A Diatribe/Accolade for Digital Whitewater Photography

Whitewater Photography is a Joy!

Or "About RAFTWEB Images". . .

An accolade for...or how to be a better photographer!

It is with great pleasure, we sacrifice our cameras and bodies, blood, sweat, and tears to bring you some of the best whitewater river photography ever! On or Off-River shots we hope you'll agree these are the best you'll ever see! And you are our stars!

Almost like "You Are There!"

I like to take many photographs as each captures a moment in time that is lost to us forever once it passes. Through the magic of photography we can capture that moment so you can relive it again and again! We hope these will be the best moments of your time on water, so realistic and from the view of our boats in the river that you will have wonderful memories and the "feel" of the river to have for all time and to share with your friends and family and co-workers. If we shoot these well enough, you and your friends can feel like "You are There!" {quote...Walter Cronkite} But you won't get wet or have the fear of falling into raging rapids!

Not Commercial Photos, RaftWeb Photos are Different

RaftWeb Photos are not like the commercial photographers who are stationary off-water and shooting every group from exactly the same position. No, definitely not the same. RaftWeb photographers are an integral part of planned group trips and shoot the group throughout the entire trip, shuttle, set-up, put-in, the river action, and take-out, tear-down, packing-up, and shuttle again. It's not surprising to see your group in 200 or 300 or more photos for each day on the river, not just a few photos at the same rapid. And most of the river photos will be from the water, from the boats in your group trip. And YOU are the stars!

No, not Waterproof or Underwater Cameras

Photographic lenses and optics require very precise measurements to allow light to correctly pass to film or recording media. Any minute alteration of that light from an underwater housing, plastic covering, or waterproof membrane can significantly alter the light and reduces picture quality. Thus RAFTWEB photographers prefer to use dry cameras over waterproof cameras. And we'll sacrifice a dry camera for picture quality. We rely on knowing how water action in the river and against boats can knock out our cameras. Water on the lense of a camera, dry or waterproof, will adversely effect picture quality. Even the smallest drop of water or smudge on the lense affects the resultant picture.

Going Digital!

Digital Photography is FREEDOM!

No longer are you tied to 24 or 36 shots of a film camera before changing rolls.
No longer do you have to carry lots of bulky film cannisters and worry about loading film carefully or risk overexposing it. (No darkness required for loading or unloading).
No longer do you have to carefully choose your shots meticulously. Just shoot and see what you get later. If you don't get a good shot or don't like a shot, no big deal, delete it. (Although I never delete a shot without keeping a copy for archive, who knows what program may come about in the future that can correct problems with today's pictures.) For example, an underexposed picture can be corrected per Bill Tuthill using GIMP as he did here:
```
Curves 98,62
Select (sky) by Color
Invert selection
HSV lightness +32 saturation +64
De-select sky
Levels - Autolevels, Input 1.7
Scale 50%
Save as JPEG
```
Before
After

Before
After
No longer do you have to wait hours or days or weeks to have your photographs processed.
No longer do you need bulky prints of all your photographs and accumulate lots of bad pictures. Now you can just print photos by uploading them when you need them.
No longer do you need to scan pictures.
No negatives or film. No handling of negatives and thus no deterioration over time or damage to photos. Digital photos always remain as good as the day they are taken. Film photos fade in time and quality deteriorates as well.
No chemicals for processing. Better for Our Environment and part of the cost savings. If I shoot 50K pictures/year, that's $20K savings I can pump into digital camera and photography equipment as well as a few boats and other river gear! Plus some photos are priceless and like winning the photo lotto, the more you shoot, the luckier you get.
No printing is necessary, that saves time and money. Plus you can digitally alter and enhance photos. Just upload for printing when you need them.
No waiting, you see the picture immediately after it's taken on the viewer (at least for most digital cameras that have viewers and playback capability). The ability to see a photo immediately once it's taken is one of the greatest benefits of the new generation digital cameras.
No need for video cameras. Most of your better digital cameras are actually DiViCams, Digital and Video Cameras. Thus you can switch from photo mode to video mode, this is great for action sequences or low light and night conditions where you want to get motion and sound synchronized together.

