The Great Photo Purge of 2013

Geezer moment:

I remember back when those digital cameras were nothing but a craze! A fad! Film was the only true medium and it was never going to go away. All those digital yahoos were in for a rude awakening soon enough...

End...

I resisted buying a digital camera long after they became mainstream. Prices were too high and quality too low. When I finally broke down and bought one back in 2002, it wasn't the greatest, but it was rugged and durable and even water/weatherproof, which was a must for my ocean-going, rough-and-tumble lifestyle. I wore that camera out, dropped it in bodies of water, rolled it around in sand, beat it against rock walls... and I reveled in not having to pay to develop film!

But the downside of being on the verge of a moment is that the systems you develop for storage and cataloging and general use become outdated very quickly. When iPhoto came along with my brand new mac laptop, I was exstatic to have an easy photo management solution. Being a creature of habit, I've stuck with iPhoto for far too long. And my photo library became a blob-like creature, growing exponentially, wild and untamable and perhaps detrimental to my (mental) health, recently reaching some 16,000+ images!

Streamlining my image library has long been on my to-do-someday list.  Given the fact that very soon I will be selling off my video-editing MacPro and with it will go all of my massive amounts of hard drive space, that someday became now four days ago. I broke down and purchased Adobe's Lightroom.

I debated long and hard between aperture and Lightroom and it was a difficult decision, both programs are solid and offer great features. But as much as I love Apple's hardware, being in the video editing industry, I've fallen prey to their flippant software product backing one too many times. (Final Cut Pro, when it switched from 7 to X, the complete discontinuance of Shake and Server...) Adobe, being solely a software company, seems to stand much more firmly behind their software, and that (along with the file hierarchy system of Lightroom vs Aperture) was the tipping point for me.

So for four days I've been purging my ridiculously over sized photo library. I'm only halfway through and I've deleted thousands of images. Thousands!

I'll be quite happy to load up my streamlined library on my travel laptop when this is all done, and especially happy to check off one more (unexpectedly large) to-do from my countdown to travel list.

My shrinking iPhoto library...

How do you manage your digital photos?

Revisiting Petra by Night

During my first trip to Jordan, in 2010, I vividly remember sitting on a hand-woven red-striped camel-hair mat on the dusty, pink desert sand at the base of Petra's magical Treasury, listening to amazing, perfectly ambient Bedouin Rababa music echoing through the cavernous passages and thinking: Dagnabit, I really, really, really wish I had a travel tripod.

Seriously.

Yes, I really enjoyed the evening. It was, in fact, one of the most amazing experiences I'd ever had, but oh! the photos I was taking in my head! The photos I mourned the loss of never having because I wasn't properly equipped for night photography!!

So when I got home from that trip, I researched, and ordered a Joby gorillapod for future trips, but especially on the very slim, off-chance that I would ever return to Petra again. I mean, Petra is like one of the holy grails of travel! It's super remote and somewhat of an ordeal to get to. (The holy grail reference is especially funny if you've seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.)

Fast forward two years: I excitedly packed my gorillapod into a coveted few square inches of my suitcase and took off for the middle east, and my second visit to Petra, eager to snap those amazing night-shots of the world-heritage site! When my friends and I set out from Jerusalem, we brought simple, small overnight bags/backpacks with us, leaving our cumbersome suitcases in the suitcase locker at the convent in Jerusalem. It was the lightest I'd ever traveled, and I was very proud of my mad packing skills.

By the time we arrived in Wadi Musa, it had already been a LOOOONG day. I drove from Jerusalem to Eilat (~4 hours), and then crossed the border into Jordan with my friends (~1 hour), then took a cab from the border down into Petra, (~2.5 hours) arriving just as the sun was beginning to set over the pink hills.

So it wasn't until a few hours later that evening, about a half-mile into the mile-long trek down the Siq for the Petra by Night festivities, when I realized that I'd left my camera in the hotel room.

In a panic, I told my friends I was hiking back to the hotel and would meet them at the Treasury, ASAP. I knew I'd miss a few minutes of the musical performance, but I'd been before, and the camera was more important to me at that point.

So I high-tailed it in high gear up the hill, to my (fortuitously located) hotel room (In the Petra Guesthouse Hotel, a Crown Plaza property, no sponsorship received) and then hoofed it in a hurry back down to the performance.

