The Northwest Files

Can You Produce Art Using Technology?

Recently I stumbled upon a discussion of whether digital photography, with all of its complex, powerful cameras and its Photoshop manipulation, could be considered to be art.

My immediate response was, of course it can! But upon reflection, I think a more measured response might be in order.

I started in photography as a kid with a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye, which used 127 roll film. I still have that little camera. I really learned the craft of photography in journalism school using a Speed Graphic, which used 4 x 5 sheet film, and moved onto rangefinder and SLR cameras that used 36-mm roll film. I spent many hours in the darkroom developing that film, then making prints from the few images that were acceptable. None of that was easy or intuitive.

These days, I shoot digital cameras. They are far more complex, and far more powerful and flexible, than any film camera ever was. They are much more difficult to use, if by “use,” we mean employing all their features. I pretty much try to do that, but I still come home with lots of images that are not worth printing.

My darkroom now resides in my computer. It is far more complex, more powerful and flexible, than any darkroom in which I ever fooled around. Though I edit my images like crazy, discarding most of them, I still manage to waste paper and ink as I attempt art. In making that attempt, I print my images on 8.5 x 11 sheets of photo paper. I frame a few and store many others in plastic sleeves in large three-ring binders.

So I think the question has several answers. One that occurs to me is yes, digital photography is art. Or at least it can be. Maybe.

But another question is this one: What is art? I’m not sure I know.

I do know that at least a few of the images I’ve made with roll and sheet film rise to the level of art, at least as I define it. All I ever try to do is produce an honest image, one that reflects not just technical competence, but also a certain beauty, and which evokes an emotional response.

I have some level of confidence that a few of the digital images I’ve made rise to the level of art. A few. Most don’t. Blame it on a crushing lack of talent.

The old saying, however, is that “Art lies in the eye of the beholder.” So, my photos may not rise to the level of art at all. I don’t much care, as long as they satisfy me.

I took a wildlife photo workshop a couple of years ago. We participants got lots of fine, advanced instruction from our teachers.

What we learned caused one participant to observe, “I used to know a lot about photography. Now I realize I don’t know anything about photography.”

That’s pretty much where I am. I don’t know much about art, either. But at least I know what I like. I think that probably that is the bottom line.

So is digital photography art? Maybe. If you think it is, it just might be.

-JFT

Shooting Animals

Hey, shooting them with a camera, OK? Making photographs, as we photographers say.

I've got a wildlife photography workshop tomorrow at the High Desert Museum. 

Tonight, a pre-workshop with famed nature fotog George Lepp, who is leading this thing. He gave lots of information, not least this: For birds in flight, 1600 ISO, manual, f16, 1/2000-sec. Make sure you have the blinkies turned on so you can see if you're blowing out the light colors. I never, ever, have shot a digital camera in Manual. We shall see.

He was way helpful with focus settings. Told us which focus points to use - center third - and which case to use - 3. Yes, Canon DSLR-oriented.

Lepps likes the 5D Mk4 way better than the 7D Mk2, which is what I have, damn him. But he also likes the 7D Mk2 just fine. Its problem is its ISO performance at 1600 and beyond. I've set my 7D Mk2 at 1250, just to be safe.

Tomorrow, waaayy too early, we start with otters, wolverine, porcupine. Then we move on to the birds - hawks, owls, eagles and a turkey vulture. And man, are they all gorgeous. Little and as fast as lightning, larger, all the way up to huge and as slow as a WWII long-range bomber - that would be the vulture.

The museum's animal curator was/is wonderful. He told us these animals don't belong to the museum, they belong to us. They are here for us to enjoy and photograph and maybe learn from. Marvelous.

Just got home a bit ago, had to spend some time carefully setting my camera and lens, a Canon 70-300 L-series. Stabilizer setting two for tracking birds in flight with longitudinal movement. Who knew? Well, you probably did. Also just reviewed my lens test to be absolutely, positively, sure where the damned thing is sharp. Sometimes being a cheapskate is stupid. I wish I'd bought the newest, latest, greatest version onaccounta it is sharper. Ah, well. Hey, I saved a couple hundred bucks! That's gotta count for something. Doesn't it?

The upside to all this is that tomorrow will be a gorgeous, warm day. Unlike the blizzard conditions in which we froze our nuts off last February trying to get a few shots of most of these same birds....

