few days away and I’ll be spending three weeks in the presence of other human beings, I better get some more clothing for my lower half. (Incidentally, I recently bought an eight-pack of socks, they went through the wash once, and now only three out of sixteen socks remain — how lame is that?)

Anyway, other than that little dilemma, I’m all ready for Norway! I’ll be spending seven days in Bergen and eleven in Trondheim. There will be many fjords. And Nordic beauties — it’s about time a British emissary was sent to reclaim what was unlawfully stolen away by the Vikings! And… er… well, there isn’t a whole lot else to do in Norway. Their primary exports are fuels, machinery… and fish. They also love their woollen goods — so basically this is going to be like the Faroe Islands, but without the fuel or machinery. And without the dried sheep and whale.

I actually don’t know what we’re going to do, except walk and carouse. I’m staying with students in Trondheim, so I imagine that’ll be quite rowdy. But even then, I’m very curious to find out what people actually do in Norway. They’re not a standard ‘Western’ nation that deals mainly in services. There isn’t going to be a ‘downtown’ Trondheim. I guess it’s a more social lifestyle there? When 50% of the country’s income is from exporting fuel, life has to be pretty easy, surely?

The weather’s looking good, too. Bergen is a balmy 3C (37F) during the day, while Trondheim is a little bit nippier — freezing during the day, down to -5 (23F) or -6 at night. (Of course, if you figure wind chill into the equation it drops to about -15C, but who’s counting…)

As for the blog, I need to spend the next few days finishing preparations, and shifting obligations to other hapless victims/helpful friends. As before, I’ll put the blog into its ‘resting state’. It’s like cryogenic suspension, stasis, but not as cool. A new header will appear at the top of the blog to remind you where I am, and that for a month posts will be both sporadic^[1] and erratic. I’ll likely stick to early-morning updates, but it’ll depend on just how debauched and drunk I get. I needn’t remind you of what happened in Poland…

Oh, and if you want to buy some photos, I’ll try to get them onto Etsy in a timely fashion. I actually want to enable sales right here on this site, but that’ll have to wait until after Norway.

Bon voyage, or as they say in Norwegian: god reise — or, if the going gets really tough, luftputefartøyet mitt er fullt av ål!

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1. Did you know that ’sporadic’ comes from the same Greek root as ’spores’? As in, scattered far and wide.

Oh come on, it’s almost as if they were named for the sole purpose of creating mirth and uncontrollable bouts of the giggles. Why oh why are they called TITS? The derivation would suggest it comes from some old meaning of ‘tit’ that means small, or perhaps similar to ‘tip for tap’ (tit for tat). Anyway, here in Sussex, we have lots of tits. Every year we seem to have more, probably because they tell tales of our house during their long and boring migrations: ‘Yeah, there’s this place… lots of tall trees… a pond… a fat woman that puts lots of seed out… it’s great! Come visit next season!

With it now being spring — despite occasional flurries of sub-zero temperature – we also have all of the baby birds. Just a few days ago, my mum saw some little fluff ball jump from its nest and land head first in a big bush with a small thud. I can only assume that the birds that star in today’s video are also young, or simply a little retarded. These long-tailed tits just kept flying into the window! Maybe they could see their reflection, or maybe they just didn’t know better; thud, scratch, scratch… thud. For more than an hour!

You probably saw my dramatic video of two robins fighting for seed the other day, but in my opinion a couple of birds buzzing about like window-licking bumble bees is far more exciting. Did I mention this video has my cat Monaco in it, trying to catch birds through double glazing? Yeah, now you want to watch it! Go on, click!

I know the aspect is all wrong. I only realised afterwards that it would be the wrong way around. I’m a photographer through and through! It’s OK if you watch it full screen though. I was going to upload a ’sideways’ version, but you’d just end up tilting your head and looking stupid for four minutes.

Anyway, for those of you resolutely not watching the video, here’s a couple of photos, of the tit and of the cat; of Tweety and Sylvester.

(I’m not sure what she’s perching on… a tiny strip of wood? She didn’t hang about though, as you can see in the video.)

