The sun goes down over the Juan de Fuca strait and the Olympic Peninsula. Worth seeing at full size, I think.

Black Friday in the Herb David Guitar Studio. I know, it was Buy Nothing Day, I forgot.

2 months ago I was wandering around in rented cars, waking up to the dawn in improvised Forest Service campgrounds, cooking up bacon and eggs and coffee on camp stoves, breaking down my tent then rushing out into the piñon-juniper woodlands with a gps antenna magneted to my bandanna, a compass around my neck and a camera in my hand, documenting the landscapes that were going to become my study sites. I would drive and hike around in a rush to look at things until I decided I had to look at something in particular very slowly. Then I would stare at it. Mostly bushes and trees and soil and water courses. Also hills and valleys. I visited Sierra Vista and Tombstone and Arizona and Flagstaff and Cedar Ridge and Tuba City, and mostly places in between, like Cochise County and the San Pedro River and the Coconino forest and Waputki and the Little Colorado canyon and the rangelands of Navajo Nation. I took a train to New Mexico and did similar things there. Then I took a train home. It was a good time. There was a lot I missed because I was in a hurry to look at semi-arid vegetation, but there was a lot I saw because I was looking for semi-arid vegetation. I wrote about it a bit here.

Because I had a camera in my hand and because New Mexico and especially Arizona are so damn visual, I took a lot of photos. I’ve finally posted some of them up here.

For the curious, I’ve posted a more detailed version of my thesis research plan. Which is currently being executed.

Also, I’m nearly done developing some of my photos from my summer research trip, and that gallery will be up soon.

Yes, I know, digital cameras have had video for a while. But I’m serious, people in various corners of the photography-oriented blogommunity (read: ‘blogosphere’, but I’m developing an allergy to that word), are getting excited about video on cameras being the next serious thing. This is because video is just about to break on DSLRs.

There are two advantages that DSLRs have over compact digital cameras, when it comes to video. One is obvious, the other less so.

1. Image quality. Obviously, DSLRs record higher quality images. So a DSLR recording video looks something like professional video, where a compact camera’s video output is more like home camcorders. And it seems the video makers held back putting video capability into their DSLRs until they were ready for real-media-standard 24fps 720p HD. But that’s what you’ll get now.

2. Lenses. There’s a universe of fisheye, long-zoom and every kind of glass in between that you can tack onto a digital camera. The result is creative video, apparently more creative than a lot of what gets shot on conventional movie cameras. Why don’t conventional movie cameras have as wide an availability of creative lenses as still cameras? I don’t know. Maybe they do, but they’re more expensive or something.

The result may be a new day for video in the same sense that ‘fine art’ photography has been either degraded or enhanced by the flood of non-professionals that cheap, easy digital cameras has brought in. Degraded or enhanced depending on who you ask, my money by the way, is squarely on enhanced. If you own a half-serious camera in the near future, you are a semi-pro video crew. Although I expect the skill-gap between a professional and amatuer videographer is even larger than between pro and amatuer photographers.

The most immediate production model video-enabled DSLRs are the medium-medium priced Nikon D90 and the medium-expensive, full-frame Canon 5D MK II. Here’s a slightly dated essay from Luminous Landscape on the topic, here’s some sample footage from the D90 (apparently shot by Chase Jarvis), and here’s some insufferable famous fellow on the 5D2. But for god sake don’t copy his images, or he might come after me.

I’m not sure who the “John” is who wrote this statement ahead of a Western Silvicultural Contractors’ Association strategy meeting, but he thinks the planting industry is in for some crazy times in the next few years.

“Let’s not forget that these mills had far larger margins to buffer the commodity market cycles than many on the silviculture service side do. And we are looking ahead at two of the worst years for growing and planting seedlings in two decades. With this in mind anyone who intends to stay in business through the next few years has a stake in how all of us collectively behave. It seems logical and necessary then for the industry to try and make sense of the future and seek some strategies to mitigate what looks like a potentially ruinous run. Broadly stated that is the purpose of this year’s summit and I would think figuring out how to stay in business over the next few years should be a strong enough incentive for most of us to attend this meeting.

Interestingly, not all the news is bad. Looking ahead three to five years it is possible to see a dramatic shift back towards a robust silviculture sector. It won’t be the same sector. In fact it might even be better, if not just more interesting. The province’s green house gas initiative, the potential funding streams through carbon credits, the possible redistribution of tenure, new emerging industries based on bio energy and the startling possibility that properly stewarding forests might be seen as an inherently valuable if not profitable enterprise on its own all present a sunny horizon for those of us prepared and preserved to appreciate it.”

40% decline in trees in the next 2 years!

I’m in Hamilton, crashing at the house of a planter who spent the summer working at a traditional BC plateau bush-camp operation. The stories she’s telling are, of course, great. My recent eccentric tangents in the industry aside, treeplanting really still is the same coming-of-age, challenge and perseverance experience it has been for so many cohorts of young planters. But maybe that is finally set to change up in the near future.

I’m just back from a trip to Chicago, and leaving now for a few days in Ontario. After that I’ll really be settling in to my desk in Ann Arbor.