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0:14
Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. And today we’re looking at a photograph that I wanted to introduce you to add to my portfolio from the Steen’s looking up to the Steen’s from the Alvord Desert It was I think for about a week or so that we camped in the Alvord on the old lake basin with the playa that’s there now is a really beautiful spot and it’s very cool. And it’s one of my favorite spots in Oregon. And what I liked about this photograph is this is right before the sun rose, where we were camped I think there was so much in the shade as you can kind of tell by the ground there. But what was neat is as you look up the to the eastern wall there that that peak of the steam is rising 1000s of feet higher than where we are in the Alvord. And so the sun shines on that earlier, which was cool to see the dawn light hit the kind of intricate shape of the mountain to the scenes for a few minutes before it rose right where we were around our camp, I just thought was a cool moment. And it’s a really beautiful spot to be this was photographed on film with a wide-angle lens and like a Nikon. And it was a great time and I love being up there in Alvord’s cool spot I’ll probably always talk well a bit, but amazing to see how the landscape has changed just in the way it used to be wet or used to be a lake. And that’s just so dry out there. It’s amazing how things could change. That’s a really interesting way to see it.
1:52
You can see more of my work at Billy Newman photo comm you can check out some of my photo books on Amazon. I think if you look at Billy Newman under the author’s section there and see some of the photo books on film on the desert, on surrealism, camping, and cool stuff over there. If like I say I like the October period, you know it’s kind of a cool outdoor month for stuff and that’s kind of what I’m going to talk about too is kind of layering up stuff for October I’ve been trying to kind of build up the layers of clothes and layers of like shelter stuff that I have for some of the outdoor travel stuff that I go out and do and I do it on a budget and I don’t have much stuff and like other people have a lot more experience of like just getting to try all these different pieces and see like the benefits or the kind of way out the pluses and minuses are different pieces. And so I’m sure it’s probably the case that like the best gear is always the best gear. It’s kind of interesting to sort of go through those checklists or you know, like kind of in your mind like seeing like what like how’s this work or what’s better for me for this thing or not. So I’ve been pretty happy to always have or for the last couple years to have like a vortex range outlay and for a lot of outdoor stuff that I do in Oregon, later into the year that’s been like a real lifesaver for having just like a hard waterproof shell that I can like the trust that has like a good hold on it that can keep me dry for most of the day. That along with I guess kinda working inward like the puffy jacket makes a huge difference. And so I use a puffy jacket all the time. There are a few different sizes though and you sort of have to like look at the down-fill layer to see what’s going to be best for you and like the climate that you’re going out to. That is kind of weird, it goes back and forth through me a little bit. So like out here in Oregon, where I am like west of the Cascades it’s sort of a mild climate a lot of the year and so I’m able to I think you’re kind of dealing with like above freezing temperatures. Most hours and on most days for the year I think like you know there’s some sections of the year where you get some heavy freezes but outside of those storm times it’s like pretty mild weather a lot of the time and if I’m going camping or doing something outdoors in the winter I well there are a couple of different types I definitely use it but really for a lot of like the three season work I do I use a light puffy jacket either because North Face thermal thermoball I think it’s like a polyester based one. It’s not a downfield, puffy jacket but I’ve used that for maybe six years now and I appreciate you having that. I think it’s been great. That’s probably one of my most used insulating layers when I’m going out and I mean works great, really all four seasons with the kind of compared and these mild weather circumstances like I am here in Oregon like that paired with that Shell has been enough for me to go out and in almost every kind of weather circumstances I’ve been in when I’ve gone out and been working or like when I was working outside a lot in the rain and trying to be si Like most days through the fall and winter, it was really fine to do that with a strong or like a good Gortex shell that keeps you dry all the way and puffy, thermo insulating layer that keeps you warm. So it was pretty cool but kind of comparing that and I have like this Patagonia jacket that I think has a heavier down fill rating and that has a lot of insulation to it, which is cool, warm jackets are great. And I take that out kind of deeper into the winter. But what I noticed though, is that for a lot of circumstances, like I say three season work and while you’re working or kind of like physically kind of exerting yourself I’ve noticed like if it’s not below freezing that is