(Sorry… cat picture… I know… lowest common denominator and all that…)

Last week I said that if no one else wrote a review, I would — and as it turns out, there’s still just a bunch of previews but nothing substantive. Yes, it has 1080p HD video recording capabilities, yes it has a shiny-almost-Canon-7D-18-megapixel sensor… but no one’s commented on what it feels like. Specs are only a tiny portion of the story — so here’s a hands-on review of the new Canon 550D.

Note: Don’t expect a highly-technical review. No doubt professional sites like DPReview will get to that in due course. This is all subjective. There are no chromatic aberration graphs, or side-by-side comparisons. Just some test shots, some video, and my (fairly) expert opinion. I’ve also never done this before, so the format might be a bit weird. Stick with me though, I should cover most of the important stuff!

You can skip directly to the sample photos, if you want to see some evidence of the new CMOS sensor and metering system, or the gains in high-ISO performance.

Gear Used

Camera: Canon 550D (also known as the Digital Rebel T2i in America, or the Kiss X4 Digital in Japan). Costs about £700, body-only, or £800 with the kit lens. Due to imports/exchange rates, it’s a lot cheaper to buy in the US (about $800 for the body only).

Lenses: Sigma 50mm f1.4 (around £400), and the Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 (also around £400). I’m actually a bit of a prime lens snob, but I’m still waiting for an APS-C sensor 10mm prime lens… you hear me, Canon, Sigma? Anyway, both lenses are best-in-class… as long as you get a good sample (I’m not going to go into the variety of Sigma’s output here…)

Initial Impressions

Before the 550D, I used a 450D for my ‘every day’ and on-the-move photography (travel, mostly). The 550D is identical to the 450D — weight, shape, balance, etc. The body seems to have a slightly different finish, and the grip is a little ‘grippier’. In more detail:

(500D on the left, 550D on the right)

The trigger: The button itself is a little harder to depress; slightly more ‘clicky’. Not ‘hard’ to operate though, just a little more… affirmative.

The buttons in general: No doubt the change to the trigger is due to an overhaul of all the buttons on the camera. The buttons on the back of the camera are now flat, making them quite a lot easier to use (though they take some getting used to!) There’s also a new ‘record’ button up by the eyepiece, to go with the camera’s video capabilities. Personally I still have a few issues hitting the depth-of-field-test button, but I think that’s due to my huge hands.

Other bits: In all other ways, it’s identical to the 450D (and 500D, I believe). There’s a new HDMI output, below the USB output, and an audio input (mic) above — and also a microphone on the front; for the video capabilities. Oh, it uses a new kind of battery too, the LP-E8 — so you’ll need new batteries, and a new grip too (lame!)

Photos

[Sample images are at the end]

The most important bit! (Unless you’re buying it for the 1080p HD video thing, anyway — that’s a bit further down the page). Does the 550D take good photos? ‘Hell yes’ would be the easy answer, but let me break it down a bit.

Resolution: Yup, more megapixels — up to 18 million effective pixels now, or 5134 x 3456. The RAW files are about 25MB, so you might need to get a new memory card!

Image quality (IQ): Better than the 450D, but I can’t compare it to the ‘identical’ sensor of the 7D. There are reports of it producing very, very similar photos to the 7D, despite Canon saying that the sensor is ‘not the same’. Of course you don’t get the weather sealing, but at half the price and half the weight… who am I to complain. The 550D uses ‘gapless micro lenses’ infront of the CMOS sensor, increasing the quality and sensitivity of every pixel. This in turn opens up ‘extended ultra-high ISO’ settings (more on that in a second).

Shooting: Continuous frames-per-second seems about the same as the 450D, despite the new DIGIC 4 processor — the listed speed is 3.7FPS, but if you shoot in RAW-only mode it will reach 6FPS! There’s all the standard options — RAW, JPEG, RAW + JPEG, etc. — but there’s currently no RAW support for Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop. The Canon Digital Photo Professional RAW processing tools are OK, but lack the depth of Adobe’s Camera RAW.

Metering, auto focus, and exposure compensation & bracketing: While we still only get the 9-point auto-focus (damnit!), there is a new ‘iCFL’ metering system in use, inherited from the Canon 7D. Basically, each of the 9 focus points collect a lot more information that’s then used to more-accurately expose your photos. From my tests, it does seem to be better and more reliable  than the 450D — but it’s pretty hard to test empirically. The AEB (exposure compensation/bracketing) now lets you go from -5 to +5, in steps of 1/2 or 1/3 — pretty neat, if you shoot into bright lights a lot (stage/theatre photography, in my case).

