Location: Huayna Potosi, Bolivia Ok firstly, i realise this isn't a great photo, theres lots of water on the lens and its made it all blurry, but i still like it for showing what was going on! :) I woke up at 7am, as planned, but felt awful. I'd developed a cold overnight and wasn't sure if it was sensible to get out of bed! We had booked a 3 day attempt to climb Huayna Potosi, a 6088m mountain outside La Paz. I took the last of the cold medicine I had left from home, 4 months ago, and hauled myself out of bed.. David, Adam and I turned up to the office of the tour company we had booked with and instantly felt massively under prepared. We had booked through a subsidiary travel agents who had told us that all equipmen and clothing would be provided and we didn't need to bring a thing. It wastrue that all the necessary climbing equpiment was provided but they had failed to inform us of the long list of items we needed to bring, that those who had booked with the actual company all had with them. We then found ourselves being led around the tourist shops of La Paz buying various warm looking llama gloves and hats, the guide even tried to convince Adam to buy some gringo pyjama pants in order to scale the mountain - Adam wisely stuck with his Wrangler jeans! After all that was sorted the 5 of us, having added another australian David and Norweigen Magnus to the group, piled into a minivan for the 2 hour trip to base camp. Once there we arranged our sleeping stuff into the large open refugio sleeping area and got changed into our climbing gear. The plan for the first day wasa short 2km walk to a glacier near by and then to get a few hours practice with the crampons and ice axes. The short walk was slow, at over 4000m any excercion resulted in breathlessness but after 45 minutes of so we made it to the glaicer. The weather was bad and visibility not great in the snowy conditions. Our guides decided that it was too dangerous to walk up the glacier to the desired practice point so we had to make do with a smaller ice wall. We were, breifly, taught the correct technique for walking up and down in the snow and ice with crampons and then we were roped up and each climbed up the 10m ice wall with our axes. This proved to be quite tricky and I was very glad that most of my weight was on the rope! Every time I jammed by axe into the wall I had no idea if it would then take my wieght or not. Once you had 3 sturdy points of contact with the ice it wasn't too tricky to move up the wall but every now and then one of the grips wouldn't hold and i'd slip back down a metre and have my wieght held, thankfully, by the rope. After a few goes we started to get a better hang of it and then it was time to return back to the refugio at base camp. Upon our return there was food and coca tea waiting for us. The food seemed ok but it was to result in a sleepless night of trips to the freezing cold outside toilet for me, not ideal preparation for the next 2 days of climbing at altitude!

PCA 82 Light and Shadow Most of us who started this group will remember our very first assignment, Light and Shadow. It was fun, challenging, and very worthy of the inaugural assignment. It's time to do it again! Remember the meaning of PHOTOGRAPHY? It means to write with light. In the photography classes we teach, we emphasize the creating of shadows more than the inclusion of light. Your assignment is to create some shadows! WIT Low Tide, New Moon, COLD front pushing through with winds from the North over 20mph and temps at 50 degrees in Florida,,, so only a VERY few birds at the beach today. So I was there before sunrise, 50 degrees for me is like sub zero for most of you all, so camera shake was a bit concern as my hands were shaking. (I can hear Lea and Cynthia now,, WIMP)... So overcast morning, strange cloud configuration with an opening on the horizon a hard line of thick clouds then a second opening. Misty rain too (rainbow to my back also, but that did not have a shadow), So I in my normal shooting spot, the water is nearly drained out of the marsh with the wind and tide, which I have never seen before. Out in the middle in about 6 inches of water was the Great Blue Heron, Frozen in this position. Sun light was really strange with that hard dark line of clouds, so it was red under and bright orange over it, then another long dark set of clouds. This was causing DUAL shadows on the ground, One from the sunrise and another from the reflections off the cloud bank. You can see here the two sets of shadows. No corrections made to any settings here, just cropped it to position the bird and take out a dark line behind him. I am a big fan of minimalism in wildlife photos, the lone birds on open space, etc. Just like the space and feel it gives to the shot. So I used the back light, mother natures overhead reflectors., the water he is in actually is a grass flat, so the texture you see in the water is grass thats laying down in the shallow water. The foreground that is lighter and brighter is water with a sandy bottom I do need to get off my wallet and buy a 77mm CPL as I took this with my 100-400mm lens I have several others (fog shadows). but this strange natural double shadow in the water was too cool to not post for an assignment on shadows and light. Red color on water is totally natural too. EXIF Data on the photo is hosed some how., this is off DPP Shooting Date/Time10/18/2009 7:50:06 AM Shooting ModeShutter-Priority AE Tv( Shutter Speed )1/1250 Av( Aperture Value )5.6 Metering ModeSpot Metering ISO Speed125 LensEF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM Focal Length400.0mm Image QualityRAW White Balance ModeAuto AF ModeAI Servo AF Picture StyleNeutral Color SpacesRGB Drive ModeHigh-speed continuous shooting EV 0