You can immediately see and review your images. Thus you get immediate feedback and can remember what photographic ingrediants you used, what works, and what doesn't. You learn and can correct poor technique. You can learn your camera's technical capabilities better and faster. With Digital Camera's you can grow more quickly as a photographer and learn how to have a higher percentage of great shots and incredible shots! With Digital, you can and should take lots of photos! Memory is cheap and gets cheaper the more you use it and recycle it. Digital helps you improve your photography skills and enables you to have fewer and fewer bad shots. Digital is better for our environment, less energy and production chemicals per shot than using film, developing, and hardcopy paper production. Digital is truer, faster, cheaper, and better, it makes you more effective and efficient, it's simpler and easier! It is new found freedom to the conventional photographer!

For Digital, all you need to remember is to get multiple copies of your image files in more than one place right away. Don't rely on CF, MMC, Memory sticks, or other flash media, even your desktop or laptop system is not enough if you have your images in only one place. All memory cards and electronic devices can and do fail so the sooner you make one or more copies of your pictures, the better!I do not recommend CF Type II MicroDrives, they are too vulnerable to failure, consume much more power than regular flash memory. And once these fail, your data is lost. I have had 2 of 3 microdrives fail and that is enough for me to avoid them now. Get your images from memory cards to one or more systems/servers as soon as you can, back them up, and/or make one or more CDs/DVDs so you can recover the images anytime. I usually like to have 4 to 6 copies of files on 2 to 3 different systems plus multiple CDs which I distribute to participants to prevent all images and copies from being in the same physical location.

If your clock is set correctly on your camera, digital image files are automatically time stamped with the creation date so you know exactly what time your photo was taken.

Digital also allows you to embed trace Copyright/Authorship information in image files. Your work is more protected in today's electronic age.

Digital allows you to be an aggressive photographer. Take the shot, don't think about it. Analog always forced you to be conservative, to pick shots very carefully to make them count, with limited resources. If you can be aggressive, you increase your chances of getting a great shot. So take the picture, don't worry about it. If it's a bad shot or soso, just delete it. If it's a great shot, you'll be glad you did!

RAFTWEB Photography

What is the secret? (Good boating + great rivers + great outdoor lighting + digital photography + river*whitewater experience)*YOU = adds up to the best whitewater photography we hope you will ever see! And YOU are our stars!

Martin Wong on Egoless Rafting & WhiteWater Photography

Certainly we enjoy driving the boats down the river, and when you don't have to, you can move to the next level in rafting. You do not need to prove anything, but you can stand ready to do so if the river decides to throw you into the driver's seat. This enables you to move to the next level in other areas, like whitewater photography for me. Raftweb Photographers prefer to be behind the camera, no need for us to be in the picture, we want you and the river to be the focus. And we can then put you in the best light and best pictures on or off water!

Photo Lottery!

The secret of great photography is that you take lots and lots of pictures! The more you take, the more likely you will get one really great or incredible picture. There may be only one great or spectacular picture in 1000 or 10,000 photos depending on how good a photographer you are plus some luck {Do you like the background image, we think it's one of those 1 in 10K shots}. It's much like the lotto, if you don't take pictures you don't have a chance to get a great shot. If you take lot's of pictures you have a chance to get the great picture! The more pictures you take, the more chances you have to capture a really incredible picture (and win the photo lotto!) We hope you'll find a high percentage of great pictures here on RAFTWEB! Let us know too if you really think any are so, we might make them calendar material! Or submit some great river pictures of your own to our site if you'd like to share them! Email: martin@raft.org with photo attachment, river location, section, rapid, cfs, and date taken. Thanks!

Hard Shell, I.K., or Raft

The best whitewater photos come from the boats of course! Whether in a hard shell kayak, IK, or raft, pictures from the water provide the river view that is unique and close to the action! Hard shell kayaks are the most maneuverable and can get into just about any position to take pictures of other boaters. However you may have trouble getting your camera gear out from underneath your skirt. IK's make this easier and you have almost the maneuverability of a hard shell kayak but you don't need to know how to do an eskimo roll. Kayaks disadvantage is you can't take pictures when you must paddle and you are low to the water so you are subjected to more splashing and wave action especially in rapids and you may be too low to get good pictures of people in bigger boats.