Custom functions: Some of the juicy high-end custom functions make their Rebel debut:  ’ISO expansion’ and ‘noise reduction’. With more pixels rammed every closer together, noise increases and image quality generally degrades — enter TECHNOLOGY! How better to counter technology issues with yet more technology? First, there’s ‘ISO expansion’ that lets you shoot at up to 12800 ISO speed, i.e. almost complete darkness with a large-aperture prime. There’s also on-camera noise reduction that seems to perform a lot better than the on-computer equivalent — you can enable noise reduction for all high-ISO shots, or just for long exposures. If you’ve used a digital camera in the dark, you’ve probably noticed the noise that creeps in — these new functions go a long way to making digital cameras better for night-time photography.

THE DAMN SHUTTER: The shutter is still loud enough to scare children from 100 meters. It’s a bit quieter than the 450D but not by much. Why does Canon give us such a noisy mirror mechanism when they’re capable of so much better? Lame.

Video

No doubt you’ve heard about the Canon 550D’s video capabilities. It was only a matter of time before the functionality dripped down from the 5D, to the 7D, and ultimately the 550D — you can now get a full-HD 1080p digital camera for just £700… crazy! And it’s pretty damn good at it too. Check out this little video clip:

Excuse the bed hair, but still — did you try it at 1080p? Full screen? (If your computer will even render it…) Anyway, the video functionality, in more detail:

HD, 1080p, 720p, etc: You can shoot video in all sorts of ways, with the 550D. Canon have learnt their mistake from the earlier video-shooting SLRs and given the 550D a full array of options: 1080p at 24/25fps (NTSC/PAL), 720p at 50/60FPS, and even a ‘digital zoom’ 640×480 resolution (which is kinda fun). Video clips are capped at 29 minutes and 59 seconds, which is 4GB at full 1080p.

Video quality (VQ?): I’m nothing more than an avid, amateur film maker, but the reaction of those that have seen my test 550D videos have been universally great. It’s simply flawless, 1920 x 1080 video. Just like usual film-making, the lens matters a lot. I’m not sure how else I can rate the video quality… it does exactly what it says on the box; that’s it.

Audio quality: The 550D has a forward-facing monaural microphone. It’s surprisingly good, though I haven’t tried it ‘at a distance’ — I can’t imagine it’s particularly directional. You can also hear a lot of noise from the wind in one my other videos. It was really, really windy though. Anyway, it’s more than enough for indoors and self-documenting work. There’s also an input for an external microphone (3.5mm jack).

Other bits: Video recording on an SLR is definitely a two-person thing. There’s no auto-focus, you see — well, there is, before you start shooting, but not once you press ‘record’. So you need a tripod, and depending on how bright it is, you might be trying to stay in a very shallow focus plane (look at my other test video to see how shallow the f1.4 focus is!) By default video recording is in ‘full auto’ mode, which basically chooses the ISO/aperture to match your framerate (24, 25, 50 or 60 FPS). You can switch it to ‘manual’, if you need to force a particularly wide/shallow depth of field.

Everything Else (appendix)

There are a few things that don’t really impact your use of the camera but are still worth noting, if only for a sake of completeness.

There’s a new LCD screen: It’s very nice, with lots of pixels and less glare than the 450 or 500D. It’s also the first 3:2 screen — i.e. wide-screen — so your images aren’t shrunk-to-fit any more! The new LCD screen is a real joy.

The digital menus have been enhanced: You can now access more ‘buttons’ through software — hit the new ‘Q’ button and you can change things via the LCD screen. Overall the menus are unchanged (though very busy, with all of the new video recording options), but with the new screen there’s some more real estate that is well-utilized.

Embed copyright info into your images: One of the smaller features to find its way from the higher-end Canon cameras is the ability to add your name and a custom copyright notification/message to every image your camera produces. It’s stored in the EXIF data for each image. Pretty neat!

