Injuries from photo accidents outnumber wild animal attacks, Camp Stoves still the most risky. Molle clip light reviews Streamlight sidewinder. Coast clip light.
Billy Newman Photo Podcast | 168 Photography and Wilderness Risk
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168 Billy Newman Photo podcast mixdown Photography and Wilderness Risk
Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. Appreciate you guys checking this episode out. I wanted to talk today about some more photography stuff. And then some more kind of outdoor wilderness, travel stuff that I was kind of interested in. Also, a cool space event is happening right about now. So it’s fun but probably talk about a couple of those things in this episode. I wanted to talk about this idea that I’ve been reading in a book I was checking out, the wilderness skills and survival book put out by meat eater. I think Steve Rinella writes it. And you know, the group of people that put together the meat eater and the podcast, and a lot of that is where it gets a lot of the good information that I get for outdoor wilderness stuff is, is out of that podcast as our content shows and stuff, but a second of this passage in their book that I was reading, and he was talking about outdoor risk and wilderness areas. It was sort of it talked about it more broadly. But then it brought it down into the United States. And it was mentioned in the number of injuries, specifically deaths that have occurred in photography-related activities. And it was mentioned that that photography-related activity was one of the highest killers in the wilderness in the last decade, as we saw, like a big ramp-up of it. And I think worldwide, and it was the number somewhere around 230 deaths have occurred, I think concerning risky photo photos, or selfies, or kind of some different kinds of activities related around getting a good shot. And I can kind of get into more specifics around professional, or you know, kind of how you have when doing work outside, you get yourself into those positions, and then also in just sort of the more relaxed, take a bit of being on vacation, being a tourist and taking photos and then getting into a risky situation. But as he was mentioning, you know, like animal attacks, or you know, like deaths by a wild animal, you know, or something like that, or freezing to death of exposure, something was kind of almost outpaced by the number of people that got themselves into a high risk and then eventually, like, deadly scenario by doing some photo activity in a wilderness location. So I guess in the United States, it was I think 12 people have died from photo-related activities in wilderness areas within the United States in the last decade. 12 is not that many. But that also kind of puts into perspective how many wild animal attacks there are. And in a fatality, I guess that is how it is. So both numbers would probably be more if it was a more flexible tally of injuries only. But as it goes for fatalities, it’s pretty low, you know, there’s not many bear attacks, there’s not many, there’s like no Cougar attacks or mountain lion attacks. Like, I think there’s one last year, one in Oregon, one in Washington. And then it has also been, I think, a long time since they’ve been any Cougar attacks, or sorry, Cougar fatalities, sometimes their attacks, sometimes it’s like after a dog or something. Sometimes there are, you know, bad encounters for sure. And I think like, it’s pretty common or ends up being more common than you would have thought for people who spent a lot of time in the outdoors to have a complicated encounter with the A individual wildlife specimen. But, but it rarely ends up in the position of a fatality. And that’s one of those weird things that’s out about it. But you can probably maybe we put a lot of thought into the risk of seeing a bear when you’re out or something like that. But you wouldn’t maybe put as much thought into the risk of stepping on a slippery log at a precarious angle near a hill, where you’re going to take a picture. You think that angle would be right or something, or you’re going to stop near the edge of something, holding a camera to take a selfie picture you know of yourself is to picture yourself with selfie, as people have been doing that for a long time. But yeah, getting a picture of yourself or something. And then and then having a fall something like that, it seems to be the way that a lot of this kind of risky behaviors end up happening where you try and kind of push yourself out of the way of the crowd a lot of time or out of the way that every other person is we try and move the camera to a high angle or a low angle so you can get a new perspective on it. But sometimes with those issues, or sometimes with that, you kind of push yourself into locations that are of higher risk, and it ends up being something that yet causes