The Scurvy Dog's Puerto Rican Blog

Muskets, Cannon and Soldiers of Great Stature

“They were as Gods… Men would tremble and bow as they marched by, never to dare and stare them in the eye”

Yeah, I said that.

I’ve talked about some of my great days in Puerto Rico, but this one stands out as a crown jewel. It was a genuine privilege to tag along and shoot without distraction, the day’s activities.

This year’s 1797 Commemoration of the British Siege and Defense of (Old) San Juan was perfect. Though the event covered 3 days- April 25th-28th, we were only there for Friday’s activities. The first reenactment took place out near Manati, on the grounds of Hacienda La Esperanza. This location has access to the coast making for a very private affair.

While on the grounds of the Hacienda, we did take a bunch of shots I’ll feature in a future post as well as a separate one on the town of Manati.

Because Friday is a work day, many of the participants would not be available until the weekend. But not to fret. The Polish Army was there in force! Yes, they had made the trip to Puerto Rico from Poland (as they did last year). What a contrast PR must be to their homeland. [Read more…] about Muskets, Cannon and Soldiers of Great Stature

51st San Blas Marathon of Coamo, The Movie

I covered this event a few weeks back so here’s a link to the San Blas Marathon story. Lots and lots of shots, mostly of runners. If you do a search you will find several more stories and videos relating to the San Blas Half Marathon.

My Video of the 51st Annual San Blas Half Marathon in Coamo runs 24:40 – My Best Time, so far.

My previous attempts at covering this event resulted in me compressing the video timeline by running it at ‘triple speed’.

That way I could include more runners. It was also quite funny. Problem is, they streaked by so fast, you could not tell who some of them were. So this ‘normal speed’ video resulted in editing out a lot of stuff.

I started with about 46 minutes of good ‘clips’ which I whittled down to 24 minutes, 40 seconds. My longest video to date. And it’s just as ‘funky’ as the marathon videos that preceded it.

Editing video in Final Cut Express (V4.0) is very time consuming even on a Mac equipped with a ‘zero raid array’ (used for scratch disk). Video renders (at 1280 x 720) still take hours to do. For those that don’t know, renders are dead time. I do not do anything else while the computer runs the render. Then there is the title graphics, tracking down music and cut transitions to deal with. It took up about 24 hours doing this video, spread over most of a week.

Then there is the YouTube upload to deal with.

I keep my finished videos to 720 x 480 (16:9) to keep the file size down.

Even at that, this one was a fat 1.45 GBs. It took 11 hours to upload, which I started when I went to bed. To add insult to injury, our Claro A/DSL Internet connection failed with 20% of the download left.

Our Claro Internet fails whenever it rains. Seriously. The last 7 times it’s rained, we’ve lost connection.

Because of our ongoing Internet issues, we also have a Virgin Mobile ‘Pay as you go’ WiFi HotSpot. I was able to seamlessly switch over to it without interrupting the upload in progress.

Otherwise, I would have been real pissed.

One render was done at 1280 x 720 since it was shot at 1920 x 1080, but that file is 7.42 GB. Think how long it would have taken to upload that one!

One other interesting point- I have retired my old VadoHD videocam. It served me well. This vid was done with my new Sony HDR-AS10.

It’s sweet!

Too bad I didn’t have it for the Guaynabo Zip-line Run.

The Sony videocam will shoot 1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720 (which is my favorite format to record in). It can also do 120 FPS (frames per second) for a slow-motion effect and time lapse. The little vidcam records in stereo and sports real image stabilization with a very wide angle lens (which I love). A nifty waterproof housing was included in the kit, with tripod socket and battery, but no card. There is a US nickel in the shot so you can get a sense of the AS-10’s size. I go into more detail about the camera over on a new site dedicated to creative photography.

At $180, the HDR-AS10 is a bargain.

In conclusion, please think of this video as the ‘highlights’ from the day. It was shot along Highway 150 as the runners stream back into town. Many more came by, after the sun set.

ARRG!

Gardening as Intervention, a Mega Update

Confessions of an exotic fruit seed junkie

I thought 3 years in, I would be done with planting seeds and moving on to keeping them watered and watching them grow. Not so.

My obsession has turned acute.

To accommodate these additions, I’ve had to clear off more undergrowth. That’s not easy for a guy who recently celebrated his 60th birthday. There’s still more clearing to be done too!

I have to pace myself.

I do see a time when I’ll spend more ‘time’ keeping things watered and concentrate on the veggie garden. An acre is about all I’m good for. Most of the fruit trees I’m trying to grow do not get big – “big” being a relative term. Some of these, I’ll ‘set free’ down in the hoya (ravine) and wish them well. Then as the surviving ones prosper, I’ll cut back the natural stuff. At least that’s the plan.

This update includes my progress on earlier efforts and a few gardening ‘experiments’ I’ve got going. I’ve made a few new discoveries too. [Read more…] about Gardening as Intervention, a Mega Update

The 51st San Blas Marathon of Coamo, My 4th

This is a local story.

One I have covered 3 times in the past. Yes, I’ve reported on this event with great detail so I’ll only be talking about the highlights here.

There are videos of the past Marathons including one that runs the entire route, the morning before the big event, shot from the roof of my car. There is also a map (I made from scratch) of the route over on my Maps Page.

The last chunk of the San Blas Marathon runs back into town along Highway 150. By this point, the runners are pretty spread out. It’s our favorite spot to shoot from. We had a very nice day overall with overcast kicking in about the time the run got started.

As always, it was a very carnival like atmosphere.

Lots of food, lots of drink, the smell of roast pork everywhere and music coming at you from all directions.

I love it!

I even got a nice ‘swig’ of Pitorro from a squeeze bag out of the deal. SWEET!

The party from the night before did not slow down until 3AM.

A steady parade of cars, jeeps and bikes started up again about 8AM… it did not end until the cops closed off the route around 2PM. After that, it’s just the neighbors and local folk milling around, making conversation. A very family oriented moment!

As was my previous observation, the Cops were out in full force for the day’s events.

I used this opportunity to fire up my new video action-cam… A Sony AS10.

I have not had a chance to view any of the footage, but I assume some of it will be OK for editing down. That will come in a couple more weeks. Video is very time consuming and why I have not done more.

Believe me, I want to.

UPDATE! The 51st Annual San Blas Video is live and ready to view!

The 21Km San Blas Half Marathon takes a hour for the first runners to cross the finish line. The main mass of runners finish in about 2 hours with balance crossing the line after 3 and a half hours. At that point, it’s too dark to get anymore shots.

As always, me First Mate and I tried to get shots of everyone that passed by us at about the 15Km mark. She actually got more stills than I since I was trying to keep up with video while shooting stills. Not an easy task. To add insult to injury, the light was pretty flat due to the overcast for most of the run. I did what I could for the shots. I processed slightly over 125 images.

Not all shots were suitable for enlargement. So it goes.

We also have a dedicated page of Runners’ pictures from the San Blas Marathon with lots more shots of the runners. Two big pages of pictures with names and stats this time – and a page of most interesting people seen there.. Our contribution to a very local event. Coamo is a very special place.

Another great day, all in all!

Zipping Through the Jungle of Guaynabo, PR

As mentioned in me previous post, we had family visiting from the mainland and took in Canopy Tour’s Zip-line traverse on the grounds of the ‘Parque Forestal La Marquesa’ in Guaynabo. This is a very nice park and worth a visit even if you don’t do the Zip-line thing.

Note that this is a very funky 11 minutes 30 seconds of pure fun.

Since I had not done this before, I was not sure on how to rig for it. What’s more, I had not done any prep for my new Sony HDR-AS10 ‘ActionCam’ so I shot this from my Sony NEX-7, instead. I had never used the NEX-7 for video either, but at least I was familiar with the camera. To add insult to injury, I could not hold the camera in my hands since you need both hands free to steady yourself when running down the Zip-line.

This meant I had to strap the camera to my waist via another camera strap at the very last minute.

This accounts for much of the video being shot at a silly angle with a waist level view, but I think it adds to the ‘crude’ look of the finished product.

I used a Sigma AF 10-20mm zoom at the 10mm focal length and set focus to infinity. I forgot the masking tape I usually use to lock the lens down so it kept creeping off the mark requiring me to reset often.

Also worth mentioning, once we got into the shadow side of the mountain, it became relatively dark. Because I had strapped the camera to my waist, I could not see to reset the ISO to 400 or 800 to deal with the reduction in available light.

I ordered the headband clip for the little HDR-AS10 so I’ll be better prepared, next time. With this, I could strap it to my arm for a better perspective.

Please know that my remark about mosquitos was regarding Alaska and NOT Puerto Rico. We have mosquitos here, but nothing like Alaska in the summer.

The background score ‘Ritmo de Amor’ was courtesy of Los Macuanos and was downloaded from the Free Music Archive. A great music resource.

My only complaint is that there was a fair amount of walking to get down to the first launch platform and then at the end, we had to trudge uphill to get back to the original staging area. I cut a lot of video from this part of the trek. I was beat by the time we stepped off the last Zip-line, but then I’m out of shape and that’s due to my ankle condition.

Both paths could use some ‘dressing’, but there were good ropes or railing to hang onto so it was not too bad. Sturdy walking shoes or boots would be a good idea.

Forget the flip-flops.

Cost was typical for this kind of venue. Reservations are a good idea because they are very busy on the weekends or holidays. We were there on a Thursday afternoon so traffic was light. Allow plenty of time for this if you are in a large group.

The Canopy Tour’s Website has more specifics and you can get your tickets online too. I score a small commission for the sale, but it does not affect the ticket price.

In the end, It still rates 5 Skulls on me Scurvy Blog.. ARRG!

A special thanx goes out to Manuel and his crew, we felt very safe the entire time. Would I do it again? HECK YEA!!! It was awesome!