If I'm lucky enough to get anything decent, which is very much open to question, I will share a few shots. I promise.

-JFT

Shooting in the RAW

If you mess about with digital cameras in any depth at all, you know that when it comes to image resolution, you have a number of choices.

Lots of hobbyists choose to shoot JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) images because that serves their purposes just fine. The camera provides some processing – just what and how much often can be adjusted within the camera – and the result is just fine for snapshots, e-mail or Web posts.

These JPEG images are not large files because in the camera, they are greatly compressed from their natural size, so they do not require scads of storage space. That's a big point in their favor, and one reason I've mostly shot JPEGS. I mean, I shoot a lot and I certainly don't want to overwhelm my computer's poor old hard drive.

But most serious cameras also will produce what's called a RAW image, so-called because that's what the files are – raw and unprocessed. Because they are uncompressed, they can comprise enormous files. How big is your camera's sensor? Is it, say, 20 megapixels? That's how big a single raw file is. Compare that with, say, a 2-mp JPEG file.

Thing is, as I understand this – and god knows, I'm no expert – the fact of compressing an image into JPEG format eliminates a great deal of the information originally captured by your camera's very sophisticated, very high-tech sensor.

So if you shoot JPEG images, you are, essentially, tossing out much of the information your camera is capable of providing. If you shoot for the Web or make snapshots, you might think that's not a big deal. But it kind of is.

It's really a big deal if you make large-format prints, as I do. If you process your images in something like Photoshop, as I do, and you want all the help you can get when you're trying to make your photographs presentable right down to the smallest and most precise color detail, especially in areas where exposure isn't perfect, you want all the photographic data, or information, your photo software can get its paws upon. So you shoot RAW.

When you do that, you can open these files in Photoshop's RAW processor, which provides much more latitude when dealing with areas that are too bright, too dark, have too much or too little mid-range contrast, and much, much more. It's all about the details. That's why RAW is good.

And so, reluctantly, after much patient badgering by my old pal Eric Herbranson, who is kind of the Clapton of cameras, I am, finally, as of this week, committed to shooting RAW. But also, at the same time, a small JPEG. The JPEG is great for looking at my shots on Windows viewer, which doesn't read RAW. And it's also great for e-mail and posting photos on the Interwebs.

Naturally, this is all a very slippery slope. If you're going to make serious prints, you just might have to upgrade your printer. Pure photo printers use lots of different ink colors. Mine uses eight colors. And you're constantly searching for the best photo paper. And better lenses. And on and on. A slippery slope.

But never mind. From now on, I will be shooting in the RAW. But while clothed in my usual jeans and T-shirt, so no worries. I'm just hoping that my images display a marked improvement.

-JFT

Photography Out of Control

I have done photography since I was a student. I really like it. I like to make pictures and I like to look at them. But now, I think that digital photography has crossed an important threshold.

I think where the threshold is depends on how comfortable one is with ever-advancing technology levels.

And I find that I have not merely reached my threshold, I have stepped way past it.

First, last year I upgraded my DSLR camera body. As you probably know, these things aren't really cameras. They're more like computers that just happen to wear lenses. And this new computer/camera is very powerful. I won't say that I've mastered it, because I haven't. But at least I'm more comfortable with the thing than I was at first, and I now understand many, if not all, its functions. OK, so far, so good.

But once you make a photograph, what do you do with it? Do you download it to your computer's hard drive and then enjoy it and send it to friends as-is? I doubt many people do that and that's where, for me, the trouble starts.

I do use the Internet to send a few photos to friends and family. But when I find a shot I really like, I print it on 8^1/2 x 11-inch photo paper with a pro-level printer. I install the prints in plastic display sleeves and then clip those sleeves into one of my photo books, large three-ring binders, where I can look at them.

Again, so far, so good. But before I hit "print" on a shot, like almost everyone else, I use one of Adobe's Photoshop programs to enhance that shot – boost contrast and sharpness, make the sky a little more dramatic, bring out detail in dark areas, stuff like that.

Now, mostly these are all things we used to do in the darkroom. Back in J-school, I started out shooting a Speed-Graphic, which used 4 x 5-inch sheet film. You controlled focus, shutter speed and aperture. In the developing process, you controlled time and temperature and if you did that correctly, you got a decent negative. And in the printing process, you dodged and burned to bring out detail, and selected the paper grade to give you the contrast you needed. It was complex, but at the same time, simple.