more problems for people than a lot of the other wilderness risk activities that people involve themselves in things I’ve seen a lot is like, you know, in where there’s a more structured environment, I think like, like a number of waterfall locations I’ve been to people sort of got hot on how do I explain it more clearly. Like, think that how can he fall waterfall section? It’s an area Easter Roseburg, and you go out there. And I don’t know if it’s on the unquiet things like Toki creek or something but, but this false is beautiful, it’s been in a bunch of calendars really cool to see, they’ve put in a bunch of effort to make this, this kind of lending platform, you go on like kind of a quarter-mile hike along this ridgeline. And then it kind of drops down to this platform that’s still about 50 feet up above, or maybe 75 feet up above the water. And then if you want, well, it is you bushwhack it. I think if you go against maybe some of what the state park agency there wants you to do, I don’t know if it’s a state park there. Still, probably over what the manager wants you to do, there’s a lot of people that have bushwhacked off of that platform down the steep hillside, and then they go down about 75 feet or so. So they can get a more central position in the Toki falls pool that sort of splashes out of fall comes off crashes down and makes a big pool out. And then that kind of wraps around for maybe 100 feet or so. And then it kind of reforms into a smaller stream and then continues on the downhill. And so what people do is, is Yeah, they scale down this hill down below the platform. And it’s that point when they start to enter into that level of extended risk, where they’re carrying a camera, or they’re carrying some set of equipment, they’re probably not equipped with the right kind of safety gear to get down that sort of slope, whether it just be like good boots and jeans or a trekking pole, or if it happened to be like a carabiner, and a rope or a piece of webbing to help kind of steady your ascent or help you get down and then ascend back up that when you get down there, man, that’s kind of like the tricky part is you get down a hill. And then you have to kind of you have to get back up that in a pretty reasonable fashion. But sometimes Yeah, those ridges can be too steep a country, especially if you hadn’t prepared or if you know prepared for a car travel trip, you get down there. Tennis shoes, or sneakers, you jumping into the water, you get back out, and then you try to shuffle up the side of the wet hillside group of Canadian geese are taken off in this wetland area that I’m at. It’s kind of cool. You probably hear him coming through. Maybe all that noise gets it out. I can’t tell. But yeah, like some of these outdoor risks, if it comes from people jumping off the trail and trying to shuffle down the sides of stuff when it’s probably really not, not something that individuals that person is ready for or equipped for is probably the other side of it. So yeah, it’s just stuff like slipping on a wet rock on a slope. Or, man, what’s forgotten me a couple of times pretty bad is sliding on like a smooth log like a log that mosses on it. And now that moss is scraped away, or even if not, you step on it with a boot on sort of an incline of a slope, and gravity will just kind of yank you down. And it all the moss isn’t gripped to that slick piece of wood underneath at all. So it’s just like a nice slippery, Pisa, round wood and, yeah, grabs it slips right off of it. And then that’s kind of sent me tumbling a couple of times. So it’s kind of frustrating when that kind of stuff happens. But yeah, photography, one of the bigger risks related to outdoor activity. So it’s kind of a tricky thing when doing wilderness stuff or outdoor stuff, even when you’re pretty close to a car. It’s sort of like a lot of risk of sometimes injury or sometimes kind of an exponentially expanding sort of scenario or situation where things kind of get worse and worse and worse and worse. Like you’re out there in the snow in your car. Or you know, you’re in your car, you’re at a day, and you’re going over a mountain pass where you’re not really equipped to do like an overnight thing. But yeah, if you go out for a little, then you get stuck there. And then maybe you get back to your car, but now it’s nighttime, and now it’s cold, it’s just sort of like this escalating set of things that sort of start to cause more problems. And, and that sort of kind of how some of these wilderness things go where you don’t really think it’s going to be a problem, and then it starts to happen. And then that causes another problem. And that causes a few other problems. And sort of dealing with those sets of situations as they come up so that they don’t, just so that you make the right decisions, and that you don’t end up making more problems with for yourself by trying