From rafts, you don't have to worry too much about the smaller waves. Rafts have the advantage of being higher in the water so you can take most any shot and you can bend down low to get kayak level shots. Shooting from rafts enables you to shoot from a level where you are less likely to get water on your lens, even with underwater cameras, water on the lens or lens housing will effect picture quality. Also rafts give you the advantage being able to focus on taking a picture without worrying about being splashed as much. You are supported by a team that can enable a non-paddler to focus on photography. Usually I take many more photos when not having to paddle and these can be more into the water action. Paddle or Oars, rafts offer the whitewater photographer many advantages, but you can't always get to where you want to be because rafts are bigger and less maneuverable than kayaks and need bigger eddies. Rafts can also stick better than kayaks though if you want to perch a raft for some prime photo taking. A good case that you can quickly access camera and gear is also very helpful.

Enjoy!

We take pictures for the enjoyment of our participants, you are our stars! We do not do this for commercial purposes, but to enhance your adventure with us and to capture the great moments and fun we have sharing the river! We hope you will agree boating with us is the best of experiences and it's all recorded like "You are There!" We encourage you to download and print our photos, if you wish to publish any, please give us a photo credit... For commercial use of photos we ask that you respect our Copyrights and obtain express permission.

Candid and Genuine

Our photography is not staged, we may occassionally shoot a posed photo or two, but there is nothing as genuine and real as candid photography. The expressions are real, smiles, joy, and sometimes fear too. The wet look sheen is real too, from the last wave, splash, waterfight, or swim. This is adventure boating and we capture real life. It is with great joy we can capture a first trip, a first swim (planned or unplanned), first rescue, and see how people grow on the river! We see how you change and grow during trips, from trip to trip, as you gain experience and confidence! Yes, we will take staged or posed pictures every once in a while, when asked, but if you want realism, life as it is, then let us take our candid style too!

Special Thanks to the Best Boaters in the World!

You are my stars! You "Support me and Enable me to be the best whitewater photographer and capture the best moments for all time, good and bad, great runs and carnage too! You drive the boats that take us safely down the river, regardless of the skills of our paddlers, veterans, intermediates, beginners, and even first timers too! You allow me to take incredible action photos while the rest of the team paddles. You are patient and understanding of me, this crazy photographer! Thank you, you help and enable me to take many photos and the best possible without missing a stroke! And thank you too, for giving me the best angles, best vantage points, craziest action, sometimes extreme runs, and running the rapids first so we can take the best pictures of the remaining boats running difficult rapids. Thank you for your smiles, and thrill of tackling great rivers together while we capture some of the moments! Thank you for being our stars!

Conclusion

Yes, I have a very bad case of "Photo H²ydrO-Digititas" or [PH²_OD] and it looks like it's terminal... I got it with my first digital camera, holding out until July, 2003 for a Middle Fork Salmon trip. But I actually had a fever beforehand, being into analog photography for 15 years prior, and getting my first taste of digital about 8 months earlier through our Rookie of the Year candidate, Paul Quiroga, who taught me how to use his Canon G1 camera. Since then, 4 watersoaked, non-functioning G1s later, I've moved to the Canon G2 and found the picture quality better and the camera more durable than the G1 in whitewater applications.

Certainly the Digital Cameras are more survivable than film cameras. I get many more pictures out of digital cameras before they die on the river than my film cameras. I've sacrificed 3 Canon A-1's, 3 AE-1's, 2 AT-1's, 2 AV-1's, all SLR film cameras and several lenses too, plus 1 early video camera to the river before I went digital, but I passed up the number of analog film photos I've taken, within 4 months of going digital. Yes, we have sacrificed waterproof analog cameras too: 3 Nikon AFs(best pictures), 2 Minoltas, 1 Canon too. And hopefully the RAFTWEB family of websites have benefitted by being able to show trip photos usually within 24 hours of the trip. Participants enjoy seeing their many photos online so they can be shared with their friends, family, co-workers, etc. After all "they are our real-life adventure stars".

