Landscapes – Page 5 – Claude Schneider's Photoblog

March 17, 2007

Costa Rica – Week 2

Have been without internet for the last few days, and with good reason. Went to the Caribbean coast for 5 days, to a great area in and around Puerto Viejo, which is half Spanish (Costa Rican), and half Reggae/Jamaican. Very laid-back and rural. The reason I had not internet is that our “hotel” was a tree house. Yup, all wooden, no outer walls, and built around a tree. OK, so there were some mod-cons (quite surprising), but when it rained (torrentially) it sounded like a jet plane on the tarp covering (not great when it keeps you awake two nights running), and there were 360 degree views of the rainforest all around. Which meant it was very easy to see lots of wildlife – we had an opossum rummaging around in a cupboard (very nonchalantly), lots of crabs in holes between us and the beach, lots of weird spiders, lizards, insects and pretty flowers. And thankfully, surprisingly few mosquitoes.

I took advantage of being on the coast and did my Advanced PADI Scuba course – 5 dives, including a mandatory deep dive and navigation dive, and I then chose Peak Performance Buoyancy, Underwater Naturalist (took a few photos), and a Night Dive, which turned out to be an incredible exercise in dealing with the worst conditions you could not wish to encounter (3 feet of visibility in a pea soup, very strong currents, and 10 feet of space to get through a gap, with the reef everywhere I swam. Still, was good experience, if not entirely pleasant! And I now love green glow sticks for an entirely new reason: survival!!!

Anyway, not going to ramble on too much – the photos should show it all, but brief background to some of these pics: went on a walk through the Cahuita Reserve, saw Capuchin monkeys up close, a good view of a sloth (and more ;), and a couple of snakes.

For the last 3 days we’re staying in the centre of the country again, at the most amazing hotel – it is in a big area with a butterfly observatory, serpentarium, 5 huge waterfalls, ranarium and hummingbird garden. So I’ve been taking photos pretty much constantly ;)

This is my favourite photo of the whole trip, can’t believe I got to see this frog and get this shot!!! Will probably be the cover photo for my book :)

Flame of the Forest

Lizard in Heliconia

Spider

Eyelash Pitviper

Sloth and baby

Bat
Ever tried taking a photo of a bat at night…?

…or a hummingbird?

Katydid

Blue Jeans Poison Dart Frog
Blue-jeans poison dart frog

Raccoons

Clearwing butterfly

Red-Eyed Tree Frog

Iris

The Resplendent Quetzal, a rare and magnificent sight

Iris after the rain

Cloud forest

Flying Tree Frog

Red-Eyed Tree Frog

Glass Frog

March 4, 2007

Costa Rica – Day 2

I wasn’t planning on writing again today, but today’s events were even better than yesterday, and while I’ve got free internet at the hotel, and my family are all early-to-bed people on holiday, I thought I’d write some more :)

A couple of things I forgot to mention yesterday were that they play lots of Salsa and Merengue music everywhere, and that every time I try to speak any Spanish, I think of Italian. It’s like I have a brain elf that goes through lots of doors in my head, trying to find the right one for a word translation, and occasionally opens the wrong door and sees a word in Italian, Dutch or Hebrew. Weird analogy, but it came to me this afternoon ;) My brother has been getting by fine, having travelled around Central and Southern America a few times. Hopefully it’ll kick in. Didn’t help that we flew over here with Dutch airlines, where I found myself speaking Dutch to the staff!

Anyway, back to Costa Rica – this morning we went to Sky Trek (www.skytrek.com), which has a cable car over the tree tops (for some nice views, and to get height for the next step: a series of unbelievable zip lines hundreds of feet over the trees. There were 7 in total, and the longest was 600ft above the tree canopy, and 750m long, reaching speeds of 45mph. While the thrill was amazing, I just couldn’t get over the breathtaking views, with rainforest waaaay below, and Lake Arenal in view… I got some video footage while going along. If anyone’s seen Medicine Man, or David Attenborough documentaries, this is similar, but with a huge injection of adrenaline and speed! Alton Towers’ Air, eat your heart out ;)

On the drive back from that, we stopped on the side of the road to see a few Howler Monkeys climbing and jumping through the trees. We knew they were Howlers from the driver, and then definitely when they started howling!

