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The Art Lover - Baedeker’s London, 1911

Filed Under retrotravels.net

I acquired a “new” guidebook today: a 1911 copy of Baedeker’s London and Its Environs.  The previous owner went wild marking the book and I love ‘em for it.  Due to the nature of the marginalia in the book, I’m calling the previous owner “The Art Lover.” Most of the markings are underlinings in pencil, but Art Lover also provided additional information about the artwork not listed in the text of the guidebook.

Like all the books in my collection, many assumptions have to be made about the nature of the markings.  Where they using it to plan a trip?  Did they have it in hand while traveling?  Maybe it was perused while home, at the comfort of their study?  Even with the amazing amount of markings in the book - almost every page - it looks like it might be difficult to get into the mind of Art Lover without a lot of detective work.  Nonetheless, this book will make a great addition to my collection of well-used travel guidebooks and I hope to use it with my yet-to-be-opened, retrotravels.net.

Here are some scans of the book. Enjoy!

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Cabot Straight, Nova Scotia

Filed Under Uncategorized, international travel, photography

There are a group of Nova Scotians who proudly live in the northern Highlands of Cape Breton.  They are the descendants of the Scots who arrived hundreds of years ago.  My friend from nearby Asby Bay said that two families living in Meat Cove, the northern-most land of Nova Scotia, have been feuding for years.  She told me of a story where the feuding was so violent, the Canadian National Guard had to be dispatched by helicopter to break it up.

The image below shows Cabot Straight, the tip of Cape Breton, and the town pf Capstick.  The clouds hung over the strip of land like a halo. If you look closely, you can see Newfoundland on the far left.

Click on the photo to load a zoom-able image.

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Nova Scotia Journal

Filed Under international travel

A little sand from the beach, a pocket of coins, a clump of moss… it is the little ordinary objects I come in contact with on my journeys that seem to find themselves returning home with me. These relics become physical connections to memories made on my trip. A vial of sand from Pleasant Bay, Nova Scotia reminds me of strolling along the beach, sharing the misty morning with a flock of seagulls. A pocket of coins instantly reminds me of a short conversation with a local while standing in line at a market. Or the friendly waitress who told me, without any sense of showing indifference towards me, that Canada doesn’t use $1 and $2 bills but rather coins. Or the beautiful moss I plucked from the forest where I had a magical encounter with a moose.

Then there is my journal. I consider my travel journals the most precious relic from my trip, capturing the moments better than my photography or any other object I find on my travels. I didn’t find a lot of time to journal on this trip, but when I did, I scribbled as much details as I could remember. Here are a few scans from my Nova Scotia journal:

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Trip Report: Nova Scotia

Filed Under Uncategorized, international travel, photography

I visited a friend in Nova Scotia for a week earlier this month. The excuse to visit her and her Canadian providence was to teach her high school art class a little about photography. She could have simply asked if I wanted to go up there to take our her trash and I’d probably had said “yes”, but it was fun to share some of my photography tips and tricks with her class.

The area she lived in - Cape Breton Highlands - is unbelievably beautiful. Wildflowers were in bloom, the pristine forests were alive with wildlife. I saw moose, coyotes, egrets, geese, rabbits, snakes, eagles, toads… I went on a couple hikes and admired how they were so clean and without graffiti or trash, an unfortunate occurrence here in Southern California.

If you want to save money, you should go to Nova Scotia instead of Scotland. After all, Nova Scotia literally translates to “New Scotland”. The people speak English with a Canadian/Gaelic accent. Even street signs along the Cabot Trail, the main highway snaking up the eastern coast of Cape Breton Island, are in both English and Gaelic.

I enjoyed the graciousness of my host and those who lived in the area. The people I met in the highlands of Cape Brenton had family in the area for many generations. I was staying in a cabin with a friend on the property her family settled on some 200 years earlier. The graveyard on the old property had over 100 tombstones, all related in some way to my friend. Her great great great grandfather who came over from Scotland was buried there.

All the sleepy towns in the area were beautiful, with their cottage-like houses painted either white or a bright color. A local told me that since the weather changes so often and usually involved wind and rain, they use protective boat paint to cover their homes – which probably comes in colors with names like “Ocean Blue”, “Fire Truck Red” or “Banana Yellow”. With the contrast of their well-manicured lawns, the brown rocky shoreline and the blue ocean, it was easy to take “postcard perfect” photos. Here are a few:

I’ll post more photos, as well as a few other things (maps, journal scans, etc.) from my trip, in  the coming weeks.

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Déjà Vu

Filed Under international travel, photography

I am spending the weekend preparing for a trip to Nova Scotia, Canada where I’ll be visiting a friend I haven’t seen since 2004. We met while backpacking through Croatia and have kept in touch ever since through e-mail. She invited me to teach her high school class a bit about photography, so I’ve spent the last few hours looking through my photos for examples of composition.

I came across this photo I took in Marrakesh, Morocco last December:

I remember having a strong feeling of déjà vu last month when taking photos of the Pasadena City Hall. It wasn’t until I found the Morocco photo that I realized why:

It might not be obvious at first glance, but the photos are of lanterns hanging from ceilings taken from below looking directly up.

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Good Quote

Filed Under Uncategorized

Have you ever read a quote that stopped you in your tracks? A quote that made you look up from the text and ponder it a bit? I found one of those quotes today while reading an article on Outside Online.

“I’ve tried to make the rest of my life good enough that even if the physics theories don’t work out, it wasn’t a waste of time.”

This quote is from Garrett Lisi, an adventurer with a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. He’s as intrepid as any backpacker I’ve met, but most backpackers I’ve met haven’t come up with a theory on everything that has been gathering attention.

The quote made me wonder how many people think that Garrett has lost his mind and that his priorities are in the wrong place. I for one think that he’s got life right and we should all take notes. He seems to understand what is elementally important in life.

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A Bug Book, BBC DVD, and a Modofly Moleskine Walk Into a Bar…

Filed Under graphic design, photography

Today felt a bit like Christmas with two separate orders arriving on the same day. I received a box from Amazon after waiting patiently for three weeks. It contained the book Closeup Shooting: A Guide to Closeup, Tabletop and Macro Photography by Cyrill Harnischmacher and the BBC-produced documentary 2-disc DVD, Life in the Undergrowth. I watched a bit of the DVD last night and was astounded by the quality. One thing I immediately enjoyed was how the host would point out how big some of the “undergrowth” creatures were by comparing it to the head of a pin. The cameras and angles they used had were extraordinary, able to focus on an insect the size of a fingernail and then on the host, standing in the background. I hope the DVDs have a “making of” featurette.

I also perused the book a bit and it seems like an excellent purchase. Every beautiful photo has data about the shot (f-stop, speed, light source, etc.) as well as comparisons with slightly different settings (higher/lower speed, flash/no flash) showing how it changes the shot. Just a skim of the book tonight gave me some great ideas to improve my insect macro skills.

A package from Modofly also came today and in it was my newest travel journal. The company is an “artist collaborative piloted by a couple of jack-of-all trade artists/designers that go by the names of Jordan and Kevin.” When I discovered their site through Moleskinerie, I was immediately drawn to “the Elephant Trot” journal. I’ve been a fan of woodcuts and this one is exceptionally well done. It reminded me of the work of Albrecht Dürer. An e-mail to Modofly asking how the books were made introduced me to Jordan, who obviously lives up to his “jack-of-all trade” title. He shared with me how the books are etched using a laser into the cover of a Moleskine journal using the designs of a handful of artists associated with them. I would learn that “the Elephant Trot” was done by the artist Tristan Brando. Based on her photo, she’s obviously a supermodel filling in the time between fashion shows by creating amazing works of art.

Here are some horrible macro shots I snapped quickly after getting home today. I’ll be using this journal in December for a very special occasion: my annual international backpacking trip.

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Kenko Extension Tube Set Review

Filed Under entomology, local travel, photography

I recently purchased some Kenko Extension Tubes for my Canon 40d and thought I’d write a mini photographic review. The set comes with 12mm, 20mm, and 36mm extensions, all made of quality plastic with metal connection mounts. Extension tubes allows photographers to focus closer than the lens’ normal minimum focal length. In other words, you can get reeeeally close to your subject and still be able to focus.

Here are a few photos I took at the Huntington Botanical Gardens over the weekend. I’ve included a portion of the full-resolution shot (3888×2592p) to show the detail captured.

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