to do something to help yourself survive, like injuring yourself when you’re trying to catch food to eat or something is, you know, like a more risky thing, you could probably go without eating that time. And it would be better for you to remain uninjured, and part of it, but also, you know, it’s just like, wow, how do you do that? How do you like, go about navigating those sets of choices and have the skills to kind of do that? So I’m sure it’s pretty tricky and hard. And that’s why it’s kind of good to sort of have some competency, so you can sort of keeping yourself away from those, those heavier, deep water situations that can kind of get you in trouble and stuff but also, it’s something you’ve got to kind of learn how to do I hope to kind of get into that more within this podcast to kind of talking about that in relation to doing some photography stuff outside pretty much everything I’ve been doing for the last few months of this podcast, but talking about a lot of the outdoor wilderness stuff and then sort of how that relates to doing some photography and media stuff when you’re outdoors too. So yeah, no, it’s kind of trippy, getting into the wilderness risk stuff that you can, you can have out there. And I don’t know, I’ve been pretty lucky with the kinds of things that have happened to me before, I think I’ve nearly been lost before out in the woods that’s kind of, or there’s a few like hard, hard-fought lessons that I’ve learned over time. And part of it is to kind of like, stop moving and stop making mistakes. When you start to make mistakes. Man, that was kind of the tricky one of like, are like trying to move around too much at night when it’s dark out, because you think, well, maybe I can get in a better position because it’s a risky position, right now. But really, movement at night is the riskier position, especially when like there’s, there’s almost no risk of exposure problems or something like that. So I remember, Yeah, being out at night up in the mountains. And then I wasn’t like kind of this rocky area, and I’d lost the trail, I slammed my gear with me, which is great. And so I could put down and kind of set up anywhere, but I remember the kind of being weirded out, I weirded myself out, you know, kind of being out there on sort of this, this, this pretty, pretty strong, Rocky incline that I guess would sort of slope back down to wherever it intersected back in with the trail. But yeah, it was off pretty far. And so I remember like, yeah, just being dark. And if it was laid out, you could just kind of, you could kind of hop down and sort of pick out a route hop down with almost no risk at all just sort of seemed like a pretty natural normal thing to do. But scaling down the side of a mountain at 930. At night, with not much of a lighter, heavier, no trail and stuff, it just didn’t seem to work. So I remember kind of making a couple of mistakes in a pretty short amount of time. And I said, Whoa, I gotta stop because it will get riskier if I keep kind of trying to do this. So I remember stopping and then just setting up my camp right there on whatever rock I’d stood on. But I’d looked around a little too kind of make sure I was in an OK spot. I just kind of tucked away in this little crack between or this kind of code between the rock is sort of coming down and then and then it was sort of shelf off a little, but I kind of scooped myself in this little spot there really just about big enough for me to put my sleeping bag in my body in there. And then I kind of had the tent out as like a mosquito net sort of thing above me, but I didn’t have any of the poles that up. And so I was just kind of in there, held up at my backpack there, and I was able to make it through the night just fine. And then in the morning, I was able to kind of pack up and load out, and then it took me eight minutes to find my way back to the trail and right away. And I remember the kind of thinking about that as I go out, man. Like that’s such a weird thing of like, one like try not to get into that sort of situation unless that’s the plan, you know, the agenda, but sort of having things go off the agenda is probably the first time that things are getting a little too out of control to sort of remain the thing that stays smooth for a long time. And that’s what’s kind of weird of getting in those more risky situations and stuff for or weird situations. I think it’s kind of like taking your time as much as you can kind of move in slowly when you can help out a lot. Yeah, we’d stuff like that. But yeah, getting stuck out at night or getting lost or getting in weird spots to eat. It’s hard to get out of, and you’re trying to get back to your gear, and you think that’s what you need or whatever it might be there’s just kind of like weird little movements that you make of being away when you want to get back to this camp part that you were