The Traveling Widower

Category: Camera gear

  • Cache Creek Nature Preserve

    Front view of a large rustic barn with a pointed roof, surrounded by trees and a gravel path.

    May 25th,2026

    I’ve been working on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques the past few days to try and increase visibility to this site. One way to do so is to start using more meaningful titles in terms of the post content, rather than the curious ones I prefer to use. This post for example, I would normally use something like “Why Ruin A Nice Hike” or simply “Why Take Photographs” since it has little to do with the nature preserve. Read on if you have some time to waste. It is quite long and rambles on quite a bit – I was really bored today. I did add a few photos. And Max makes an appearance

    Photography as a hobby

    All this started a few days ago, when a friend at the tennis club introduced me to one of the better tennis players, and told him I travel all over the world and take a lot of pictures. He asked me two questions that were hard to answer at first – “Why do you take photographs?” and “What do you do with them?” My standard response to the first, was that it’s been a long standing hobby, which fits well with my interests in nature focused traveling. As for what I do with all the photographs…that’s probably a tough one for any amateur photographer. It’s kind of hard justifying spending thousands of dollars on camera gear, computer/internet storage and travel, for a bunch of pictures that you might show to some friends and family, and occasionally at camera club competitions. 

    So these two questions have bounced around in my head for the past few days, as I spent hours each day working on SEO changes for the blog, and continued curating photos from my most recent trips. And then Saturday afternoon, I headed off to yet another opportunity to take more photos at the Cache Creek Nature Preserve, a conservancy managed natural area along a tributary to the Sacramento River. I was not really expecting to take a lot of shots – I was mostly interested in getting out of the house,  doing a bit of easy hiking, trying out the new lens I had recently purchased, and maybe seeing a nice sunset. Beats my usual Saturday evenings of sitting in the house by myself and watching TV, especially now that I’m relegated to drinking mock-tails and near-beer. Blah. 

    My low expectations for this outing were easily met, and even exceeded a bit – I wandered around on the trails for a few hours, talked to some of the other visitors (a mix of artists and photographers), and played around with the new lens and the wildlife tracking features of the Sony A7RV camera. A very relaxing, low stress walk-about. It was quite warm, especially with the late afternoon sun beating down, so I found a nice, shady, rattlesnake free area to sit for a while (I did have a snake encounter earlier..rattle,rattle). A couple of bunnies hopped around while I was sitting there, and I just watched instead of staring at them through the camera lens. And then I thought back to those two questions. Was I just ruining a nice, early evening walk by lugging around camera gear? And what am I going to do with the thousands of images that I have stored in the Google Cloud, and on storage devices attached to my iMac? There are only so many prints that will fit on the walls of my house, and the traffic on my blog is pitiful compared to most serious blogger sites. So why am I doing this?

    A brown rabbit sitting on the ground surrounded by vegetation.
    A brown rabbit foraging on the ground among thin grass and flowers.

    Why Photography?

    As I watched the bunnies hopping around (I did take a couple of pictures…they were just so cute and much friendlier than the rattlesnake), I gave some thought to the “Why” question. To answer this one, I first had to ask myself (I talk to myself non-stop these days), what would I be doing if my wife were still alive? 

    The answer to that one is not so easy. I’m not so sure that I would have joined the Sierra Camera club if my life had not been so drastically altered with her passing, so I may not have been invited to this event. But, I went off regularly in the past – she expected and encouraged me to stick with photography as a hobby. She enjoyed seeing the results of my trips, and had a natural gift for picking out the best images to print. So maybe I would have joined the club, and she also went along on anything she could hike wearing sneakers. This was a sneaker/walk outing, with lots of shady places to sit.