We still have these elemental controls, but now our computers are our darkrooms. And in those computerized darkrooms, so much more is possible.

And the possibilities continue to grow. The problem for me is that every few months, the various Photoshop programs become more powerful and complex.

Because I have been unwilling to pay full-pop for the regular, full-featured Photoshop program, I have, for years, used something called Photoshop Elements. It's kind of Photoshop-lite. It's worked well. I started with Elements 3, upgraded to Elements 7 – which I used for a long time – and last year upgraded to Elements 13. And now there's an Elements 14, which promises many "wonderful advances."

Ah, but recently Adobe moved standard Photoshop to the Cloud and initiated a subscription program.

So, OK, the cost of a year's subscription was reasonable, I thought, so I bought the sub. What I got was not only Photoshop but also something called Lightroom. Both are incredibly powerful and also incredibly complex. I do not know what to do with it all.

And as if to make my point, aftermarket suppliers now are offering what are called plug-ins that automate the functions of these programs. With them, you hit a couple of keys on your computer keyboard and Hey Presto, the image becomes more dramatic. Or at least some programmer's version of what is more dramatic. This is supposed to simplify the process. I don't think it does.

I'm finding that the complexity of these two programs, and their attendant learning curves, get in the way of the enjoyment of, you know, actually making photographs. I mean, I don't even know what some of the stuff in Photoshop does. I don't want to be a computer geek and don't have the qualifications to be one. I just want to be able to produce photos that are halfway decent. Yes, I'm mostly satisfied with halfway decent photos, though I aspire to better than that - maybe three-quarters decent, relying on an excellent starting point, a really high-quality image from the camera. That would be pretty good.

So here's where I am: I've been fooling with Photoshop CC, as the Cloud version is called, for a couple of months now. I think that the advance of software functions has gotten out of control, providing functions that most of us hobbyists probably don't need. As a result, I find Photoshop CC very unwieldy and I find the few plug-ins that I've tried to be unsatisfying. Yes, I could haul myself over to Samy's Camera, the big camera shop here in town, and take one of the Photoshop classes the shop offers. That would be two days or evenings and a good chunk of money out of my limited supply of money and time. Or I could just backfill and continue using Elements 13, plug-in free. In a sense, that's like sticking with black-and-white film, I suspect.

I have no wish to revert to my little Kodak Brownie Hawkeye, an example of which I still have, or, for that matter, to the last great film camera I bought, a Canon EOS1 that is gathering dust in a closet. But I'm thinking that if I just stop and think, use my DSLR's abilities to their fullest, and then do what I've always done with Elements, I'll probably get results that are more than satisfactory and save myself much frustration.

So that's where I am, at least this morning. I mean, is photography, in its totality, an art? Or is it a technological exercise? It's a little of both, I suppose, and always has been, but on a sliding scale. But more and more, I feel the urge to back away, at least a little, from the technological side. That's because I think that this explosion of photographic technology has meant, at least for me, not more control, but less. At least, that's how it seems to be working for me. So I plan to step back across to the comfortable side of the threshold. We'll see, I guess, how long that satisfies.

-JFT

Kodachrome Again, Sort Of

As I may have mentioned, I've acquired a new camera. This has caused me pain because it is an enormous technological step forward from the piece it replaces. It's taken/is taking me time to figure it all out.

But I think I'm slowly coming to grips with it. Most importantly, I've finally figured out the focusing system, which is very flexible and which requires one to make choices about what, exactly, one wants in focus. I mean, we've always done that, right? But this is different.

My previous camera, like this one, a Canon DSLR, sort of cleverly tracked the user's eye movement to see what he/she was looking through the viewfinder at, and then focused on that object. This one does not work like that. Instead, it provides about a dozen zones of different sizes in which the camera will focus. You get to decide which size zone you want, and where you want it placed in the viewfinder. 

This isn't really a bad thing, as I very often use sunglasses when I'm shooting outside and their dark lenses pretty much scuttle this feature, leaving the camera to decide on its own or leaving me to take several bites at getting what I'm looking at into focus. So this new method is really good.