Howler Monkey and baby

We stopped in the nearest “village”, La Fortuna, which seems to have popped up due to tourism, but has kept a nice village square, church, and two high streets. Quite a few dogs wandering around, and some interesting locals, made for some good cultural photos of non-wildlife.

Saw a pair of macaws in the grounds of a neighbouring hotel, one of which flew from the trees straight onto my brother’s arm. Some pretty butterflies in their garden, and vultures swirling overhead.

Blue and Yellow Macaw

Back at the hotel, the clouds cleared over the peak of the volcano, and we could see puffs of smoke appearing down the sides. The puffs progressively appeared further and further down the side of the volcano, almost like ripples appearing when you skim a stone on a pond. I then realised that the puffs were caused by lumps of rock tumbling down the side of the volcano. As it got dark, we could see these rocks glowing red, and they’d appear now and then in varying amounts. I was taking some photos of these, and suddenly saw the whole top of the volcano erupted!!!!!

An unbelievably lucky sight to see!!! I managed a lucky photo, but the sight (and delayed sound) were unforgettable! My family were all inside and missed it, but came out after the loud rumble to see lava flowing down the side of the mountain.

I’m very VERY lucky to have seen a volcano erupt :) All the while, there were howlers howling in the distance, frogs croaking, crickets, a large spider on the leaves above my shoulder, and a pretty frog in the pond just in front of our rooms. Ah, jungle bliss :)

February 21, 2007

360 Degree Panorama of Cambridge in the snow

Well, it took 2 weeks to get round to finishing off the photo-stitch – it was a tough one, took several attempts, lots of manual tweaking, and it’s still not quite perfect, but good enough! There were 36 photos, and the final cropped panorama weighs in at 56 megapixels.

You can scroll around the panorama in the Java Applet linked below. You can drag the view around with your mouse, or use your keyboard’s arrow keys. Pressing – or + lets you zoom out or in, although the images are displayed at 1:1 resolution already.

Cambridge in the Snow: Panoramic view from Castle Mound. Visible in the panorama are the University Library, King’s Chapel, St. John’s Chapel Tower, and lots of snow!

Click to view panorama

February 8, 2007

1 hour in the snow

It snowed in Cambridge again today (the heaviest UK snowfall in the last 11 years), not quite as much as in Oxford or London, but enough to make every other person wander around town with their camera :)

Taking advantage of the glorious and beautiful snow, I left home early and wandered around the pretty parts of Cambridge taking photos before work. The last time it snowed, I headed straight for the St. John’s Backs (snow photos from January 24th, 2007), so this time I took a friend’s advice, and wandered around Jesus College, with a few stops along the way. My favourite photo of the morning (after some minor artistic retouching) is of a girl playing with her dog on Jesus Green. The colours were pretty much as shown, and are very reminiscent of the famous scene in Schindler’s List, with only the girl’s red coat standing out in an otherwise black-and-white scene.

One photograph (well, 36) that I haven’t got round to processing yet is a 360 degree panorama of Cambridge, taken from Castle Mound. I have a similar panorama taken at sunset, so it will be interesting to see how the two compare.

Quayside Punts in the snow

Girl and Dog on Jesus Green

Snow-covered railings

Jesus College

More snow photos are publicly available on Facebook.

January 24, 2007

Cambridge in the snow

I woke up this morning to find snow lining the tree outside my window. With great glee, I grabbed my camera and headed in to work, taking a long scenic detour through St. John’s college backs. The last time I remember snow settling in Cambridge, and when I got photos, was in March 2005 (see the album on Cantabphotos). I tend to gravitate towards St. John’s, my alma mater, whenever there are interesting lighting/meteorological conditions, though I’m quickly running out of novel photos to take there!

Snow-covered trees reflected in the River Cam
Compare this to the same view taken a mere 10 days ago

St. John's College chapel in the falling snow

Moorhen venturing out into snow from behind a tree

Avenue of snow-covered trees

January 14, 2007

Landscape fading into the sunset

Another clear and mild day in Cambridge, so I took my camera out to capture some of magic hour. This time, I wandered around the St. John’s backs briefly, before heading up to my favourite haunt, Castle Mound, to watch the sun set.

Reflection of trees at sunset

Reflection of St. John's College

People watching the sunset

Airplane trails

These next two photos were taken 4 minutes apart, and are quite similar to a stunning mountainscape I took in Edinburgh. I love photos where the landscape gradually fades to grey in the distance. I can’t decide which I prefer, so here are both of them!