at but also maybe it’s better for you to just kind of stay put for a little and kind of figure out what you’re up to. I picked up a couple of cool pieces of gear. I was talking about flashlights last time and some of these coasts lights and like Streamlight, and then I think it was Surefire, I think sure fires that other brand I was trying to talk about that was like I don’t know like I think has a contract with the Marines or something or contract with the military to have you know these Surefire lights for their tactical equipment, but they’re insanely expensive. If you look up Surefire lights, you can spend like $13100 on a high-powered metal flashlight. You think, Wow. That’s a lot of money. It really seems like a nice flashlight. But yeah, sure, if I said it was crazy. So kind of down from there is like Streamlight. They have a lot of rescue lights and tactical lights and stuff that I’ve seen cool. And then there’s also this other brand. Excuse me. Yeah, this is another brand coast. I was checking out there. A company out of Portland, I thought they were pretty cool with some lights and products that they had out, and they’re really inexpensive but also had like a lot of durability to them also. So I thought that was kind of cool. I picked up a few of those a few weeks back, and then as I was checking out some stuff, buggies flat out me right now. It’s cool. I hear they get moving. As soon as the sun starts going down. It’s kind of fun. But what I was checking out was this clip like there’s sort of these tactical lights that are out there. Streamlight has this one, and I think it’s called the Sidewinder that I think is pretty cool. But there are these angled lights where you can have it like a A flashlight, you know, it’s like, it would point kind of straight out in front of you, if you held it out, it’s like a rod at the end of that rod. There’s lightning shines for it. But what’s kind of cool about some of these tactical lights is they have these rotating heads on them, so you can have it point out straight in front of you. And then you can also kick that down. So that’s a 90 degree angle where it’s kind of like an L bracket angle. And then it can shine out in front of you if you have the light, I guess at a standard that, so it’s kind of cool. And I guess it used them in the military for, for some uses and stuff, the Sidewinder I think, I don’t know boot or something like that is a good entry-level one, I think that’s like, like a $30 flashlight that has that, that tactical clip, like look, I think hooks onto the Malay straps that you see on backpacks, like those military packs, it’s kind of like thin straps, and you have like, like an inch loop or not a loop but like, it’s like a pretty tightly woven strap that kind of caps over it’s about like an inch long or so but you can hook a piece of gear into that like an extra bag that holds utility or in this case, like a flashlight that a clip-on there. And then you have it at that 90 degree angle to shine out in front of you. So you have like your headlamp or you have a sidelight or something like that. But this one I think, is to kind of clip on to gear or a clip on to like your jacket or backpack or, or something so that it shines out in front of you. So you have like a body light on yet at the same time. But there’s that sideline or the Streamlight Sidewinder, and then we have another tier of the Sidewinder lights that are more, I guess, I know tactical ready that are like 130 bucks or something like that. They go way, way up in price. But they’re LED lights, they’ve got the red LED light. And I think they’ve also got like a couple communication lights, it’s sort of like a military-specific thing where you can run a green light or a red light, or blue light, I guess kind of depending on your, your mode, whatever that means. I think it’s like a training operation thing that they do specifically. And then you can also get a version with a UV light that kind of cuts in that which is kind of interesting. But I was also checking out this coast light this coast clip light that they have, and then it’s got like a magnet backing on it. And then it’s got a roller head on it. It’s a lot smaller than the Sidewinder it’s really only like three inches or so tall. And then instead of like, like a joint that has an angle light unit in it, it’s really just a cylinder that sort of rolls in place where it is you’d have to kind of look it up to visualize, I guess what I’m talking about, but the cylinder sort of rolls its angle from V 180 out to 90. And yeah, we’re surely Well, it’s got the red light, it’s got a UV light option also on there, if you want to pick up that that unit, I guess that’d be like more like a medical unit. I don’t know what they use the UV stuff for. But I see like UV light for a lot of these equipment, like work lights or service lights that that people would