But I've also been fiddling around with user choices. See, back in the olden days, I used to love - no, absolutely adore - Kodachrome. This, because of its brilliant, saturated colors and high contrast. (OK, cue the Paul Simon tune of that name.) Then Fuji introduced a film called Velvia. That was even more saturated than Kodachrome. I loved it. And yep, I've still got a brick of the stuff in the freezer, along with the freezer-burned burger patties and the rock-hard packages of corn and peas.

But digital cameras don't require film. You know that, I know. But they do allow you - especially these new ones - to tune images with amazing flexibility in the same way we used to tune images through film choice - Ektachrome to emphasize cool tones, Kodachrome to enhance warm tones, Plus-X or Tri-X for beautiful black-and-white, or whatever.

My fiddling has brought me to the point where I have changed the user settings on this new camera body to mimic the Kodachrome/Velvia settings I so adore.

This is good. What it means is that I no longer have to spend time in Photoshop tuning the images my camera produces so that they look the way I want them to look before I make 8 x 10 prints of them. The camera does it for me.

Oh, and it also produces in-camera High Dynamic Range (aka HDR) images. Used to be, when I wanted HDR, I had to shoot the required multiple images manually and merge them in Photoshop. But this camera does all that, and has its own way of emphasizing vivid colors, with spectacular results.

Is technology wonderful, or what? It's certainly a far cry from the Speed Graphic 4 x 5 sheet-film cameras upon which I learned in journalism school.

So far, I've not gone anywhere/done anything with this new piece and therefore have shot very few images. So I don't know, for instance, whether the in-camera HDR is better than HDR images from Photoshop. Mostly I've just tromped around the back garden shooting close-ups of flowers and telephoto shots of our local birds. But we're planning on getting up into the Sierras this summer and I'm looking forward to focusing on some fun photography. I'm taking along a tripod and, I hope, more than my usual quote of patience - famous last words. We shall see, literally and figuratively.

-JFT

Photography's Slippery Slope

Back in the mid-'70s, right after I got the advance for my first book and had some rare folding money in my pocket, I knew exactly what I had to do: I raced down to Luke's Nevada Camera, in Reno, where I lived at the time. I traded in my old Minolta SRT101 35mm SLR, which I'd bought while I was in college, on a Nikon Nikkormat and a couple of lenses.

That Nikkormat was a beauty and an enormous step up from my first camera, a little Kodak Brownie Hawkeye.

Here at the right we have a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye, my first camera, obtained even before I went away to boarding school in 1957. It shoots 127 film, which was invented by Kodak in 1912 and discontinued in 1995. I still have a few photos from that camera around here somewhere. It is somewhat different from the cameras available today.

That Nikkormat had a steel frame, brass gears and worked as smooth as the silk covering your sweetie's backside. Lenses as sharp as a mother-in-law's tongue. I told myself at the time, "This is the last camera I ever will need." Innocent that I was, I really believed that.

But time refused to stand still and the advent of electronic, and then digital, photography blew those naive expectations to smithereens. So did the imagination of camera engineers, incredible advances in technology and the manufacturers' race to offer something nobody else has.

What that's led to is this: I read recently that digital cameras are a lot like cell phones, a new version of which is produced every few months, or at the least, every few years. The author of this comment held that a DSLR user should not waste money on new camera bodies but should, instead, buy the DSLR body that seems sensible, then put his/her bucks toward quality lenses.

To an extent, he's right. But my experience indicates that while most DSLR body upgrades do indeed bring but minor enhancements, every so often, major, worth-while enhancements happen.

So it is with Canon, the camera manufacturer I have used for 30 years or so. My old Canon 10D, bought in 2001 when I laid aside my last film camera (a Canon EOS1 that I still have), produced killer images that could easily be enlarged to fit onto a magazine's two-page spread (important to me at the time) and my 40D, bought in '08, was even more capable.

Now, seven years later, camera capabilities have advanced so far that it's time for another upgrade.

But one must be careful about such things. For instance, Canon now offers its 5DS, which includes a 50-megapixel sensor. Gotta have it, right? I mean, you can shoot billboard-sized images with that thing. Well, no. I don't shoot billboards. I think sensors with that kind of capacity represent overkill for most of us and at nearly 4,000 samolians, the 5DS is very expensive.

