The Narrative Image

They say Native Americans carved petroglyphs at the base of Willamette Falls, an ancient fishing site. I’ve paddled up to the falls a couple of times to find the old markings, but always seem to miss them. The massive horseshoe-shaped falls are over a quarter mile wide and are blended in with concrete and steel industrial structures that make its natural configuration something of a puzzle. I figured a fresh set of eyes would improve my chances of finding the petroglyphs, so I invited Karen, who had previously expressed an interest in learning to kayak. Karen and I are part of the same extended church family, but more like cousins who almost never visit each other. In the past, she has tried to kill me with a heavy piñata stick and also a spring roll (the spring roll wasn't really her fault). Having Karen along makes even the most pedestrian outing more like a life and death adventure — at least for me. Smoke, presumably from California’s wildfires, interfered with the dawn...

What do you call it when you mix a digital camera with a spotting scope? The answer is digiscoping. Taking quality pictures from far away requires expensive lenses, lenses worth thousands of dollars. I can’t afford them. But Mr. P already has a legacy spotting scope and he had heard that there were adapters available to connect it to a digital camera. The question became, would digiscoping be a viable option until such a time as purchasing an $8,000 telephoto lens would be deemed justifiable? And more to the point, would it be fun? Right now, the longest lens I have access to is a third-party 70 - 300 mm, F/4 - 5.6 zoom. When  combined with my camera sensor's crop factor of 1.6, it becomes equivalent to a 112 - 480 mm zoom. But if I could hook my camera up to Mr. P’s spotting scope, I theoretically should be able to achieve a focal length equivalent to 2,700  mm It took some research and eventually some help from Kowa experts Mr. Paul Kardos (Natio...