get, you know if they’re, they’re working as like EMT, or a police field or something like that. And then I see like the red lights a lot for trying to preserve your eyesight and low light situations and stuff that works great for my sort of stuff of trying to go camping or Astrophotography or whatever it is and trying to, to roam around with a little red light and stuff kind of helps out with, with like the headlamp when you’re at night, kind of around the campfire. And you don’t want to shine your full on spotlight around the camp everywhere. And it works really well with this little clip light to run the red light in sort of a dimmer mode on a backpack or something. So I guess the plan is I’m going to transfer one of these clip lights on to like kind of my backpack or out of my camera bag or something like that. So that I always have like a light reading on when I’m in low light situations. So like when I’m out trying to do some star photo stuff are like right now like man, it gets dark so early. But so I’m trying to go out early, I mean, you can go like four o’clock, or you know, like I guess it’s getting a little lighter now. But you can go out at like five o’clock and it’ll be dark and almost no time. And if you’re lucky enough to have some dark weather like right now you can see how close Jupiter and Saturn are together. Really cool how that the great conjunction came about how they’re really close together. I mean, gosh, it’s like just like 10 points next to each other. So if you’re trying to like do some photographs of that, or other star stuff, or just do some observations and stuff like that, it’s cool, you can go out there and then throw on this red light and not have that effect. Your pupil contractions allow more light in your eyes while you’re out there. It does a better job, it’s better to have it just perfectly dark. But if you do need some light, the red light does a lot to keep you from losing your night vision as you get out there and your eyes start to dilate to the dark, dark light conditions that you’re in. So it’s kind of cool. But yeah, it’s for doing like some photo stuff out there. It’s kind of cool to be able to clip the light to the bag and have that run in and then I can kind of leave the bag right that’s sort of what ends up happening a bit too is like I’ll sort of adjust the tripod or I’ll move it away. And then I’m sorry, getting into the photo that I’m taking. Now I’ve set the bag down, and I’ve moved the tripod now two times or three times now it’s dark out, and I’m thinking wait a second. Where’s my bag, I just left it I moved now 20 feet or 30 feet or now there’s like obstacle in the way, and I don’t know where it is, and it’s dark, so it’s hard to find. So what I’ve been trying to do is, for a while the same, I got like a pack of glow sticks, I took a glow stick to my truck, I’d have a glow stick to my camera bag so that I could find it easy. I have my headlamp and stuff with me. And that has a red light and stuff too. And I can crank out the spotlight and scope around and stuff. But it’s really a lot easier when you just don’t have to do that sort of stuff, or when there’s at least some kind of little trigger that showing you Hey, hey, over here, that’s where you left that backpack and stuff. So now hopefully, I want to have to, I want to have to lose my backpack or lose my stuff out there. Or at least like have the fear that while I’m trying to like hunt around and look at Hey, where to go to fall over like is it down by the stump or something it always kind of slips off from wherever it was that woodsy stuff too. It’s like nothing’s ever as organized or clean. And a feeling is what it seems like it should be, you know, just the system has to have its gets like a little clumsy. So you can’t can’t always keep it as straight as you would if you’re in a more organized normal environment like you’re at home. And that’s sort of what kind of amplifies that risk stuff to a little. But yeah, it’s cool to throw a light on the bag that you have, especially when you’re in like nighttime kind of darker conditions, it’s cool to get to throw that in there. And yeah, be able to find it again. But as it goes for like a little utility light, it’s pretty cool. I tried to throw that in as little as a little like security light or sorry, safety light or something like that I was looking at like emergency kits and stuff, the types of things that you want to have in and, and sort of like a he said, like glues that’s not glue, you know, like lm or super glue and stuff, but probably something like a JB weld, or a super glue, or one of those like plastic like adhesive Wilder’s and stuff. So really, that’s like, or like tapes or something like that, but it’s really, so you can repair stuff as it kind of might fall apart in you while you’re out in the field. And if you can get a couple of those things to help you