Camera Club

Saturday, 15 November, 2008 @ 5:45 PM

Wednesday evening was the monthly meeting of the Cayman Camera Club. Although well attended, I generally find the meetings a touch boring. There are some interesting people there occasionally however. The highlight of the evening is the monthly photo competition, and for the second month in a row I was lucky enough to win, the theme this month being "Wildlife". The winning photo is on the right, while the macro below of the frog's eye was voted second equal. Whee!

Wading the Mastic Trail

Saturday, 15 November, 2008 @ 4:20 PM

Last Sunday I finally got around to walking the Mastic Trail again. The Mastic is Cayman's longest nature walk, running North/South across the belly of the Island from Frank Sound to North Side, and usually taking aproximately two hours each way. In hindsight, perhaps the day after a near miss from a Category 4 hurricane is not the best day for a bush walk – as the trail was flooded along perhaps 90% of its length, necesitating plenty of wading – however it made for a very different experience from the hot, dry walk that it usually is, and in some ways was much more interesting.

The Mastic trail is a great way to get up close and personal with Cayman's native wildlife, some of which is rarely seen around the more built-up areas. On this particular occasion the birdlife was especially prevalent, featuring several close encounters with groups of friendly native Caymanian parrots. Also, many dragon- and damselflies of various colours and species, lizards, snakes – both in the water and draped in trees at the side of the trail – a couple of different frog species and even a hermit crab the size of my fist.

As usual, I brought my camera along, with a couple of lenses packed in what turned out to be a fairly inconvenient shoulder bag. For a while I was having doubts as to whether this was a sensible move, given the precarious nature of footholds in the muddy water and the soon sore state of my shoulder. I did manage to get some photos I was quite happy with however, so perhaps it wasn't such a bad idea after all.

Sunday turned out to be a good day for photography all around. On the way to the trail I stopped off at a small rocky beach on South Sound, and got some decent shots of a Heron skimming the water (if only I had a longer fast lens!) and also a peculiar-looking but extraordinarily beautiful moth that had a single-minded attraction to a certain bunch of flowers.

On the drive to the trailhead I also saw more Egrets then I've ever seen before... some fields peppered with more than 50 birds. I'm guessing their appearance is somehow related to the weekend's storm, perhaps evacuees from Little Cayman?

A bonus pint to the first person to tell me what an Ekranoplan is without checking Google!

Storm aftermath

Wednesday, 12 November, 2008 @ 7:30 PM

Paloma's last minute swerve may have been the salvation of Grand Cayman, but it didn't have such a happy ending for Little Cayman and Cayman Brac, both of which suffered a direct hit, resulting in extreme damage to property and infrastructure, but thankfully no loss of life. The murmers of Paloma reaching Cat 4 strength turned out to be true, with gusts up to 160 mph being recorded, and now being ranked as the second strongest November hurricane on record

Here on Grand Cayman just a couple of days after the storm, it's business as usual, however, especialy among those who experienced Ivan, there's a definite sense of having had a very close shave, as well as plenty of sympathy and support (both moral and practical) for the Sister Islanders.

All clear

Saturday, 8 November, 2008 @ 8:30 AM

Despite some rather dire-sounding warnings emanating from US-based TV news networks, this morning we have the all-clear. It seems that Paloma took a last-minute zig, bypassing Grand Cayman, but traveling over the Sister Islands instead. The word on the street is that it reached Cat 4 strength, although in my experience it is human nature to exaggerate these things a little.

I ended up spending the storm holed up in a friend's house, more for company than safety's sake. I left it late to drive over there, so had some rather strong wind and rain on the trip. The power there was on all night, so we watched DVDs, drank a few beers and had an impromptu jam session till the wee small hours.

Driving around this morning I'm seeing extensive flooding in some low-lying districts, a few small trees down as well as some signs and fences, but very little, if any, damage to property. There are a lot of bewildered looking birds wandering around, and a number of emergency services vehicles as well as rubberneckers out on the roads.

Water came back on at around 8am, but I'm still waiting for power to be restored here.

Paloma

Thursday, 6 November, 2008 @ 10:15 PM

It seems I may have spoken a little prematurely as regards the 2008 hurricane season being over... as I write this, hurricane Paloma is less than 150 miles south of Grand Cayman and picking up steam as it heads in our direction. It's currently forecast to pass almost directly over us tomorrow evening around 7pm, by which time it is exected to be a category 2 storm (wind speeds between 96-110 mph). The weather websites I follow indicate that it will intensify into a cat 3 hurricane (winds up to 130 mph) after passing Cayman, before hitting central Cuba as a still potentially devastating cat 1 storm.

Strangely enough, Paloma will pass us on November 7, which happens to be the anniversary of the Great Storm of 1932, a devastating late-season storm which took over 100 lives here in Cayman. As usual, panic buying has emptied the gas stations of fuel and the supermarket shelves of stores. Personally I feel safe enough, living in a sturdy house equipped with hurricane shutters and stocked with enough essential supplies for a week or two, and my (hopefully) hurricane-proof car fuelled up outside if there's any need to make an emergency getaway.

Against the grain

Monday, 3 November, 2008 @ 8 PM

This week I reversed a long-running trend, and actually SOLD a lens. Yikes!! That's right, I sold my old faithful 18-70mm lens to a Nikon-using colleague at work. As the kit lens that came with my D200, it's served me very well: crossing the Pacific with me and being used to take the majority of my all-time favorite photos. However I just don't find myself using it any more. Since I bought the 18-200mm VR – which handily wins on flexibility if not quite in ultimate sharpness – there's simply no compelling reason (aside from sentimentality) to use the old lens. I also have a handful of much faster glass covering at least a portion of its range.

Indeed, it's a sad, sad day, but I at least I have my one-week-old 105mm F2.8 VR Micro lens to comfort me :-D

Actually, this might not be an isolated ocurrance. I've recently decided that my 400mm Sigma telephoto is surplus to requirements also, so it's going on the market next week. Despite this anomalous behaviour, I have little doubt that some exotic piece of glass will soon come along that will tempt me to return to my old acquisitive ways.

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