fouldsy.com

Over the Labor Day weekend, Jeff and I headed way up the Gweek River camping. It was great fun, the weather on the Saturday was just awesome, well in to the 70F’s with clear blue skies. I have a few photos I’ll post, but the second camping spot we ended up at gave us an amazing sunset and moon rise. We were both a little tired when we got back on Sunday, but experiences like that all add up. It was quite weird to be way up the Gweek to the point of needing a canoe, and to then end up drifting back down to camp covered in camo duck hunting. It got me thinking whilst grilling salmon how much of a difference a year makes.

I never really think back on my times in Tunt and long to be back or wish for things to have turned out differently, but have thought a few times over the summer how different it must be for the teachers that find themselves stationed around Bethel in Napaskiak, Oscarville or Napakiak, or up around Kwethluk; or west coast sites like Mekoryuk, Toksook Bay or Tununak. The southern coastal sites like Tunt, Kong and Kwig are quite, quite different, and feel a lot more remote and desolate. I couldn’t imagine trees like I’ve seen around the Kwethluk or Gweek Rivers, and even small rolling hills or the abundance of bird life or fishing when I was living in Tunt. A year ago this past weekend I was spending the Labor Day weekend moving up to Bethel, and I can first remember feeling something not quite right after my second day on the job here whilst phoning back that the evening.

Contrast to today where I was calmly balancing so many district-wide servers, networking and licensing issues, whilst also taking my first college class through UAS where I’m enrolled on a bachelor’s course, and tonight have been running Facebook and Skype through my iPhone. I own a truck and a boat, and my snowmobile came back home last night and work started on replacing the rear suspension assembly for the coming winter. I would never have believed I could have found myself living in such a situation.

My first political science class went really well and seems like it will be pretty interesting. I spent the rest of the evening working on my readings for next week. The first of my oceanography classes is Monday afternoon and I have some readings to do over the weekend for that.

I also finally got an iPhone up and running out here today It’s taken a lot of patience, but other than the same restrictions on any cellphone out here in Bethel with regards to lack of data coverage, it works great. There are a few apps I’ve installed such as Facebook, Tweetdeck, Skype and Shazam which are cool, and I have a friend coming in to town next week that am sure will point me in the direction of even more. It really is an awesome little device, and even things like text messages bring on a whole new meaning when it’s formatted like iChat conversations. Very happy with it!

It’s been a long while since I wrote anything on here. A mix of privacy issues elsewhere and work bouncing from stressful to plain stupid hasn’t helped. In general I’ve just been spending a lot less time around a computer outside of work, focusing on playing elsewhere The last four weekends I’ve been out boating + fishing, with other trips inbetween too. A rare photo of me I like was from taking my little boat way up past Kwethluk fishing, which it coped with just fine, and nice to know I can do a long trip like that without any problems in my boat:

That weekend I found out one of my best friends from school had died in a car crash. Finding out by reading such seemingly meaningless posts on Facebook and having the comments going back and forth made it all seem so impersonal and frustrated me a lot. Partly why I haven’t blogged for a while. The one plus point was at least I had some kind of a connection, regardless of how impersonal it seemed.

A few days later, a friend made it in from Anchorage to photograph local events for the paper. That was fun, and gave me an opportunity to try heading home from work on a sunny day, hook the boat up, drop it in the water, and go play for a couple of hours. Knowing I have that kind of freedom makes such a difference, so we had fun going down to and exploring Napaskiak and Oscarville. Plus, she also made a good photo of me:

Since we’ve had a few good spells of weather and fishing opportunities, we also headed out with Captain Macy (and Erin…), Brian and Bethany to go fishing.

With four of us out there, it was a fun afternoon, though the little noseeums gave me some grief! This is me fishing with Bethany:

Last weekend Jeff and I decided to go explore the Gweek River in anticipation for moose and bird hunting. We did a little fishing, but not much around there except pike, but we had a good day exploring a new area. An hour and a half out of Bethel, quite a way’s up the Gweek, we stepped ashore and found a bunch of moose tracks in an area quite unlike anything I expected of the delta, and very reminiscent of Scotland:

The photo’s don’t do it justice as I just had my little point + shoot, but it was quite a beautiful area. Jeff is certainly going to return in the 10-day moose opening from September 1st onwards.

I also then purchased a Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun this past week to get out bird hunting. The act of purchasing and owning a gun doesn’t phase me anymore, but to walk in to the AC grocery store on a lunchtime and walk out 20 minutes later with a gun was a little weird. So, Wednesday night Jeff + I took a walk out across the tundra just getting used to it (he’s been great in going over the safety aspects, the gun components, hunting methods, etc. and is looking forward to a partner this fall), and Nikko ended up leading the duck count, managing to retrieve an already injured white-fronted goose. Bird hunting doesn’t officially open until September 1st, so we weren’t really looking at doing much ourselves, but again, is nice to have more options for getting out on an evening and weekend now.