Sample Images

I’ve only had the camera for a few days, so I haven’t had a chance to try every kind of condition yet. I’ll try to add more to this little gallery over the next few days and weeks. The various improvements to the sensor and the addition of some custom functions to the 550D are generally tailored towards more extreme use — low-light, especially. There’s also ‘Highlight Tone Priority’ (another custom function), but I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet — 7D users are reporting great results though, especially for candid/external portrait photography (weddings), so the 550D is probably just as good in that regard.

These photos are all taken on either the Sigma 50mm f1.4, or 10-20mm f4-5.6 lenses, and are straight out of the camera. Click for larger versions.

(Simulated fire, 50mm @ f/1.4, ISO-6400. Close up on the right)

Wide-angle night-time, City of London (The Royal Exchange), 12mm @ f/5, ISO-1600.

Just standard overcast light, 50mm, ISO-100, large aperture. Metering looking good.

Photo on the left looks a bit bright (but it’s accurate). Metering on the right looks pretty spot on, with dark/bright elements!

* * *
If you have any questions about the camera, feel free to leave a comment — I’ll reply.

I’m still way behind on things, after being away for the weekend, so I’m simply going to wow you with lots of pretty photos — and a vaguely interesting breadcrumb of information.

First, the anecdote, about horses. I was talking to a cute Welsh birdie about horses, as one does, and the talk quickly shifted to the topic of herds. There were lots and lots of horses in the New Forest, but all in small groups of two or three. If you saw the horsie photo yesterday, you’ll get what I mean — why are they alone, in the middle of nowhere? The mare on the left is pregnant — ’so is that her mate on the right?’ I ask. Apparently not — female horses hang out together! The men only get called in to do the dirty when the mares are in season, otherwise… they have to go and sit alone somewhere, probably under a tree. Sucks to be them. The small clumps of horses come together at night, when they’re cold, to form a herd! Herds are led by the the most matronly mare — usually the one that kicks and bites the most.

And with that truly awesome bit of info to kick off your day, let’s get to the photos!

I’ve been experimenting with the 50mm landscape again, and — I hope you’ll agree — with quite pleasing results.

(My favourite of the day. 50mm lens, boo-ya!)

(I like how the horse on the right almost looks like a unicorn…)

(Looks a bit like a book cover or something…!)

(After the apocalypse… there will just be horses. This one’s a bit Wuthering Heights.)

(Bit boring this photo… but thought you might like to see just how few trees there are in the New Forest!)

(See, England can look expansive! They’re right there, in the middle. A rare glimpse at the sky too!)

Thinking back, there were a couple of bullet point blog posts early last year, but I don’t think I’ve fallen back on that particular crutch since. But I’m doing it now: I’m invoking the Too Busy To Blog Properly clause of the Web Logger’s Constitution.

This weekend I left my bedroom. Actually, I’m scheduled to leave my bedroom next weekend too, so you might get two blog posts like this. My most heart-felt, belaboured but ultimately spurious apologies in advance. After being cooped up for six months, it does feel awfully good to breathe fresh air — I wonder how much oxygen remains in the recycled air of my bedroom…

Anyway, I was in Southampton this weekend, observing the yearly pancake pilgrimage (it takes all of my effort to leave that uncapitalized). There’s actually a photo of me post-pancakes from the same pilgrimage last year, and the making of the ultimate pancake. I’ve actually changed what I consider to be the ultimate pancake this year… but read on, for my awesome bullet points!