too warm of a jacket to wear. And so you kind of get to pick a little bit of like where your, your environmental thresholds are like what kind of environment you spend a lot of time and is it going to be above freezing temperatures or below freezing temperatures? Or is it gonna be hot weather temperatures, like where you’re working, you know, your coldest temperatures might be 50, but you’re going up toward like the 80s and 90s pretty regularly? And that’s kind of a different environment to work into. So I’ve been kind of trying to keep an eye on that but as we’re kind of dropping into October the outfitting stuff that I’m doing is sort of away from the heat gear stuff that I would have been using where I’m in like lighter synthetic shorts and trying to use like lighter layers and stuff like in the winter you kind of get to layer up and stuff we’re just got some kind of fun sweater weather right
6:31
what I picked up last year and I’m kind of excited to put some more use into it was a wool baselayer so I got a great wool t-shirt and I kind of appreciate trying to cut out some of the cotton material that I’m using when I’m going out and doing some more outdoor stuff and I guess it’s because back in the day cotton was a great revolution right you know, it was a more breathable fabric and it would dry faster than other fabrics that they had available to them I guess is part of what was cool about it. But as I sort of understand now it’s one of the riskier types of fabric that you can wear as a base layer when you’re out in the woods for a couple of days or when you’re out camping or you know the talking TV shows about when you’re in a survival situation. Not that but yeah, when you’re out camping or if you were gonna go hunting or you’re gonna go on a couple of day photo trip in the woods, you’re just going to be living out of your truck and stuff, it kind of it ends up being a little difficult to use a lot of cotton pieces especially if you’re going to get wet or if it’s cold and you don’t want to get wet but you do get wet and that’s a bummer because the cotton stuff just kind of stays wet and it gets cold when it gets wet. And a couple of those things just sort of lead to it being a little bit frustrating and I guess that’s where some of the survival complications of happy with people who are out in okay conditions they get hit with cold rain or wet snow and they’re in like an outer let you know their insulating layers but they’re like a cotton coating. Or like I guess tough warm-insulated Carhartt jackets on hunting in that they got into some wet snow on the second morning. The car hard wet pants got or the pants that were insulated got wet from the tall grass and brush that they walk through and then the person became hypothermic because of their exposure to the cold that soaked through their pants that got them very cold and I think they had to like ditch the band’s get into their sleeping bag it was synthetic and then they try to like to warm them up with a hot water bottle in a sleeping bag or something like that out of the Jetboil but like it ended the trip I think they like they can’t continue out of that sort of stuff so it’s kind of interesting I like that kind of thing can go and people have probably heard anecdotes like that similarly in the past I’d hear like someone else talking about like a warm weather thing where I think they’re going out on like a 42-day canoe trip Can you imagine that like going through some big river system and Labrador up in Canada? Wow, fun times popping out in Hudson Bay or something who knows? But they would go up there and they would talk about like all like the specific limitations on the type of fabrics that they would select to use because like if they got wet in the river, or I think it was like cold weather or who knows what kind of weather you’re gonna get sort of circumstance where you go between hot and cold and Canada kayaking or canoeing down 1100 miles or something like that just big long trips like that. And they would kind of be really specific about how like they won’t even have cotton boxers or cotton underwear because it’ll be the thing that ends up being a problem for other people or another person. I think kind of there are a lot of great ways to sort of work through this next problem, but I think someone argued that they did have cotton on them so that they could use it as a fire starter. If they needed a fire starter. I said Just to just bring a Firestarter or some other material like that I think it would probably get you by a little better than your cotton underwear. The best Firestarter that I’ve used and heard about was
10:18
well, I mean yeah like a stove or whatever but if you’re trying to light a fire in the winter having a plastic bag with Vaseline-dipped cotton swabs was like a pretty inert material. Just like having a backpack that doesn’t smell like kerosene or something. And it has multiple uses you can use it cosmetically for everything’s our best, if your lips chap, I hate when it gets dry and cold and you go oh man, my pores can’t handle it. They were in a different environment. 5000 feet a difference in elevation a day ago, too much change and too much seasonal change. Now you get like, I don’t know just rough spots or dry spots or something you use the Vaseline you get the cotton swabs for all sorts of different things, but they’re fantastic. If you light that up. It’s a great little flame ball and you can use that with a stack of your other dry materials to get a fire going. Even in pretty wet conditions especially if you’re kind of keeping your Firestarter material protected. And some little party backpacks give it a try and stuff that works out pretty well. And I think it works better than your underwear on a rafting trip. So but yeah, I’ve heard of that. Yeah, people, people try to not use that people try to like drop their leather belts. Like they won’t take a leather belt out into the woods either. Like I wouldn’t like a sturdy belt. Like what you see people like big leather boots or whatever it’s not because it gets washed, and waterlogged. But I guess because it’s maybe a weight thing. I think that’s what the idea was for. Maybe they’re like going backpacking and using a piece of nylon webbing as a belt at that time. or other stuff we’re like, I don’t know just little tricks and things of like how you kind of hide certain materials and other materials and stuff. But it’s weird how it goes. So I guess yeah, cotton stuff is sort of a go. They talk about using wool a lot as sort of like a preferred material to make it out of or down here like down stuff is kind of a preferred material. And then I also kind of hear similarly, sided, bad things about sort of the petroleum develop products that you get from polyesters or nylons, or I guess like the polyester insulating foams, you get like those thermo ball insulating foam bits that would be in the pouches of another polyester material that makes up like the puffy jacket that I wear. For the Patagonia one that’s a downfield, puffy jacket. You have little goose feathers poking, poking out of it all the time, too. Yeah, I feel like you feel around the right way a little goose feather I’ll punch out the side and pull it out a little feather right there a little down feather, which is kind of trippy. But those I guess are like a better insulating system. Then like the synthetic kind of oil-based stuff. I guess the same goes for like sleeping bags too. If you want to get into like a sleeping bag to keep you warm. There’s something like the 15-degree bags that are well, I don’t know, I think it has a couple of other features too. I guess it’s like light and it stretches down well. And if you get it wet, you can get a drag and well I guess it depends on like certain qualities down sometimes that kind of get I think is a little tricky. But the wall I guess you can get, you can have to get wet, you’ll stay warm, and you can get it dry faster. And I think that’s sort of the benefit of the wall on the animal that gets wet too. You know, like if you think about sheep getting rained on all the time, I guess it’s sort of part of the fibers that it doesn’t attract a lot of odor because it has to be on an animal all the time. And I guess it does well to not have to, like make you cold when it gets wet. I guess that’s a big part of it. So a lot of the merino wool fabrics that have come out, or the merino wool blends that are with some little bit of spandex or some other kind of natural fiber product that they try and put in helps to kind of be a little bit more durable when they have those little blends. But mostly you want a pretty strong merino wool fabric. And that’s pretty cool if you’re getting sort of like a base layer, or something like that it’s a little bit more tuned for the outdoors like wool sweaters or something that you can find but that’s not quite their cool old white shirts, you know, like an old old Pendleton shirt or an old Filson shirt that’s like a loggers kind of wool button that would go under like a canvas jacket. I kind of think is cool but that’s sort of a different look. And it used to be the technical gear layering and probably still you’d see if you get like, I don’t know like a horse guide like a guided trip with a horse or a mule or something like that. That’s the pack and a bunch of stuff. They probably still use gear that’s sort of similar to that. Without the kind of like the technical synthetic gear that you try and find it like Rei hiking places or something or wherever whatever else similarly branded but yeah it’s cool trying to do some wool Merino underlayers trying to work with those puffy jackets when they can
15:19
try to work with lavish a soft shell that gets a lot less useful than it used to be. I used to try new soft shells all the time but I just kind of go with the wool, the wool base layer, The North Face kind of wore you know like a warmer temperature-rated puffy jacket and then have the GoreTex layer over that picked up a hat this year. That’s pretty cool that boots had a couple of different sets of boots for the October stuff before it gets really heavy in the season before it gets like real wet or rainy. Now while I’m kind of doing some of this lighter outdoor stuff I have like a pair of heavy leather boots that are super cool for some of that deeper hiking stuff that you get into especially after it’s wet and rainy and stuff but really for a lot of the light season stuff and sort of summer spring stuff. I have these Nike s FB boots it’s like that military dude I picked them up in brown like a desert tan color. And then I also picked up a similar pair that under armor makes and so they’re kind of like a lighter, more athletic shoe from the base but they have like kind of tall neck that goes up to like your mid-upper ankle there. And so it’s not like a real table or like it’s not like galoshes they’re not waterproof they’re kind of vent on the sides and they dry out they’re kind of like a synthetic material that dries out pretty quick when you do get it wet but it also has like a good bit of tread and you can get wet get them dry and wet. I think they’re kind of made for an okay dry environment that’s sort of where I use most of the time you know hiking around for any of this kind of lighter duty for us that was nice because they’re light boots like with those other heavy leather ones like just the soles of the boots seem like they pound each you know you kind of like feel it the first couple of days you getting back into the use of them during the season where you’re like man my feet are like four pounds heavier it seems like each just kind of like walking with a weight on it. So it’s nice to have one of the newer sorts of higher tech boots that don’t have the same kind of ankle support as a thicker leather boot does or they don’t have the same kind of heel support. I like to talk about like those you know thick like a two-inch heel or something that like one of those whites boots has or if you get like Red Wings they have like a real deep thick heel on it that you can use to kind of stomp in and cut in on some hiking stuff and these Yeah, it’s just kind of like a good sort of smooth walking boot and you get some ankle support from that that tall neck but it’s sort of fabric so that it seems like it you’re just it’s a light boot and seems like you’re ready to run and you can do like an athletic maneuver in these pretty well and it doesn’t seem like the boots gonna be too heavy to slow you down not right for every circumstance like if I’m going in a deeper area it’s cool it’s nice to have like the kind of protection of a steel toed leather boot but like the normal s sfbs I think are not a steel toe I think I think these Under Armour ones though are there are steel toe versions that are out there. But that does seem to I’ve kind of run into a few circumstances where for some of the more woodsy stuff it seems like having the steel toe has helped a lot to keep my feet protected and stuff and if you hate gonna lie you gotta watch out for blisters and stuff too. One of the big things I’ve noticed to help that is like really breaking in your shoes with three weeks or more but three weeks of like pretty near full-time use to start getting them broken in or to get kind of the feel the break the crease the kind of the fabric kind of working together in the way that it’s going to fit around your body and stuff but yeah, it seems like it takes about three weeks to sort of get those issues broken into a spot that that ends up being uncomfortable for longer trips and longer where I had like a pair of chocobos then this jacket was they were great you know that you don’t wear socks you don’t like buffer it with wool socks or something but I remember I think working with those for like three weeks or so at first your feet, man, they will rub raw
19:25
Yeah. Yeah, they’ll you’ll get some hot spots with the webbing on those chocolates. It’s like this really kind of tough webbing but after like three weeks or so like after you kind of wear your foot into it so that it’s kind of strong enough to deal with it. And you also start breaking in the rubber of the boot or the rubber of that foot for the shoe. You’re your foot. But once you get that all kind of broken and I was able to hike for miles and miles and have no rub problems at all. I think I did. I think I did the whole hiking trip up to the summit. The paintbrush divide and the cascade Can you know like the Teton’s chip I talked about some times But yeah, I did that whole hiking trip of the Tetons in early, mid-late September, probably right around now. But I did that trip in the Tetons, with just those, those black shakos that I had had like kind of that boot tread bottom and I did great through that whole chip I did like a 42-mile trip down the lower road that was like a hiking backpacking trip so you have a background backpack on you got these little river shoes on and you’re hiking away on the trail and yeah, a lot of the times if you’re not really in shape for it man, those will just rip your feet up pretty badly and I’ve seen it affect people’s trips before you know like where their shoes just like really start to bite in on them. And it happens fast. As soon as you get like a hotspot or something it can be just a quarter mile or another mile and then like that, that problem has been exacerbated a lot. So as soon as like gets bad boom man gets bad fat or it starts to degrade fast and then once it’s gone it’s gone on for a while, you know so it’s bad and it can cause some mobility problems when you’re out there. So I think kind of to kind of deal with some of that stuff. We’re kind of breaking them in earliest School, which is what I’ve been trying to do with some of my shoes but yeah, trying to get outfitted for this stuff in October it’s been kind of fun trying to work out the layers and stuff. You can check out more information that Billy Newman’s 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 feel more comfortable using Patreon that’s patreon.com forward slash Billy Newman photo.
22:00
also interested in as I’ve spoken about before on this podcast I have an affinity for taking photographs on film. And I want to get back into that in a way because right now I don’t have a film camera with me, I still have the Nikon en ad floating around. Though I’m short a lens or you know that’s what I’m saying is like I’ve kind of made it an investment now into this whole range of focal lengths that have been quite nice pieces of glass over on the Canon side now. And so I’d like an opportunity to be able to take those photographs on film with that range of glass that I now have available to me. So what I’m looking at trying to do is, is trying to pick up one of these older now but one of these older but one of the last runs of film cameras that canon had put out and so I was looking around and trying to do some research for that. When I talked to you guys before about it. In the podcast, I was mentioning that I picked up a Nikon F for a camera that was the fully manual camera or you know like no I don’t it wasn’t for me anyway, I think it was autofocus and I had a whole color matrix It was one of the first cameras have that color matrix auto system in it where you could kind of like set it up. But nav has a lot of those same features what I’m trying to do to get to the point is I’m looking at the EOS line of film cameras that canon produced in the 1990s and the 2000s. And there’s a lot of opportunities there where you can pick up a very nice camera body that you know shoot film, and that would kind of accompany the five D Mark three and all the Canon lenses that I have now. So I was looking at the EOS one n which I think is the camera that can come out in 1994 it looks quite a bit like a five-D body shape but it’s not like that. It was it’s not the oversize body but it looks you know just kinda like that camera SLR body style. And as a bunch of the features on the back, I think has that roller wheel that canon users have gotten accustomed to it probably was one of the first cameras to introduce that big roller wheel to control your F stop, and then the other roller on the front to control your aperture. So it was kind of it’s interesting how it’s laid out. But it feels like it looks almost the same way. So I’m looking around at those that came out in 1994. And then in the year 2000. They had come out with the EOS one DC one n before. What was it? I think I wrote it down over here. I can’t remember what it was. There was the one and maybe the one h sunray. What would it have been? Let’s look here is the one v that’s I think the one I’m looking for. Yeah, the one V is that the film camera that canon produced in the year 2000, and probably up through like 2006 or 2007 or 2008 there’s probably even new versions of that body that are still around if you notice those hardcore film users out there, so I’m looking around at some of those on the US market, I think they’re like three, four, maybe 500 bucks if it’s kind of on the higher end of expense but but I’m looking at some of those and it seems like it’d be kind of an interesting purchase to pick one of those up, then it could be shooting you know, film images like I have had an interest in doing with a professional body that kind of matched a lot of the same layout and workflow that that the five D Mark three that I’m using has, so I’m pretty interested in that and then I can use all this L class that I’ve been making a purchase of two so I have the super wide angle, or I don’t know is it super wide, I think it’s just a wide angle zoom for that 17 to 40 millimeter f4 I’ve got the 24 to 72 a i would have the 70 to 200 USM f4 and then I would have a couple prime lenses on top of that so it’s like a pretty full collection of glass that I could use to make a whole bunch of different types of art or you know, like different different photographs different pieces that I’d be interested in trying to produce. And you know, like a lot of the film stuff I was I was building like all the stuff that was on that film book that I put together that was almost all done with a Nikon 50 millimeter f1 A and maybe like a couple of manual focus lenses that I should not have been using actually kind of knowing better now. The optics of those we’re always kind of thanks a lot for checking out this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. Hope you guys check out some stuff on Billy Newman photo.com few new things up there some stuff on the homepage, some good links to other outbound sources, some links to books, and links to some podcasts like this blog posts are pretty cool. Yeah, check it out at Billy new minnesota.com. Thanks a lot for listening to this episode and the back end