What to keep in Whitewater Photo Outfit

Pelican Dry Box modified with screwdown clips for biners or rings with 3, 4 ft. cam straps for quick tie down to any raft or IK.
Mini-Tripod
Towel for lens wiping
Paper towels for lens wiping and drying camera
Lens cleaner
Filters which can be removed quickly.
SP FX filters especially for bright outdoor special effects such as prismatic, star cross, nebula, multi-parallel, halo, split image (2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 6x, 8x, 21x.
Spare Digital Memory
Spare battery packs
Marking Pen (waterproof)
Remote shutter trigger
Whistle
Multi-plier
Nail Clipper
Can-opener
Lens cover
Lens hood
Good point and shoot camera or SLR.
Dental Floss
Duct Tape (esp. for additional waterproofing of camera gear
Dental Floss (great for cleaning, but also creating little tie downs.
Waterproof sandwich bags, remember most of this stuff if dropped in the river does not float, it is lost, but if you keep it in a waterproof plastic bag with a little air, you have a chance to recover it if dropped.

Digital Disadvantages

No, all is not whitewater with digital cameras. Anticipate up to 2 second delays from when you want to take a shot to the time your camera records the image. The more automatic mode you use your digital camera, the longer it must take to think and adjust itself to take the picture. Also the delay may be longer if you have to switch your camera on or from a playback state to image ready. If you want to have your camera image ready when you want to take your picture, you must plan ahead, anticipate the camera's setup, focus, adjustment time before you can take that great picture. Also not all digital's are SLR cameras which give you a better opportunity to see and frame what you are actually shooting.i

Some digitals do not have interchangeable lenses, but you can mitigate that with mountable optics and filters. Having a filter on to protect the lens from water spray is helpful and allows you to remove the filter quickly so the lens is clean and clear to take that next great photo without cleaning the water-spotted filter. Clean, dry and wipe the filter at a more convenient time later. Of course some digitals are so tiny/compact, they do not allow you to use other optics in conjunction with the camera's lens, no special effects shots, or when wet, only a blurry/spotted shot.

Point and shoot cameras also are less accurate up close than SLR's since you cannot see through the lens to exactly what you are shooting, you are using a seperate view finder to view your subject matter, this is ok for distant subject and scenic shots. But if your subject is less than 10 feet away, aim high or you may find your picture will chop your subject's head off. Finally to some digital's require you to view your subject matter through the LCD display, this is ok too, but remember LCD displays use more power and use power when not taking pictures so your camera battery will not last as long. For this reason I shoot most of the time without the LCD display on.

Some digitals also have a video record mode, but the video is not the greatest quality. You can though use video to shoot in low light conditions with distant or scenic material. Video is useful in low light when a flash picture is ineffective beyond the 8-12 foot range and you do want to capture something memorable. Remember though, that video mode consumes much more power than photo mode, and usually more than flash, but sometimes you can record video images when your battery is nearly discharged enough that it can't charge up enough to take a flash picture. Video is nice to capture synchronoused sound and to have a more memorable recording of your event or scene. But video takes up much more memory on your memory card than many photographs so be aware of the tradeoff. Also note that video files also take longer to upload and download on the internet because of their size and can't be incorporated into web pages as easily as still images.

Ok, so go digital, but be aware of its limitations. You can still cross that digital divide! Remember that digital cameras are also like most technologically advanced devices, in time you will get more features, better resolution, and other performance improvements at lower cost. So if you don't need the latest bells and whistles, just get a simple digital camera to practice with and improve your photographic techniques. Yes, you will see cell phones, mp3 players, blackberry devices, etc. with digital cameras, but these will never produce the variety and quality of pictures you get with digital cameras. Also you don't need the high resolution pictures of the latest cameras with 6MP or sometimes 10MP resolution unless you take a lot of pictures you want to blow up to poster size. My Canon G2's shoot up to 4MP, but rarely will I shoot at such high resolution and create the larger data files. 1MP is sufficient for blow-ups to 8 x 10". And remember the larger the file, the longer the download time and display time and the fewer the images you can place on your website/internet.

Martin Wong,
First Adventure Photographer with 70K Photos on the WWWeb