    As for the main question of why do photography at all, there’s a couple of good reasons why I lug all this expensive gear around on my trips:

    Between the hi-tech camera gear, and complex software for manipulating images, photography is a wonderland for techie geeks. I used to have my own darkroom years ago, and spent many hours working in the dark, mixing chemicals, and dodging and burning prints to my hearts’ content. We were early adopters of digital cameras, and both of us were Adobe  Photoshop users – I was pretty good at pixel-level editing. The point being that I have always enjoyed the technical aspects of photography so jumping back in, with all the spare time I have now, makes a lot of sense.

    The other point regarding why I burden myself with all this extra weight on my adventures, is the symbiotic relationship between photography and adventure traveling. Some people travel for photography, and others travel for the adventure, and document with their camera. I’ve seen a lot of people on the trips I’ve been on that just use their phone, primarily for selfies – no expensive camera gear. I’m somewhere in between the two extremes – the majority of the trips I have scheduled are for places I have always wanted to see. Antarctica, Galápagos Islands, Alaska, Patagonia, Iceland – all have been on my bucket list. And all of them offer incredible photo opportunities, so I get to see some absolutely amazing places, and get to work on the skills of my main hobby. 

    I guess there is one other good reason – photographers love to talk shop, especially on the trips I’ve been on. For someone socially inept, anything to do with photography is a great way to meet and establish some relationships on these trips. 

    Smothered in photos

    So that leaves the “What do you do with all those photographs” question. Again, no easy answer for this one either. I’ve discussed my solutions for storage in previous posts, and my efforts to re-organize all the folders I have in Google Drive, Google Photos, Apple iCloud, and on multiple hard and SSD drives. But that’s not what the question is about. I may have simplified my storage woes, and have a grasp on how to organize thousands of photos, but what will I do with them? 

    I’m sure most everyone has a box filled with old family photos, negatives, slides and maybe even movies, all on a mix of media. And the boxes usually collect dust somewhere, rarely opened, and are ultimately passed on to someone else in the family to deal with. After my wife passed, I found two boxes of photos – one with mostly her family, the other of mine. I reviewed both boxes – all of my wife’s family photos went to her sister (who probably tossed most of it), and I thinned out my family photos to a bare minimum. I have nobody to leave them to, so I’ll be tossing them out eventually.

    That leaves me with about a terabyte or two of digital images which cover many of the trips my wife and I had through the years, and all of my recent endeavors. Back to that question – what will I do with them?

    The older photo’s I’ll probably thin out over time, keeping just a few for my own memories. I do like to look back in time once in a while although most photos of my wife can trigger a meltdown. It still hurts a lot. As for the collection of photos from my trips, I now have a process of reducing the volume on the memory cards, before copying them onto a drive for review and curation. I usually delete at least a half of the images to start with.

    Now that I have figured out how to use Adobe Lightroom, I use this software for a more detailed review of each image, and delete anything that I will never print for display, or curate for submitting for competition. Everything else winds up in separate folders for that trip. I’ve also stopped doing dual JPEG and RAW images – that cuts the volume for each trip in half. 

    Sorry, I’m getting down in the weeds. I’ll get back to the basic question. What will I do with all this stuff? I still don’t have a good answer. 

    Photo Club Competition – I submit maybe a dozen or so images each year, for the various competition categories. I don’t really take the competition seriously – sometimes I submit images that I think are interesting, just to see how they will be judged. I’m not a competitive person. And after I’ve submitted them, the images just pile up in a folder.

    Contest Submission – there are lots of national and international photo competitions, most of which you have to pay to enter. I’ve done a few for the fun of it, but the competition is really tough, since there are serious, professional photographers submitting their best photos. I’m not that good, but it’s fun trying.

    The Blog – I include a lot of photos in my blog posts about each trip, which is one of the reasons I take so many photos. I enjoy writing strange stories about my travels (or maybe these are strange travels), and adding photos helps to illustrate some of the amazing things I’ve seen. 