Landscape fading into distance as sun sets

Landscape fading into distance after sunset

Crossing pink and white airplane trails

Orange clouds after sunset

January 4, 2007

Cambridge Sunset Panorama

I took a panoramic view of a stunning sunset back in November 2005, viewed from Castle Mound in Cambridge. Lord knows why I waited a year to stitch together the photos. I only stiched about 340 degrees of the view, so don’t have a full wrap-around, but there were 40 photos, resulting in an output file weighing in at a hefty 108 megapixels. I’ve cropped it down to 70 megapixels, as much of the dark ground isn’t interesting. What prompted me to take the full wrap-around is that the pink clouds are visible across the whole sky, not just over the setting sun. Friends have asked how I get such colours – I just capture what nature does best – amaze us with its wondrous beauty.

Cambridge Sunset: Panoramic view from Castle Mound. Visible in the panorama are the University Library, King’s Chapel, St. John’s Chapel Tower, and the moon.

Cambridge Sunset Panorama
Click to view panorama

I also took a second set of photos of the same sunset. Much of the sky on the left was too dark to keep in the panorama, so I cropped this one down to 31 megapixels:

Cambridge Sunset Panorama

December 20, 2006

Cambridge Mist & Frost

It was rather misty and frosty in Cambridge this morning. Oh, and pretty cold as a result :)
I got a few photos on my way into work this morning. Poor spiders…

I had to stop there, as I was running late for work, and I couldn’t feel my fingers.
That evening, I couldn’t resist getting a photo of the giant snowman by the Cineworld. It’s HUGE!

October 2, 2006

Panoramic Photos from Italy

I travelled around Italy in September 2006, and took lots more photos, including a few sets of photos which stitch together to form panoramic views. I took two 360 degree panoramic views, in Venice and Sienna, which are shown in Java Applets below. You can drag the view around with your mouse, or use your keyboard’s arrow keys. Pressing – or + lets you zoom out or in, although the images are displayed at 1:1 resolution already.

Venice: Panoramic view from the Campanile di San Marco, about 100m above St. Mark’s Square. Visible in the panorama are St. Mark’s Square (with its multitudinous pigeons), the Doge’s Palace, and St. Mark’s Basilica.

Click to view panorama

Siena: Panoramic view from the Campanile, about 100m above the Piazza del Campo

Click to view panorama

Milan’s Vittorio Emanuele Arcade

Milan Panorama
Click to view panorama

Verona at night

Panoramic Photo of Verona at night

Positano

Panoramic Photo from Positano beach

April 19, 2006

Hi-Res Panoramic Photos

During my trip to South Africa, I took several sets of photos at various stunning vistas, which I would stitch together back home. Well, now that all the other photos have been tweaked and added to CantabPhotos, I’ve started stitching some of them together (I use the open source stitching software Hugin, along with Autopano). At Blyde River Canyon, I had taken 19 photos at 8 megapixels, and once I’d cropped the resulting stitch down to the region I wanted to keep, I ended up with a 26 megapixel image, with 19 Photoshop layers. I very painstakingly checked the blending/overlap of each layer to ensure no seams were visible at all (it took me about 5 hours!). I ordered a 30″ x 14″ print of the panorama (printed and delivered next day by Photobox), and it looks absolutely stunning.

I also worked on a panorama of the Cape Town City Bowl, taken from Table Mountain, (17 photos at 8 megapixels, this time it produced a 37 megapixel image), which has stunning detail when zoomed in fully. I got that printed at 30″ x 6″ (the largest Photobox could print it), but would ideally like to get it printed to 100″ x 20″. I’ve shown a very low-res copy of it below, along with a full resolution crop of the downtown and waterfront area.

Well, I may as well add the rest of the panoramas in here as and when I stitch them together. This first one is of our first fine Capetonian sunset, from Signal Hill. The peaks are, from left to right: Devil’s Peak, Table Mountain and Lion’s Head. This panorama weighs in at hefty 55 megapixels.

Next panorama (25 megapixels): The Twelve Apostles and Camps Bay bathed in the golden light of Magic Hour – the last hour of sunlight. This was taken from La Med, where we often went to see some amazing sunsets.

I had to define the control points of the next panorama manually, as the images were too dark for AutoPano to work with. 5 photos, each one a 30 second exposure at 1600 ISO, combined to create a 12 megapixel widescreen panorama of the Milky Way.