• Southampton is about two hours away by train. On Sunday, when there are replacement bus services and you have to hop around from station to station like a backwards tourist, it’s nearer three and a half hours. This is one thing I hate about travel (cars specifically and trains to a lesser extent) — you take so long to get somewhere. When I went to the Faroe Islands, it took me longer to get to the airport, than from the airport to some fly speck islands in the middle of the Atlantic. I was away for weekend, but about a quarter of my waking hours were spent on a train. Lame.
• Last year we had biologists, this year we had philosophers. One of my friends in Southampton is a biologist, the other a philosopher — quite a disparate bunch of friends, I assure you! After a long afternoon last year spent with biologists — most of them doctors, or close to it — I wasn’t sure if this year was going to be better or worse. I’m at home with scientists and engineers, but most lab-dwelling ones tend to be even dorkier than me — if you think I spend little time in the presence of others, imagine what it’s like when you spend most of your time with microbes and tissue cultures… is it better to talk to yourself, or to a Petri dish?Anyway, the philosophers were OK. When you do a PhD in most subjects, it’s towards a specific target — to be a rocket scientist, a medical doctor, a master of a particular subject — but philosophers don’t seem to be like that. Do they want to be scholars of their favourite philosopher, or do they actually want to become a philosopher? Do you become a philosopher by reading a book? No. Do the books shape your thoughts into philosophical shapes? Maybe. Nothing wrong with scholars of course, but I can’t help but feel the world would be better with more actual philosophers. Maybe.
• Pancakes rule. The pancake master still reigns supreme. (That’s me, by the way: The Pancake Master). Philosophers eat less pancakes than biologists, you know? Last year it was three or four each! This year, only the friendly Greek Nietzschean guy could keep up with me! I created a new ultimate pancake: clotted cream, Canadian maple syrup and fresh strawberries. I used a little lemon juice to cut through the richness of the cream. It was very, very good. I had four of those.
• The New Forest is pretty. You probably saw this on Facebook already (check out my self-promotion! I’m so proud of myself), but the New Forest is, despite its name, a very old and well-maintained forest. It was originally ‘curated’ by William the Conqueror in 1079, a few years after his successful invasion of Britain — probably so he had somewhere to hunt. The quality of the soil is poor though, so there aren’t many trees — lots of scrub and shrub though. It’s basically a heath (and I rather like heaths!)

At this juncture, you’d expect me to break into photos… but I haven’t had a chance to go through them all yet. You get one now (which is also this week’s 52), and a bunch tomorrow.

Happy Monday!

I’m going to run out of Norway-related gasms before I actually get there, I can tell. My flights are now booked, though — I’ll be departing England on the 18th of March, and I’ll be in Norway until the 4th of April. I have just one month to prepare for a rather impromptu excursion. I don’t have the gear — the clothes, the snow boots! — nor do I have anything other than a bunch of couches to sleep on.

I’m staying with students, y’see. Institutionally-painted, box-room dwelling students. I graduated five years ago, but for some reason or another, most of my international jaunts since then have featured me staying at some kind of school or university. And I always end up getting horribly drunk — there’s something about being a student, at least in Europe, that implies drunken behaviour.

I presume Norway will be the same, just more expensive — a pint of beer (500ml) is $10 (£6). Much like the Faroe Islands, not much grows in Norway — some hardy grains, sheep, cattle, goats, pigs and potatoes. Oh, and fish of course — so basically, they import everything. A pizza costs $20, and they’re at the top of the Big Mac Index. I’m relying on the generosity of my hosts — surely, to them, a pizza is ‘just $20′, while to me it’s ‘TWENTY DOLLARS??!’.

Anyway… fjords. The main feature of any trip to Norway, other than the delicious fish, petroleum products and girls, is fjords. The definition is a little bit wishy-washy, depending on where in the Anglo-Norse world you happen to be, but generally it describes a narrow inlet from the sea. Technically, if you’re a geography nerd, fjords are U-shaped valleys formed by glaciers (mostly during the last ice age). As the glaciers drifted out into the sea, they carved valleys that have been eroded over thousands of years to form the fjords we see today. There are fjords all over the world, but Norway has much more than any other country — Scotland, Greenland, Canada and New Zealand have a few, but that’s about it. If you click the photo above, you can see the fjords that dot the west coast of Norway. If you think they look beautiful there… just wait and see what I bring back!

As for the actual photographing of them, I think I’m ready. I’ve cleaned my lenses, ordered a new camera and hired a Swedish gypsy to carry my bag and tripod — I’m ready. I don’t know which parts of Norway I’ll be seeing exactly — students aren’t so good at making plans for prospective visitors, at least not beyond ‘and now we drink!‘ — but I’ll see at least two of the big boys: Hardangerfjord and Trondheimsfjord. Trondheim is on its fjord, so it will be pretty hard to miss, while my host in Bergen has a house right on Hardangerfjord (which, believe it or not, derives its name from ‘hard anger’, probably referring to weather conditions). I don’t think we’ll make it to Sognefjord (the biggest one), because it’s right in between my two stops. Other than fjord-spotting, I’ve been threatened with long, healthy hikes in the mountains… and skiing. I haven’t worn skis since I was two years old. But how hard can it be…?