I arrived, sweaty and breathing heavily from the exertion, only to realize once I'd found my friends, that I'd left my tripod in my suitcase, back in Jerusalem.

I'm sure it's a sub-conscious sabotage thing. You know, I didn't take the tripod so I'll have to go back, again...

 My travel peeps, Heidi and Rebecca

NephewQ's Three-Year Photos

NephewQ turned three a while back and to celebrate, I was able to take his three-year photos. They really show off his cute little personality, don't you think?

 Q how old are you? "Two, furee, four, five..." 

Close enough!

 Little lady Avery

 Look at that little chubster! Little Rhys.

 You two are suspect... highly suspect!

 Love that little Stinkerbug!!

Capture the Color Photography Contest

www.travelsupermarket.com is hosting a clever photography contest. Bloggers can enter by publishing a blog post of photos that capture the colors blue, green, yellow, white and red.

Here's my entry:

YELLOW: 

 I shot this photo on my first trip to Rome, in 2009. Why it took me until 2009 to visit Rome, I have no clue. I fell completely in love with the old, romantic, dirty, historic, fabulous city immediately, but especially with the buttery yellow color I saw everywhere, from the buildings to the sky.

BLUE:

While in Utah for a friend's wedding, I took a drive out to remote Saltair to see the weird salt/sand flats and the Salt Lake. A storm moved through during my time there and this is one of the really cool images from that day. The sky was so gray and ominous one moment and the next moment it opened up and *Bam* hello, gorgeous blue!

RED: 

My first taste of Greece was sampled via Sailboat. I snapped this photo of my chipped, red-polished toes just before jumping into the 19ft of beckoning, brilliant blue-green waters in the cove of a tiny, near-deserted island in the Greek Dodecanese Islands. (Of course, I put the camera down first.)

GREEN:

Exploring the beautiful Wadi Rum Preserve in Jordan was, at times, kind of like being on a driving version of Disney's Jungle Cruise. I think good ol' Walt must have visited this place and tried to mimic it's utterly amazing, exploratory (Indiana Jones-ish) feel. Pink sands, crystal clear starry skies at night and an unforgettable time staying overnight with the Bedouins in Wadi Rum were topped only by my falling head over heels for this amazing, faded old army-green truck. I was offered it, as part of my dowry, if I agreed to marry the local Sheik. Sadly, I had to leave the truck, and the Sheik behind.

WHITE:

While walking across one of Stockholm's many, many bridges, (the city was built on 14 islands) I happened to look down and see this gorgeous, swirly black body of water, almost oily looking it was so black. As I pulled my camera out, several swans, native birds to that region of the world, but beautifully exotic in mine, paddled into the area. I quickly fired off several shots and was super excited about this one.

All images Copyright Christy Warnick, 2012 

For the contest, I'm nominating: @sweetbookshelf, @kellywestover_, @itravel81, @the_HoliDaze, @natthefatrat and @OopseyDaisy917

To check out this fab photo contest, click here: http://www.travelsupermarket.com/c/holidays/capture-the-colour/

2012 Calendar Project: The Final Product

I just realized that although I took photos of the final, printed calendar, I never posted them! What was I thinking??

So, without further ado, the final calendar project, created by yours truly, with photos taken by moi:

Curated Collection: Oceans // #FriFotos

This week's twitter meme subject is one of my favorite things in the world. In fact, they cover most of the world! That's right, Oceans!

Here is my curated collection of oceanic bodies of water from around the globe. Enjoy!

The Red Sea (Egypt) 

 The Pacific (Monterey, California)

 The Caribbean Sea (Antigua)

 The Baltic (At sea, near St. Petersburg, Russia at 3am) (This is one of my favorite images ever)

 The Pacific (Hawaii -- Big Island, from Volcanoes National Park)

 The Meditteranean (Anchored at Levita, Greece)

 The Meditteranean (From Santorini, Greece)

Gateway to the Black Sea from the Bosphorus (near Istanbul, Turkey)

Pickin' the Zin

Facebook can sometimes be a great friend in and of itself. Friday afternoon I *just happened* to be browsing through the numerous and varied subjects posted as status updates when I happened apon this jewel:

Anybody want to come help pick Zinfandel tmrw am @ Landa Vineyards? Will be food, fun, wine and bocce after! Let me know, they need help!

