"Are You Still Going to Make a Calendar This Year?"

Fleming Point | Albany State Marine Reserve | Albany, CA

“Are you still going to make a calendar this year?” my Mom asked the other day. The question came from the assumption that Covid, and the lack of travel, would “prevent” me from pulling together my “best shots” from 2020.

Sure, trips to Europe, Tahoe, and Sonoma were all cancelled this year. There was no work-related travel. But we did indeed get to Florida in January, Park City in February, attended a concert in March (that may have been sketchy). And for a change of scenery, we spent the summer in San Diego, and took local trips in the Bay Area that did not require getting on a plane.

So yes, there will be a calendar.

In fact, I think I may have had a harder time this year compared to the past. It’s not easy narrowing down the best 13 to include in calendar (12 months plus the cover shot). In fact, I intend to write an additional “honorable mentions” blog post as I felt really bad for the photos that got “left behind” this year.

19 Years and Counting…

My 2003-2020 calendars.

Every year since 2003 I have been making a calendar of my “best of the best” photos. (I wasn’t sure what year I started this, so I needed to dig them all out!)

I give them to my family at the holidays and include all the birthdays and anniversaries and the like within them. Since I started this Web site last January, I have set a goal of trying to get all those photos on to the site…at some point.

Aside from tracking all those old photos down (I have been through a few computers since 2003, including a Dell Desktop and IBM laptop), it takes time to title, describe, and link to the places in the photos. But “re-telling” those stories of the photos adds a new element to them - and I’ll enjoy the walks down memory lanes. And with Lightroom, I may even “remaster” some of them.

So far, in addition to this year’s, I’ve only got 2020 and 2019 up, but I’ll get the remaining 16 up there by hook or by crook as my Mom likes to say. She’s probably one of my biggest fans of these calendars (of course).

What about you? Do you make annual calendars from your best shots? What’s your best shot from 2020?

Click on the 2021 Calendar below to see my best from 2020.

Can a GoPro Take Better Photos Than Your iPhone?

We all know GoPro cameras are great for capturing action packed videos, but did you know you can also take great 12 megapixel photos, even in RAW format with the Hero 8?…or can you?

I bought the GoPro Hero 8 because I thought it was ridiculous that I was holding my iPhone with my bare cold hands on the ski slopes while trying to take videos and photos. So a GoPro had to be better than my iPhone, no?

Last “ski week” I got another chance to test that out in Park City. Unfortunately, like my last ski trip, the voice activation is still buggy, not always turning on when you expect. And the same was/is true for the command “GoPro Take a Photo.”

“Why would you need to use voice activation to take a photo? Can’t you just press the shutter release like a normal camera?”

Yes, you can. But not so easily when you’ve got the camera strapped on to your “chesty” mount and it’s 10 degrees out and you don’t want to take off your gloves to press the shutter release. Or, when you’re actually skiing and you simply want to capture an action still.

Testy the Chesty

“Wait, what the hell’s a ‘chesty’?”

It’s that contraption you see me wearing on my chest in this ski lift shot below. Of course, in this photo, I have the GoPro on my “3-way” selfie stick.

To take photos like this, you could yell out “Go Pro Take a Photo” or, you could set the self-timer on the camera to 10, press the shutter release, get the camera in position, get your subjects all ready to go, and watch the countdown on the face of the camera go 10, 9, 8 until it clicks and you get the shot.

Family selfie shot with a GoPro 3-way mount using the 10 second timer. I felt more confident using my GoPro on the ski lift versus futzing with my iPhone and potentially dropping it down on the slopes below.

Voice Aggravation

But back to taking voice activated photos. As hopeful as I was at capturing some great “in action” shots, many times the voice activation failed. This could have been due to wind noise, the sound of the skis in the snow, or just a big miss by the camera mic.

Below you can see one time where the voice activation did work while skiing with the GoPro on the chesty mount. I believe this shot was taken in the wide angle setting.

You can see a fair amount of fish eye distortion (some like that effect) and an un-level horizon in the unedited, original version (I may have been skiing at an angle when the shot was taken.) With some cropping in the edited version you can see a level horizon and the action being brought closer.

Either way, I didn’t love the results of the in action shots from the chesty mount. It’s really an act of faith to be yelling out “Go Pro take a photo” and not be able to see what the camera will be shooting and/or even know if it took a picture.

So did I get any good pictures with the chesty mount? (“You like saying ‘chesty mount,’ don’t you Rob?)

Yes I did, and yes I do. With a catch…

I got the best results with the chesty mount when I was standing still.

“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?”

Not necessarily. It was still pretty cool to be able to “hands free” say “GoPro take a photo” and have whatever was in front of me captured “on film.” Check out the great results below.

Point and Shoot

So what if you don’t want to wear that ridiculous mount on your chest? Or annoy your family with your insidious “GoPro do this, GoPro do that." Can you simply hold the little cam in your hand a press the button to take a photo?

Of course you can.

Here are some additional great photos taken via the 3-way mount and timer and/or by simply pressing the shutter…

Raw Deal

One “bug” or snafu I haven’t figured out yet was how to default the voice activated photo to shoot in my custom RAW setting. You can select many different custom photo settings (as you can for video too), but for some reason the camera defaulted to shooting JPEGs versus RAW files. I am sure there is a way to change/address that if I do a little research on it.

Better Than an iPhone?

So is the Hero8 better than using an iPhone on the slopes in these elements? To answer that question, we’ll have to take a look at those iPhone photos…in the next blog entry :-)

Useful Links

Park City Mountain Resort

The Eating Establishment - a great place to eat breakfast in downtown Park City