Anyhoo, I haven’t been sleeping very wellI didn’t manage to take any photos of my own this week (except the fun Valentine diptych with Abi), so I’m afraid you ‘only’ get a bunch of fjord photos that I found while scouring the Internet. Most of these fjord photos can be clicked for larger versions, which I really suggest you look at.

(Hardangerfjord, the one near Bergen)

(Sognefjord, which is a massive 200KM long — the second largest in the world, after Scoresby Sund in Greenland… which I have no intention of visiting… yet)

(The view from Trondheimsfjord)

(Maybe I should get a photo of me in the same place… would make a good new ‘explorer’ photo.)

(Beautiful Romsdalsfjord, but I don’t think I’ll get there on this trip… alas!)

If you’ve been stalking me on either Twitter or Facebook, the next piece of news probably won’t come as a surprise. Truth be told, I’m going a little crazy here in cold, grey, snowy, dismal England. I don’t ever recall having this much trouble getting through the winter — something has changed within me, something is not the same. It’s like… the rules of the game have changed and I’m no longer satisfied with sitting here in front of my computers.

So I’m going to NORWAY, baby. Middle of March through until some time in April. I will experience the FJORDS and… er… I don’t know — cute, blonde inbred Scandinavian Übermensch? (That’s a Google Images link by the way — I’m not going to go and pick favourites, sheesh.)

(Photo not mine — just showing you what a fjord can look like…)

But yes, despite the brief moments of testosteronic superiority, the real reason I’m going is the fjords. Often described as the most beautiful natural wonders of the world, the fjords of Norway line the entire coast of the Scandinavian Peninsula and make up 7% of Norway’s total area. For some reason, Norway has one of the lowest densities in the world with only 4.8 million people in the entire country. Considering they have one of the best standards of living, and a huge income from oil, I really have no idea why no one lives there. Maybe there’s a disease (like the Faroe Islands), or maybe it’s the ol’ ‘it’s too damn cold for 80% of the year’ thing.

My friend in Bergen has a house on (by?) Hardangerfjord, which is one of the biggest. Have a look at Svein Ulvund’s photos of the fjord and nearby — insane, eh? March is when they’re meant to be at their finest, after most of the snow has been and gone. I hope I can do them justice — and I may need to buy a new camera before I go…

Anyway, I’ll be going to Bergen and Trondheim — here’s a map:

I actually had no idea they were so far north… Trondheim is further north than my trip to the Faroe Islands! At this time of year, there probably won’t be much sunlight — but by the time March rolls around, it should be at least 4C or 39F… so not that cold, really. Yet again I’ll miss the Arctic Circle by a few hundred miles, dammit!

We’ll try to drive around a bit, but I think only one of my hosts has a car — we’ll likely stay close to Bergen and Trondheim. Maybe they have skidoos that we can buzz around and churn snow with? Our plans are still in their formative stage, but I’ll be booking flights in the next few days… so there’s no going back.

If anyone’s been to Norway (Chele?), now’s the time to throw in any advice. And does anyone live in Norway? Maybe I can pay a fleeting visit!

* * *

Because it’s Tuesday, I have photos; mostly alternates for yesterday’s 52 Weeks. They’re not amazing, but perhaps they’re interesting — you decide!

(You might not be able to see it on your screen, but the leaf is reflecting a pink sunset — if you can’t see it, trust me! It’s pretty!)

(Again, there’s some lovely pinks and blues in this photo, but you might not be able to see them! I chased the birds around for ages, but they finally settled down in the tree for a photo. So kind of them.)

The last two are obviously a bit ‘experimental’ — my favourite bits are the golden ‘halos’ where the sunset hits the water at an odd angle. Very cool.

I was a little bit torn when titling (heehee) this post. Originally, I had planned to paint my face brown, make myself one of those conical rice-farmer hats and take some self-portraits in my garden. But Abi told me I couldn’t: ‘That’s just plain wrong, Seb. Think of the children.’ — and she’s right, it would’ve been completely insensitive and political suicide… but it would’ve been really damn funny. Ah well. Maybe I can still get a shot of myself in a conical rice-farmer hat when I visit ASIA!

Last week I looked at Africa, this week it’s Asia’s turn.

As a reminder, if you haven’t read about my Grand 2010 Tour, the plan is to cover south-east Asia: Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines — you get the idea. The more I think about it, I’m pretty sure South Korea and Japan (and China?) will have to wait for another trip. I could however hop down to New Zealand, stay there for a few weeks, and then over to Los Angeles (there’s a big ‘around America’ tour I’ve been thinking about for years, I’m just not sure when to do it!)

Anyway, Asia, after a little more research, is a lot more affluent than Africa — probably because of the secular, capitalistic powerhouses of Korea, Japan and Singapore. It’s a little rougher up on the mainland: if I go to Cambodia or Vietnam life is dirtier and more dangerous — but they have ELEPHANTS (so does Thailand, mind you… so I could probably just skip over potential-death-by-land-mine and head for the transsexuals of Bangkok.)

Re: Thailand, there probably isn’t much you don’t already know through the wonders of the modern media. It’s a melting pot of everything and anything, where east and west culture collides and something not wholly human emerges in the aftermath. Thailand appeals to my hedonistic streak because I get the feeling you can ‘find’ anything there: salvation and debauchery, food and drink — but also beautiful vistas and remnants of ancient civilisations. I guess it’s a ‘gateway’ country, much like Greece or Turkey — the multitudinous influences from every other culture in the vicinity have surely left their mark on Thailand.

For some reason (I’m going to research it more, but if anyone has the answer, let me know), the entirety of east Asia is really populated. Thailand with 63 million people has the same population as the UK, Vietnam has 85 million, the Philippines 92 million — and Indonesia has a stonking 231 million! At least Malaysia and Cambodia are fairly sparsely populated, so I’ll have a chance to spread my legs there. Is it simply because they’re really big countries? And I know less-developed nations tend to have more children for lots of reasons… maybe they grew big in the last 100 years, and now they’re slowing down as their ‘development index‘ increases? Oh, incidentally, Singapore is the third most-dense place in the world… more so than Hong Kong. It’s going to be a tight squeeze to get me in. 19,000 people per square mile, in Singapore — 12,000 per square mile in London, and 5,500 in urban New York City, by comparison. (They also speak Singlish in Singapore… which I am quite eager to hear! The other south-east Asia islands have similar pidgin languages right? Indo-English, Malay-English?)

Did you know that Russia has 11 time zones? And you thought scheduling in the US was hard! They go all the way from UTC+2 to UTC+12… which means Russia runs almost half the circumference of Earth… eep. Just threw that one in there, sorry. (Seriously, the amount of random shit in my head…)

It’s now time for this week’s ’site of photographic interest’, this week… Sumatra!

Sumatra

The first thing that caught my eye was the name: ‘Coffee!!’ Sumatra, along with Java (the main Indonesian island) are two of the most recognisable names when it comes to coffee. It’s no surprise tho’, considering all of the world’s coffee is grown within a narrow band around the equator — coffee beans come from trees that do best in hot-and-wet rainforests (and incidentally, the coffee infographic/comic by Oatmeal is very, very good).

So, it’s rainy, quite heavily forested and also right smack-bang on a fault line. The west ridge of the island is one long line of volcanoes! And there are elephants! (I’d really like to ride an elephant — I can’t think of a more apt mount for my gargantuan self.) Just look at this photo by Hank Hammatt (I don’t know who he is, but he takes nice photos it seems):

That’s Sumatra. I don’t even know how such a landscape is possible. It looks like a painting. God knows, really, but I want to find out!

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Anyway, this week you get some totally unrelated photos. We had a light snow a few days ago which started to look really pretty when the sun eventually came out. They’re just assorted photos from around my garden and estate, and all using a 50mm lens in the hope of getting a little better at using it!

(In another photo you can see the number of rings… it was only about 60 or 70 years old. Quite young for a fallen tree!)

(I like the streaks of snow-free grass, from where sun has shone from between tall trees to the right)

(Look! A little… blob of snow!)

Now to brainstorm a disgusting story involving Vietcong rice-farmers and Japanese school girls…

No, not crocs like the ones in my full-frontal photo… crocs, like… Crocodile Dundee! This post references yesterday’s post on The 2010 Tour.