I think that camera bodies that cost half that amount - or even less than that - and sensors in the area of 20 megapixels offer the sweet spot for the vast majority of us. That's because resolution with these things is so good that you can print 11 x 14 (or larger) images and not notice pixelization. And that's even if you crop your image. Which of course I don't. I was trained to always shoot full-frame and that's become a habit. So since I never print anything larger than 8.5 x 11 inches, this works for me.

At the end of the day, cameras do not make memorable images. The photographer does. It all comes down to the ideas transmitted from the eye to the brain. If you see crap, your camera will record crap. You have to start with that and do better, be better, than that. But occasionally upgrading hardware helps a bit, I think, in that the many options available in this new generation of cameras - far more than any film camera ever had - allow the camera to do more while the you concentrate on composition, on content.

The upgrade I finally settled upon did not come cheaply. But I think this new camera body, which is loaded with features and capabilities, was worth its cost and will serve me well for a very long time. Hah! Famous last words, right?

So far, I've just sat and looked at this new bit of gear and handled it enough to become familiar with it. I'm thinking that my first expedition with it might just be to the L.A. Zoo, as long as the weather stays nice. Will be fun to see what kind of images it will produce. Stay tuned.

-JFT

 

Sharpness

In photography as in all things, sharpness is good.

No, wait. It's not just good. It's the holy freakin' grail.

That's why I am on a quest for sharpness.

But again, I've proved - as if any proof was needed - that I am an idiot.

I've known since I first took up photography back in college how to test a lens for sharpness: You tack a newspaper page on the wall and make images of that page, an exposure at each of the lens' f-stops.

Until today, I'd never done that.

I'm lucky enough to have some pretty darned good lenses. Three of the four are razor-sharp. But my 100-300 zoom is a bit less so. Odd because it is a quality hunk of glass, a Canon L-series lens that was quiet expensive, even when I bought it more than 25 years ago.

But I've been bugged by that lens' softness in some situations. So today, out of excuses, I finally did that time-honored old test.

What I found is that the lens is reasonably sharp everywhere, starting at f32, its smallest aperture. You'd expect that, according to photo tradition - smaller f-stops are supposed to be sharper than larger ones.

But wait: It was sharp at f32, but sharper still at f16, and even a little sharper still at f10. That busted the hell out of traditional thought. And it remains pretty sharp all the way down to f5.6, its largest aperture, where it is supposed to be at its softest.

Here are a couple of the photos.
You can see that the first one, the f32 example, ain't bad.


But if you study the detail of the type in the second and third shots, f16 and f10, respectively (and I admit, you have to look closely), the detail is a bit cleaner.

I've tried to make these test images about the same size - I hope you can see what I'm yakking about.

Lesson of the day? Continue using the aperture priority on my camera, a Canon 40D. (I know, it's technologically out of date. So what?) And use f10 whenever possible.

Amazing, the stuff you learn when you (finally) take a moment and work the problem.

Also, see, you newspaper haters? Newspapers have utility even beyond use as bird-cage liner.

-JFT

Photography's Slippery Slope

I have for many years fooled around with photography. Indeed, it was part of my education in journalism school, complete with many happy hours spent in a darkroom.

But lemme tell you, photography today is an incredibly slippery slope, more now than ever before. Here's how far I have slid down that slope:

We all know that darkrooms are anachronistic, right? That's because darkrooms exist today in our computers in the form of Photoshop, a program that will do everything anyone could ever do in even the most sophisticated darkroom (well, except allow you to make out with your sweetie in a secure, dark room), plus much more. (Right, no more Dektol and fixer, no more developing tanks trays, timers, enlargers, etc. This is a good thing.)

So my workflow goes something like this: Shoot the photo, transfer it to my computer, fettle it using Photoshop, print it. And that's where the trouble starts.

Not everybody prints, but I do. I print 8 x 10 glossy prints of my very best images. I keep these in plastic display sleeves in big loose-leaf binders I can look at whenever I want to.

So having a printer, a good one, is an imperative. For years I've relied on an HP Photosmart all-in-one unit, the one you see here. Regular size. Inexpensive. Excellent results. But now it does goofy things when I print photos. Nobody can figure out why - and yes, I've completely worn out my welcome on the HP help line and wasted gallons of ink and pounds of paper.