Seriously?

Really?

How cool is that?!! It was posted by an old friend of mine who I hadn't spoken with for over ten years. So I typed in a quick query about the event and was soon answered back with all the pertinent info.

This is the kind of stuff I love to do. Random. Pretty much unplanned. Great chance to learn something new and see something interesting. Not to mention a great opportunity to lend a hand to a small, family-owned and operated business.  I knew I was going to go even though it meant that my once-weekly ritual of sleeping in on Saturday morning would be nixed. Oh well. I sent txt messages to a couple of people inviting them to come along but only one person could come: my adorably preggo little sister. Fun!

We were up well before the sun this morning. I frequently say (and think) that I really can live without seeing the sunrise. I'm not a morning person. Ughh. Alarm clocks are sources of real pain and frequent torture. Kels lives about fourty minutes away from me (in the opposite direction from the vineyard), so she took BART to where I am, I picked her up and after a quick stop at a coffee shop for some hot cocoa (and a bathroom - I could blame the pregnancy hormones, but just as much of it is that small bladders run in our family) we were off!

Have you ever experienced Bay Area traffic? It's gotten progressively worse since I started driving at the age of 16. Back then (in the olden days, when we walked to school in the snow, uphill, both ways) outside of rush hour the freeways were reasonably clear. Not so any longer. Now there is bad traffic during any time of the day or night. Especially traveling along the 580 to 101 corridor. Today we discovered the secret to traveling quickly along said route: Leave early in the morning. Aparently Bay Area-ans are not morning people in general. We were on the road by 7am on a Saturday morning and made fantastic time! We rolled up to the vineyard in Sonoma County by 8:15.

 My long-lost friend Sarah greeted us, introduced us to the vintner (a fabulously laid-back man named Jim who wore a soft Aussie-style hat) and then (after another bathroom break) we hopped into a few rows of Cabernet Sauvignon and started snipping away with our clippers at the vines.

Kels and I picked a few rows of Cab with Sarah and one other fun couple and had a great time chatting and catching up. I had a chance to learn a smidge about a couple of different varieties of grapes. For instance, Cabernet Sauvignon grapes tend to grow in more sporadic clusters while Zinfandel grapes are darker in color and grow in tight bunches. The tight bunches of the Zinfandel grapes posed a problem for the Landa vineyard this year because just as the grapes were going to be perfect for harvesting we had a random, massive, two-day rainstorm blow through. The rain affects the sugar levels in the grapes (the brix) adversly. The sugar content goes down, so the grapes had to stay on the vine another couple of weeks for the brix to rise to the proper level again. 

Doesn't seem like a big deal, but it is because the fruit can (and did) get moldy if it sits damp. Sadly, a good portion of the fruit we picked was fairly moldy! We picked around it, snipped moldy sections of fruit out and still managed to get a decent harvest. But just imagine what it could have been like! This experience really made me grateful for farmers. (That combined with my attempt at growing tomatoes, bell peppers and Lima beans this past year). Imagine putting your heart and soul into efforts to grow and tend crops only to have something like a freak rainstorm take out all of your hard work just as you're about to see it pay off! Heartbreaking!

Thankfully, Landa vineyard is more of a hobby for the family. They have careers outside of wine, so they're not counting on this as a cash crop. But there are seriously thousands of vineyards of varying sizes through the Napa/Sonoma/Solano area. They all were hit by the rain. And what about other crops? 

...We finished up the harvesting around noon and headed up the hill to the house, where the grapes were put through a machine to remove them from the vines and the juice and squished grapes were collected into giant tubs. The concoction will sit for ten days and cure, at which point the juice will be strained through a sieve and then bottled. Voila! Wine!

A fabulous pasta lunch followed sitting around on a gorgeous back deck with an amazing view for a good while nourished the body and soul. Excellent morning!

--

Oh, by the way, I don't drink. I don't advocate drinking or alcohol in any way. But I did thoroughly enjoy this day and had a great time learning about a famous regional industry.

What did you do this weekend??

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Favorite non-PC quote of the day (overheard while harvesting): "I'd make a good Mexican. I'm picking. And I love tacos... and tequila." 

 Wow. 

Photos: