From the Archives
Endless Winter
June 25, 2009 #
This article was originally published a year ago in issue 4 of travel magazine Everywhere. I have updated the content and photos for the web, but the theme is as relevant now as it was then.
With summer heating up in North America and Europe, this is a time when avid skiers and snowboarders are starting to suffer some serious withdrawal symptoms: The season ended months ago, and it’ll be months before the snow starts falling again. There may be hiking, or mountain biking, or even indoor skiing on hand, but frankly, it’s just not the same. For anyone who can’t wait to get a proper fix, the snow in New Zealand’s stunning Tongariro National Park beckons.
Located smack in the middle of New Zealand’s North Island, Tongariro National Park sports a trio of active volcanoes: Flat-topped Tongariro, cone-shaped Ngauruhoe and towering Ruapehu. New Zealand’s two largest ski areas—Turoa and Whakapapa—occupy the slopes of Mount Ruapehu. The season here runs from July to October. During the first few months, the weather can be unpredictable and the trails tend to be hard-packed and icy. But as New Zealand’s spring approaches, the fierce sun turns the snow into a grainy slush, which makes for fantastic backcountry riding. In a good year, the ski areas open for summer skiing as late as December, and the snow gets progressively more buttery, until the ski season segues perfectly into the surf season.
More than anything, though, skiing in Tongariro National Park is about the nature experience. In winter, the rugged, volcanic landscape around Mount Ruapehu’s peak softens out into swooping ridges and smooth bowls. Both ski areas offer expansive views of New Zealand’s North Island, and intrepid riders can hike to 9177ft Tahurangi Peak for glacier skiing and plenty of crisp, fresh air. Even the access roads are beautiful, winding first through lush, native forest packed with ancient trees and giant tree ferns, then a barren landscape of black, jagged boulders—some of which were launched from the crater during volcanic eruptions.
I’ve spent several seasons skiing in Tongariro National Park, and I’m in love with the altitude, the wide vistas, the soft spring snow and the unique terrain of a living, breathing volcano. It’s a remarkable place to experience, and for travelers from the Northern Hemisphere, the chance to do some off-season skiing is icing on the cake.
For ski area information, trail maps, weather reports, volcano safety guidelines and more, visit the Mount Ruapehu website. And for additional photos, check out the Mount Ruapehu gallery.
HDR Necropolis
June 20, 2009 #
High Dynamic Range photography, it seems, is still considered a bit of a novelty. That’s a shame. The technique has uses far beyond creating surreal, painterly images for the Flickr HDR Pool. And if you’re a travel photographer, it has double appeal: It allows you to take photos on the road, in impossible lighting conditions, with absolutely no extra gear required. (Nope, not even a tripod!) The only catch? Tedious post-processing.
These days, Photoshop has support for merging multiple exposures. And there are a number of third party applications available for the same purpose. But that still requires a round trip out of your favorite photo management application, which, with my limited attention span, I find highly disruptive. Creating HDR images shouldn’t be any harder than doing regular RAW processing in Aperture. And now, thanks to the Photomatix HDR Tone Mapping Aperture plugin, it isn’t.
Here’s how it works: I found a gorgeous tomb in Buenos Aires’ venerable necropolis—the Cementerio de la Recoleta. Because the necropolis is arranged in a north-south direction, noon is a great time to take photos, with hard but symmetrical lighting. For this shot, I wanted the sun in the frame, hidden behind the cross on the roof. I also wanted the tombs in the background well lit to add depth, while properly exposing the main subject. As you can see below, the automatic exposure on my trusty old 20D was not quite up to the job.
To create an HDR image, I shot two more frames, overexposed and underexposed by two stops. A tripod helps at this point, to make sure the images are perfectly aligned. But I’m not a fan of lugging one around, so all three frames were taken handheld. A handy tip here is to use continuous drive, to grab all frames in quick succession and minimize the alignment errors between them.
Back in New Zealand, I selected all three images in Aperture and fired them up in the HDR plugin. If you haven’t used a tripod, the plugin will align the images. It also offers to reduce chromatic aberration, which can be handy in high contrast images like this one. I found that the plugin generally does a great job of the alignment, but not so much of the chromatic aberration. More on that below.
Next up, the actual tone mapping. If you are the impatient sort, the Photomatix default settings do a pretty good job of many scenes. But you can probably get a much better result by making some small adjustments. If there’s a lot of blue sky involved, for example, I like to dial down the “Saturation Highlights” a bit. This keeps the blues from getting too overpowering. For the tomb, I also reduced the “Microcontrast” and increased the “Micro-smoothing” to achieve more natural texture detail in the stonework. As always, experimentation is the best way to learn about the various settings: Crank the sliders up and down to their extreme values to see what effect each parameter may have on your image.
At this point, I was pretty happy with the result, so I clicked Save and let the plugin generate the blended image. However, taking the loupe to the end result, it was immediately obvious that I had to do something about color fringing. Even with chromatic aberration correction enabled, many of the high contrast edges had cyan and magenta halos. In this case, I was lucky: Because the tomb itself was almost gray, I could use the Color brick in Aperture to select first the cyan, then the magenta areas, and fully desaturate both. To finish off, I also added a small amount of saturation to the stonework, lightened up the shadows, and added a very subtle vignette.
That’s it! From raw footage to fully processed HDR image in less than two minutes—plus travel time to Argentina.
The Photomatix plugin does have a few glitches. In particular, resizing the user interface can wreak havoc with the controls, and even make some of them inaccessible. And I’d like much better control over the preview image, which is currently of limited use for making detailed adjustments. But this is more than made up for by seamless Aperture integration, easy-to-use tone mapping controls, and great results.
HDR photography may get a bad rap for being overly gimmicky. But it allows you to get usable shots in difficult lighting conditions, at very low cost and with a minimum of hassle. And perhaps with an Aperture plugin now available, more photographers will add this useful imaging technique to their bag of tricks.
The Photomatix Aperture plugin is available from HDRsoft for $79. There is also a Lightroom version available, as well as a standalone application. And if you’re not ready to pony up the cash just yet, you can download a fully functional trial version and take it for a spin.
Site Upgrade
June 14, 2009 #
As you can see, peciva.com has had a slight upgrade. (Reading the news feed? Take the site for a spin.) Among the improvements: Integrated photo galleries, integrated Twitter feed, and much less blue and orange.
A few things to look out for: In the new Photography section, you can now hit the “View Slideshow” link in any Gallery to enjoy higher resolution images. If you know what you’re looking for, you can Search for specific images. And if you’re an image buyer, you can now sign up for a free PhotoShelter account, create lightboxes and purchase rights managed licenses, all without leaving the site.
For the blog, the new widescreen format should allow for bigger photos and better formatting of content. The idea is to publish slightly beefier blog posts, while moving the quick updates to Twitter. Don’t have a Twitter profile? No problem: My Twitter feed will also appear on Facebook, and in the sidebar on all blog and Archive pages.
That’s just about it. Take the new site for a spin, and please let me know what you think!
Oh, and the photo shows a rugged section of the Andes, halfway between Santiago and Mendoza.
Airport Grid
June 6, 2009 #
Geometrically pleasing view from the airside waiting area of Salta International Airport.
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