Clearly a nuclear response - a new/another printer - was in order. Laura is partly responsible for this - she urged me to go whole-hog and obtain a dedicated photo printer. In criminal-justice circles, this is known as aiding and abetting.

So I drove over to Samy's Camera, our local paradise photo superstore and bought a real photo printer. The unit I choose is a long way from the high end, as these devices go. But it will print photos of up to 13 x 19 inches, which is bigger than I need, and the job it does is terrific. And I got a great price that is augmented by a nice rebate, which means the thing will cost me about what a new HP Photosmart would have cost.

But the thing is, as you can see, huge. I might as well have a golden retriever sleeping on my desk. Oh, wait - the cats never would stand for that, because sleeping on my desk is their private gig. But it's big. It's also very complex, with eight ink cartridges and a new set of controls and possibilities that I will have to learn. But I will indeed learn them.

So I'm set. I've got a supply of premium photo paper, including a few examples of really fancy canvas, bamboo and linen paper and more, and I'm set. Until I run out of ink. Which probably will happen pretty quickly.

Ah, well, I'll just have to make another trip to Samy's. Like I said - it's a $lippery $lope.

-JFT 

How Do You File Your Photos?

You shoot photos, right? You've got a digital camera and you snap away, recording family gatherings, your back yard in beautiful light, vacations, your pets and much more.

That's good. It's a healthy, creative hobby that keeps us all interested in lots of ways. I do it, and it certainly keeps me interested.

But here's my question: What do you do with the photos once you've made them?

I'm genuinely curious about your answer. I have friends who are over the map with this. I have a friend who shoots and then stores the memory cards in a desk drawer. I have friends who view their photos only on their computer screens. And I have friends who make random 6 x 8-inch prints, either at their local drugstore or on their home printer, and keep them in shoeboxes.

All of that is good, if that is what suits them. But this question occurred to me this morning as I was going through my prints.

Here is what I do: After a couple of hard edits, I save my photos on my computer, just like a lot of people do. But using my computer, Photoshop and a desktop printer, I also make 8 x 10-inch photos of a select few images, the very best ones.

This just seems natural to me, I suppose because I spent so much time when I was a college student making enlargements in a darkroom.

I've been doing this for quite awhile now. The result is that I've accumulated four large three-ring binders filled with these prints, which are stored in plastic display sleeves, two per sleeve.

What I did this morning was this: I went through those binders all to make sure the photos were in proper order. I also got rid of duplicates, of which there more than I would have thought.

I keep them in more-or-less chronological order, with the earliest ones being from slides that I've copied. Some of these are pretty old, and the copier I have isn't as sharp as I would like for it to be. But it does OK, so I've got stuff that I shot years ago on Kodachrome.

The selection goes from there to images made with one of those early
twisty Nikon Coolpix cameras through a succession of DSLRs and, lately, also a pocket-size point-and-shoot that creates really nice images.

The lesson I took away from today's exercise was that dang, I've spent a lot of money on ink and paper. I mean, there are hundreds of these things. That's the good part. There is no bad part, because for me, this is an ideal way to review shots of flowers, pets, family gatherings, vacations, car shows and much more.

Plus it's fun and it keeps me off the streets. See? Everyone benefits!

So I ask again, how do you store and view your photos? I'm curious. Am I the only one who is this crazy?

-JFT

Scotland on a Wing and a Prayer, Part I

A while back while kicking around ideas, Laura sez to me, she sez, "Vacation? Well, I think I would like to go back to Scotland."

Well, OK. I like Scotland just fine, even if the bipeds there do talk funny. Because Laura is fond of gardens and sea coasts, that would be the theme for this trip.

So after much planning and preparation, we left LAX Friday night, June 27 on a British Air flight and arrived in Glasgow Saturday evening. We checked into the Carleton George, a nice midrange hotel right downtown, where we stayed for three nights. Walked the town, window shopped, gawked at the street musicians and visited the cathedral and Victorian necropolis. This is a very interesting place that indicates that yes, you can indeed take it with you, at least in the form of a headstone.
Here are a couple of photos of those places - and as usual, if you will click on them, you will see them full-size.

Tuesday morning we picked up our car, a Skoda Octavia wagon, of all things, and headed for a comfortable country hotel, where we spent four nights.