bond some things together. That’s, that’s sort of the stuff that you would have to repair or do or build when you’re out there. And I think a lot of that stuff is stuff that you can you can get for a couple bucks put in an ammo can that you get for a couple bucks. And then you have a little like car utility kit where you have like a fix a flat. You have a fire starter, you have a couple emergency lights, a couple emergency knives, or you know like some kind of sharp knife blade or multi-tool Leatherman knockoff kind of things scooting around in there. And then you also have Yeah, stuff to make a fire stuff to make a quick, like dry weather shelter tarp or something like that, but few of those things are gonna have around is cool. And then really like, yeah, the adhesive stuff comes in handy too, if you have like a car breakdown, or if, in emergency circumstances when you need to, like, Man, I’ve had like a, like a vacuum hose go on me as well, it’s good to have like some tape or some adhesive to try and kind of patch this thing up a little. So I can get back down to the road, which is cool. Or like I’ve had like battery problems. That one sucks. And you’re like, well, I don’t know if the car is going to start this morning because it was cold or because my I don’t know, like the interior was like it just was finicky all the time. So you’d have to kind of bang on it a little and try and get it going again. And that was a weird one. Or like that kind of problem when you’re out on the road shape is frustrating, especially when it’s chronic. And you’re out there for like a longer time. And if you’re not really in a position to get it fixed right away, you’re just like, well, what am I doing? Like, I am out here for 15 days, I don’t know if my car is gonna start. This sucks. So that’s a that’s come up before. But if you can get over that stuff, I guess you can kind of start to figure out how to get out of there and stuff. But yeah, thinking about like I was looking at Costco, they had this big, this big inverter box that I really liked those inverters in the past I use them on the car stuff to help me charge batteries, somebody run stuff before, but I think Costco is this big inverter that I think they’ve got like a cheaper one that’s a battery started probably for the cars and stuff, but they got this truck size was like man I should I should get this guy you know, it’s got like a full like power outlet on the front of it. You can just plug in run stuff off of whatever’s on power, or you can run it on however it’s its charging from the car itself, but it’s its kind of wild, the two of them are you know, like trying to get power stuff out on the road basically, man I should have an inverter and so if I need to run some power to my battery to get it jumped in the morning or so that I can still do it. It’s kind of weird when you’re out there just by yourself. You got no one else around, you know the truck, no one else to run a jumpstart if that’s what you need. And now I don’t have like a stick shift or something. So I can’t do the bump start like I did. Way back in the day I bump started the Camry a couple of times. I bumped started the forerunner when it didn’t start the nightmares of that. I’ll get into that next time. But yeah, thanks a lot for listening to this episode of the podcast. You can check out more information at Billy Newman photo comm you can go to Billy Newman photo.com Ford slash support. If you want to help me out and participate in the value for value model that we’re running this podcast with. If you receive some value out of some of the stuff that I was talking about, you’re welcome to help me out and send some value my way through the portal at Billy Newman photo comm forward-slash support. You can also find more information there about Patreon and the way that I use it if you’re interested or if you’re more comfortable using Patreon That’s patreon.com forward slash Billy Newman photo. So some cool stuff coming up, get the music podcast that I’m working on the music listening sessions with Billy Newman, I got the night sky podcast stuff that I’m trying to put out. I’m also trying to figure out some video and media stuff to go up on YouTube this year to I’m trying to figure out as many things I can do to kind of get some stuff together quickly. And then also sort of have that set up so that it automates out over a lot of time. So that you know, for the next six months, I’ve got videos and photos and stuff ready to go that I’ve already put together and set up and written out, and it says in no sweat off my back, so I can just kind of head out and do more camping. Do more photo time. Hopefully, I get to do more of that. Now that it’s kind of coming into January, man, New Year. We’re almost there. Thanks for listening to this episode of the billing human photo podcast. I will talk to you again next time. Thanks