This weekend Erin is moving, which is helpful, as Bethany is then moving in to her old place the following weekend. Means Iain’s Moving Services are required for two weekends, but beer and pizza are good forms of payment. If this fairly okay weather holds that we have today, am sure Jeff will be forcing me to go out on the river too. Which would be just awful I have a few more snowmobile parts coming in soon too to get my Indy 500 ready for the coming winter. The temperature dropped below freezing and gave a good frost a few days ago, so we’re definately easing out of summer.

Despite the rain, Ted Berry and I headed out a few miles down river to around Napaskiak to drift net for salmon with a strong run of silvers coming through now. I didn’t take my camera out, so relied (?!) on my cell phone for one of us in action:

We hauled in 33 salmon, 31 of which were silvers, in three main drifts of around 5 minutes After heading back home and sorting out the boat, I then headed home with 17 silvers. I can see the appeal of fish camp to give you somewhere to cut fish if nothing else! It gets messy. This was my two rubbermaids after unloading the truck:

I’d been picking up fish fish here and there from the Tundra Center, so already had a 3 silvers, 2 reds, and maybe half a dozen chum, but I just about managed to squeeze in the 17 silvers from today! This is one full freezer, and also staring to see the appeal of a separate freezer:

Overall, a fun afternoon, if leading to a long evening spending hours cutting fish!

This morning I had my practical driving test after the written test a week or so ago. Given I was doing it at 8a.m, I ended up passing it before I’d even had breakfast The plus side is my new Alaska driving license has me looking like a serial killer!

I also then called up the immigration department after not being able to check the status of my green card renewal online or on the phone for a week or so. I had received a request for additional information which was due back by July 23rd, and I was getting concerned the mail had messed up and they hadn’t received all the paperwork I sent them. After being transferred up the chain to a supervisor and starting to really get worried, I then had to explain my problem again, which the very helpful lady didn’t seem to understand. She casually informed me my case had been approved on July 22nd and that the new green card had been queued for printing and mailing out Well, that certainly was a lot better than I was expecting! I think I had to ask her to repeat it, just to make sure!

Hopefully it arrives pretty soon, as I’m still a tad nervous until I actually have it in my hand. Would much rather still be able to see the status in writing online as being ‘approved’ as with previous cases, but certainly sounds like it’s for real! Within like two hours this morning I’d tied off the last couple of major things with being over here and getting through the renewal on my own. Has also gone through incredibly quickly if so, given I didn’t file until the end of March, but then I had got a biometrics appointment within 3 weeks, and everything seems to have moved smoothly. Will see what I get in the mail over the next couple of weeks.

The past week has kept me busy finishing off a bunch of projects at work given people start rolling back in to the office next week. I was also on dog watch for for 4-5 nights around last weekend as Jeff went down to see Angel. The weather has been very up and down too, last weekend was just wet + miserable the whole time, then Wed-Fri have been nice through the day, and rain pretty much bang on 5p.m!

Last night I went to fill up the gas cans for boating and literally as soon as I stepped out the truck the heavens opened! As I’m filling up the cans, I say to the guy at the next pump doing the same thing: “You going out boating tonight?”. He looks up, dripping wet, smiles and says “Nope. You?”. I look up, dripping wet too, and reply “Nope”. Regardless, Jeff and I decided today we were going, rain or no rain!

That was my truck + boat at the top of the small boat harbor south ramp waiting to lower in to the water. I’m slowly getting better at reversing the truck with boat trailer, but am glad Jeff is around to help and is patient! It’s quite difficult trying to learn to reverse a trailer in the first place, let alone when you’re going downhill and in to water, the last part of which your brain tells you is stupid!

Anyways, we’d wanted to go run the Napaskiak River so we knew where it came out and what it looked like, as it’s on the main Kuskokwim channel between Church Slough and Kwethluk, the primary marine highway I guess. Here’s a rough map of our explored areas now:

Red was today’s play time, yellow was our camping trip a couple of weeks ago. The others have been shakedown runs of Jeff’s boat and mine or from exploring the Kwethluk River before our camping trip. The Gweek River is next up, the one just starting at the top directly north of our red route from today, which is meant to be quite pretty and good for wildlife. The Kisararlik (sp?) is also a planned trip, past Kwethluk and heading off in the top right hand corner, which is a good fishing river apparently.

Gas wise we got to within about a mile of the boat harbor coming back before I ran out of gas. There was still a little left in the tank, but that whole red run was done on 6 gallons. Not bad for a 2-stroke. As a comparison, Jeff’s yellow run was done round-trip on about 12 gallons, so there’s seemingly not much between the 2-stoke 30hp and 4-stroke 40hp, though Jeff is pushing an 18ft boat loaded up wih gear which then shows how fuel efficient it is. But, even at $5.10/gallon, that’s a good 2 hours or so on the river today for $30, and fun going exploring some new waterways

Given the difficulties of towing a boat with a bicycle, I decided I needed something a little more useful:

It’s ‘92 Chevy S-10 4.3l V6 4wd pickup which for a Bethel truck is in a pretty good condition Will haul my boat to the harbor and back and get me around town rather than walking in the rain. Quite pleased with it!