    Acrylic Prints – back when I had a high-end photo printer, my wife and I decorated our house with framed prints (she got to select them of course). Our last house in Gold River had a long hallway which turned into a photo gallery. Since then we started replacing prints with acrylic enlargements, and I’ve continued on with that since she passed. I’m quickly running out of wall space and will likely just rotate through the prints every now and then.

    Printing for the fun of it – I’ll probably invest in a large format printer once again, when buy another table to hold it. I’d like to submit prints for competition, and make prints for anyone interested in some of the better shots. 

    I guess if I had enough really good photos, I could try marketing online. There are a number of sites for posting images for sale. I’m not sure I really want to get into that. This is a hobby after all. But who knows, maybe I will eventually set up a booth and sell photos at street fairs once my adventure days are over. Max seems to enjoy it.

    An elderly man with gray hair smiles at the camera while showcasing framed photographs at a booth named 'Max's Creative Photography'. The stall features various pictures and greeting cards, with colorful market stalls visible in the background.

    He left the dog (Aperture) home. 

    And I did take a few other photos at the Cache Creek Nature Preserve. There were large flocks of Tree Swallows and Cliff Swallows flying around – fast little critters. I thought I’d try out the animal tracking feature of the Sony camera, with the new lens (50-400) I just acquired. It was kind of fun – another reason I lug the gear around. I really do enjoy standing around, trying to capture images of incredibly beautiful creatures. 

    Two birds flying over a calm lake reflecting nearby greenery.
    A bird flying over a calm body of water, reflecting the surrounding trees.
    Two birds flying over a calm body of water, surrounded by lush green grasses, with reflections visible in the water's surface.

    Peace

  • Keep On Keepin’ On

    “The only thing I knew how to do”
    “was to keep on keeping on”
    Tangled up in Blue, Bob Dylan

    May 10th, 2026

    This post started out as a personal whine about aging, and morphed into a composite of those strange thoughts that randomly bounce around in my head, along with some geeky hiking and photography stuff. Sorry, the blog is my replacement for having someone to talk to in the morning.

    Maybe I really should get a Golden Retriever. They are good listeners, as long as you have snacks in your hand. 

    A man sitting in a chair with a mug talking to a golden retriever in a living room, featuring comfortable furniture and a coffee table with books and candles.
    How did this guy and his dog get in my house?

    One of the problems with being ancient is that the damage from all the sports and dangerous activities we undertake through the years is cumulative. The human body was designed for hunting and gathering, and has not really evolved much beyond that in the last million or so years. Eventually, parts of our bodies wear out – knees can only take so much abuse from running, basketball, tennis and other fast movement sports. Shoulders are the same, especially for baseball and racket sports. How many tennis players do you know who have had one or two shoulder surgeries? I’ve had one, and I suck at the sport. Broken bones in various parts of your body  can lead to painful arthritis as you age. I’ve broken lots of bones, which complain most every morning, especially when the weather turns cold and damp. Hips wear out from a number of activities. Maybe sometime in the far distant future, there will be a sub-species or two – the current Homo Sapiens, sort of the generic person still limping along in their 70’s, a new and improved model,  Homo sapiens athleticus, and then maybe one at the other end of the spectrum, Homo sapiens couchpotato, sort of a cross between a human and golden retriever.

    The good news is that while our bodies may not have evolved, our big brains (for some of us at least) have come up with replacements for a lot of the parts that wear out – sort of like replacing worn out parts in your car – an Autozone for the over achievers in athletics. It seems like so many of the tennis and pickleball players out on the court have one or two replacement parts – knees, hips or shoulders. Heck, some people have replacement heart valves and are still motoring along. 

    I’ve done all kinds of damage to my body, but somehow or another, I have avoided having anything replaced so far. That’s not necessarily a good thing – I wish one of my knees was wrecked enough to replace. But with my usual bad luck, I’ve inherited a wonky nervous system from my mother, and have something that cannot be fixed with a replacement part. Nerves. 