But first, Stirling Castle, a classic stone keep with a history of battle and strife. It sits atop a commanding hill and that once was defended by William "Braveheart" Wallace. It is very impressive and has been lovingly preserved as the historically important fortress it is. We lucked into a tour with a guide named Frank, who was terrifically knowledgeable and entertaining.

Just up the road a few miles was our next stop - a country hotel called Gleneagles. Once there, I took the opportunity to amuse myself a bit while Laura was off golfing and enjoying the spa. First I shot some clays, which was far different from the trap I usually shoot. This involves shooting clays thrown to simulate the flight of birds, squirrels, rabbits, like that.

Animals are safe from me. I have no interest at all in shooting game, but clays are another story. This was a lot of fun and I found it very challenging. My coach, Jim, assured me that first, there are no easy shots, which I knew because I miss a lot of "easy" shots, and second, that I'm a good shot with good shotgun skills but I need practice. I knew that too, but he got a nice tip in any case.

Next day, a local guide, Willie, took me fly fishing. I caught two nice rainbow trout from a couple of small lochs during our short outing this morning. Catch-and-release, naturally. This was not a good day for fishing. Cloudy, wind howling. Willie also caught just two and he's supposed to know the place. Oh: I also caught my hat. I kept that.

Interesting that these lake rainbows don't fight anywhere near as hard as the smaller river fish I caught during a trip to the Eastern Sierra in May. No current for them to work against, I guess, so maybe they're just not as muscular. My hat didn't put up any fight at all. It was all a hell of a lot of fun anyway.

I should mention that here we found good, but not great, food at this stop. There was better food at Jon and Fernanda's, a bistro in an adjacent town. But then we did not sample the hotel's Michelin-starred restaurant. Probably we should have, but we were just not up to the formality, expense and stress of that experience. If you've ever done it, you know what I mean.

We had no activities scheduled for our final day here so we drove up to Perth to visit Scone Castle, original home of Scotland's Stone of Destiny, stolen eons ago by these rascally English. This is the stone that Scottish kings sat upon when they were crowned. It was returned a decade or so ago and now resides in Edinbrugh Castle, though the chair into which it fits remains at Scone Castle.

 We checked out Saturday morning and headed up into the Trossachs, a wild park in the central Highland mountains. Drove the Rest and Be Thankful, 
a wonderful pass originally opened by the military in 1740, with the old road now used for hillclimb events. The Brits built it to help tame the wild Highland clans, which of course didn't figure they needed taming at all. Excitement ensued.

Way up in the boonies that same morning, passing scores of pretty little towns and cottages, we visited the grave of Rob Roy MacGregor, who was buried there in 1734 and who, one suspects, helped cause part of that excitement in the first place. His headstone outside the ruins of an ancient church reads, "MacGregor despite them," which you have to like. He was either a bandit or a hero. Don't know which and don't much care. Sure was a pretty place.

To top off this day we visited Balmoral, the royal residence still owned and used by the royal family. It is a wonderful, isolated estate of 5,000 acres way up in the mountains. Originally bought by Queen Victoria after the bloke who built it choked to death on a fishbone. Or so we were told. The old girl had taste, I have to say, and better luck than the previous owner.

Then it was on to a B&B in Oban, which bills itself as the seafood capital of Scotland. We found plenty of very fresh seafood, which you would expect. But we found no place that seemed to be doing anything interesting with it, unfortunately. We walked the town and toured the local distillary, and sampled a Ceilidh ("kaylid") celebration said to have been endorsed by Rick Steves because we'd promised ourselves that we would hear some local music. If indeed that endorsement is true, old Rick needs to recalibrate. We left early, it was so dismal - bored woman playing accordion, bored high-school kid playing pipes, another bored high-school kid dancing. We've seen the real thing. This wasn't it.

 As an aside, a word about "Samantha." For years we navigated around Europe using the excellent maps published by Michelin at about $15 a copy. But a few years ago we bought a GPS device that contains European maps and calls out directions in the voice of a cultured British woman. We call this thing, which we stick to our rental car's front window, Samantha.

Samantha can get confused and she can make mistakes. But for the most part, she is golden. Her competence really lightens the burden on Laura, who navigates while I try to drive. In addition to pointing the way, Samantha will suss out banks, gas stations, hotels and more, even as she notes the speed limit and, er, your actual speed. We will never go back to paper maps except as supplemental information.

End of Part I