Saturday morning I got things ready to put my boat on the water I was a little nervous, especially trying to lower it down the ramp with the truck given I’ve never reversed a vehicle trailer before, let alone in a long pick-up and with it being boat trailer! But, Jeff guided me in and the boat engine fired up and we started heading out:

Yesterday I moved the seats round in the boat, as is more natural for driving from the opposite side. Hopefully is a little easier driving like that. But, the engine itself ran just great, a lot better than I was expecting, very little vibration so the prop is good, and was okay on gas too. A little loud with it being a 2-stroke, but not uncomfortably so. Overall, very happy with it!

We then swapped out boats and headed way up the Kwethluk River with Jeff and the dogs to go camping. The weather was just great, and with a little breeze, very few bugs either. After a little battle with the fishies, I finally landed a pike which went straight on the grill Tasted great:

Our camp site was in a really nice spot, on a little beach and getting enough sun whilst still staying fairly cool:

My tent was a bit small for the dogs as well, though just fine for Jeff + I, so we will need something a little bigger to have those guys getting a more comfortable night away from the bugs. But, overall, was a good shakedown trip to figure things out for next time now we know what we gear have that works and doesn’t (and not to leave stuff in the boat unless you want it covered in dew in the morning!). Am tired today, but good fun!

A few days ago I headed down to Hangar Lake, local float plane base, after work to make some HDR photos of the airplanes since we had such nice weather it would have been a waste not to This was Myron Angstman’s (I believe) Cessna 172:

There was another 172, a 207, Maule and Aviat A-1B docked along the shore, plus this Piper PA-18 belonging to the State Troopers or Fish & Game, looking just awesome in HDR with such intense blues:

I’d set up a function key on my EOS 50D to allow the AEB switching to be easily able to shoot more than 3 bracketed exposures, so these photos and others on Flickr were from a 1EV 5 exposure sequence in Photomatix. This gave a much more even tone and less graininess which I experienced doing a 3 exposure sequence last week with the abandoned Army truck and burned down house. There’s definitely some great uses out here to capture the range of tones, especially blue skies. I can imagine in the winter time especially there could be some fantastic opportunities at sunrise and sunset!

For the 4th of July parade and festivities, the Tundra Drums asked me to send in any photographs I took, so I spent a few hours on the Saturday morning moving around getting really good ones detailed in my flickr set.

Being around whilst people in the parade were getting ready gave the opportunity to get Iditarod 2009 musher Harry Alexie to pose in a dog-sled cart:

I pretty ran the length of the parade route, meaning I got to a bunch of shots from different parts around town which although tiring, was actually pretty good fun. No-one seemed to mind the idiot sitting the middle of the road whilst a dog team or truck was coming right towards me. Which was nice. Here is the well adorned Girl Scouts float:

At the carnival itself, the were some fun little market stalls set up, food vendors, raffle tickets for sale, etc. I managed to find a fun shot of Brian Kay adorned in the stars and stripes:

One more photograph I made mainly for the newspaper was of a couple of elders enjoying the festivities going on around them:

All in all, I was really happy with how the day turned out. I filled an 8Gb CF card in like 3 hours with 360+ RAW photos and then spent pretty much all Sunday processing them to get them in to the paper for the the 8.30a.m Monday deadline. But, they ran 6 photos in full color which was cool. More photos from the day are detailed in this flickr set. I’d then ended up spending the rest of the 4th out on the river with Jeff, so was a great day!

For well over a year I’ve wanted to experiment with HDR (high dynamic range) photography, the blending of multiple photos taken at different levels of exposure. Over the winter I’d been slowly eyeing up various places around town where there is some interest, as I think HDR can be easily overdone and applied to subjects that don’t warrant it. But, each to their own. I’m hoping to stay calm and use subtle blends. So, coming home from work with 60F weather and blue skies, I grabbed my camera gear and jumped on the bike for some areas I’d seen just yesterday with Jeff:

There must be a fantastic story about this old army truck. I will try to pick people’s brains tomorrow on it!

Right next to this location, there’s also a burned out house just sitting having never been cleaned up. Again, would like to find out a little more about it. I can only hope everyone got out safely. This is still my biggest fear with living out here:

These HDR images were created using the awesome Photomatix software, which I realized very quickly, and with HDR in general, not just this piece of software, requires a good number of images to work with. The Canon EOS 50D by default only does 3 auto bracketed shots at up to +/- 2 stops exposure. I have found a good tutorial to quickly adjust this to 9 to 12 shots which I hope will reduce the graininess present by a lack of range in the tonal adjustment processing. 5 to 9 images seems to be a good standard for creating HDR images. The tripod and balllhead were awesome in setting these up, with ballhead so much easier to quickly and precisely line up what you wanted, and the quick release plate meaning I could also easily move to somewhere else lining up shots.

I’m looking forward to experimenting more. I know with the right conditions or filters, I may seemingly be able to achieve results close to these, but even photographs I made at what I would consider the right settings and looked very respectable pale alongside an HDR composed shot now. Check out the large resolution versions on flickr to see what I mean It works really well, and just the effect I was hoping I’d be able to achieve.