    I was diagnosed some time ago with idiopathic peripheral neuropathy, a condition where the long nerves in the legs degenerate (and arms too), misfire, and eventually stop working. I already wrote about this condition in a previous post, so I won’t bore you with details, just that the neurologists have no clue what causes it, or how to cure it. Lucky me. I currently have issues with mobility and balance, which are not going to improve, and will continue to get worse over time.

    I have to be extremely careful hiking, and have opted out of more difficult hikes on the last few National Geographic trips. The night time photo shoots in Arches National Park were a bit frightening for me, since my balance was way off in the dark, especially when we had to hike to rocky, awkward setups for our gear. I wound up holding on to the tripod most of the time, to have a point of reference. 

    This year, I should be OK with the remaining trips – only two have significant hiking, all of which are in the daylight and on flat terrain. Running away from the Kodiak bears might be an issue though.

    Next year may be more problematic as a few of the trips have some moderately difficult hikes. I have yet to book any trips for 2028 – there are quite a few I’d like to schedule, but I have to think about what my physical limitations might be in a few years. Bummer. Switching to Viking river cruises is not the answer for me. I’ve had to give up drinking wine and martinis – I’m not giving up on travel. My bucket list does not seem to be getting any smaller since I keep finding new, interesting places to go to. 

    But, there is a non-surgical, potential solution to my problem – not replacement parts, but body augmentation! I give you…..

    …..The Robo-Traveling-Widower!!!!

    An elderly man wearing an exoskeleton and hiking gear walks along a rocky mountain path with a golden retriever dog, surrounded by a scenic landscape of mountains and trees.

    I’m serious about this. There are a couple of companies which are developing exoskeletons and one or two are already available. One in particular, the Hypershell from a company of the same name (https://hypershell.tech/en-us), might be something I look into as the wonkiness in my legs progresses. It’s sort of like an electric bike – it provides extra oomph to your legs when you need it. The top-end version is light weight (carbon fiber), with a small battery pack, that can handle up to a 30km hike, which is much further than I walk/hike on a given day. For $1800, it would be worth it to keep me on the trails. 

    For now, I’ll just rely on my latest REI purchase for hiking stability, collapsible carbon-fiber hiking sticks from Black Diamond. Yes, I now have four sets of sticks (one was my wife’s). I’ve been jamming a pair of heavier, aluminum poles in luggage on most of my trips, and I’m  desperately trying to lighten my load for the next trips. The new sticks are like tent-poles – they split into 3 connected segments, and take up much less room. New toys from REI.

    Adjustable trekking poles with blue accents, placed on a textured gray surface.

    And while I’m on the topic of reducing my luggage weight, I was depressed the other day, so flipped a coin as to where I should go shopping – REI or Mike’s Camera. That always cheers me up. Seriously, I had been considering buying yet another lens for some of my upcoming trips. I currently rely on two lenses – the new 25-200mm Tamron lens for most everything other than wildlife (all the rose garden photos were shot with that), and the big 150-500mm for wildlife. But, there are trips where I don’t really need the reach of the 500mm – the Natural Habitat lead for the Kodiak trip said you only need a big lens if you want to get a picture of a bear eye ball. I decided maybe I need something in-between, like a 100-400mm lens. As it turns out, Sony has that lens, and Tamron has a 50-400 for half the price. Off I went to my favorite camera store (only one in this area) to compare the two. Fortunately, this also happened to be the day Mike’s Camera has their annual sale, and had rep’s from all the major manufacturers in the store. They brought out both lenses for me – the Sony was over a pound heavier, and was older technology. Easy decision to make. My camera closet is getting crowded with gear. 

    But now I’ll be a bit faster with less to carry, when I have a Kodiak bear chasing after me.

    A man running along a beach, holding a camera, as a large grizzly bear charges toward him. The scene is set against a backdrop of mountains and a forested area.
    Run Forest, Run!!!

    I’m so excited about that trip.

    Peace (I hope)