The next few weeks will probably see a flurry of posts about Africa and Asia. You’ll have to forgive me if that kind of thing doesn’t interest you — but this blog’s about what interests me! I’m sure I’ll throw in a few delicious curve balls to keep you on your toes anyway.

Unlike the Faroe Islands, a grand tour to either Asia or Africa requires a lot of planning. The Faroes, by virtue of their Danish owners, are one of the most developed nations in the world. The Asian countries rank higher on the ‘Quality-of-life’ index, but that might simply be because most of Africa hasn’t been ranked yet. I have a nagging feeling that Asia is probably safer… if it wasn’t for the earthquakes and tsnuamis and suicide bombings…

Only Mozambique and Tanzania are on the ‘least developed countries’ list (and Malawi and Madagascar, if I visit those) — and even then they’re doing better than the central African countries, with regard to GDP per capita and disease and genocidal maniacs. Malawi and Tanzania are both meant to be very safe. Madagascar has some really funky rules/customs incidentally, called ‘fady’ — in some towns you’re not allowed to wear specific colours, or eat certain foods. They’re handed down from the ancestors, or something like that.

Language-wise, most of east Africa speaks English. It’s not the ‘common’ language — more the stuff reserved to those that have been to college, or work in a modern sector. Short of learning Swahili, there isn’t really a better option though. I imagine most touristy folk speak English too. Over in Asia, the islands (Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, and I think Singapore) speak very good English. Not so great in Korea, Thailand, Cambodia — but if you wave some cash around, you can probably get most things simply by pointing. Including women (incidentally, you can get jailed for a looong time if you sleep with the wrong girls in most of Asia — not such a problem in Africa, but they’ve got HIV instead.)

Now, because I’m a photographer, I should probably highlight one ‘beautiful vista’ each time I make a post like this — first, so that you can whet your appetite; second, so that I can plan how best to photograph the landscapes of Africa… or Asia!

Because it’s easy, I’m going to start with Tanzania and their world-famous, omg-it’s-the-prettiest-place-in-the-world, Ngorongoro Crater — aka The Cradle of Civilization (hominid remains from 3 million years ago have been found there). With a name like that, it better deliver, right? Well… it does:

(Click for larger)

Within the crater there are zebra, gazelles, wildebeest (never understood why it’s spelt ‘beest’…) — even some rhinos and hippopotamuses!

The crater is a caldera, (102 square miles), created by a giant volcano that exploded and then collapsed in on itself. A pretty frackin’ big volcano. The fact that the crater is so ‘closed in’ apparently causes problems for some of the animals there — the lion colonies there are inbred! It’s just like the deep south…

There are tons more photos over on the Wiki page, and I’m sure on Flickr too — go have a look, if you can’t wait for my TOUR. I almost want to go purely because it’s called Ngorongoro — get this, the name comes from the sound of the drums used by a group of Masai warriors called ilkorongoro. They conquered the crater back in 1800, apparently.

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Anyway, with all the research (and some really pissy-grey weather that needs to stop already), I haven’t had a chance to take any pretty pictures this week. Unless you think a knife-wielding psycho is pretty (what were the chances?) — in which case you’re in luck!

(Black and white version over on Flickr. I like my eyelashes in the B&W one…)

(Stick a knife in me, I’m dun…)

(I’m holding a knife up! But you can’t see it, so this just looks like a stressed profile shot. Don’t think I’ve shown you my profile before, so… ta’da!)

Now to plan some kind of African safari slash/fan-fiction for TMI Thursday…

I’m meant to be NOT typing today, so as to give my RSI-ridden fingers a chance to recuperate, so… just enjoy the photos. There are a few notes, if you hover over them. In the case of the one with the tiny moon, you’re going to have to buy a print to actually see the moon — I think it’s the smallest new moon I’ve ever seen.

Also, one of these photos is dedicated to a friend of mine whose birthday was a few days ago. I don’t do it often, but I do it occasionally — I also do children’s parties and hen nights, if the price is right.

(The new moon is on the left side, about half way up… no, it’s not a speck of dirt on your screen…)

(Another 50mm landscape. Quite a ‘dense’ view, eh? But pretty.)

The sun is setting behind me — this is looking almost directly east I think.)