This past Memorial Day Weekend, Melanie and I took a trip up to Savannah, Georgia. We stayed in the heart of the historic district in what is probably the nicest Holiday Inn Express on the planet. From the rooftop pool there were great views of the city and the Savannah River, through which some impressively large ships travelled. The historic district was amazing; it is a huge area filled with 22 parks and all kinds of neat old homes, churches, and buildings. Although a bit touristy at times, the city has a very unique feel to it, and was a lot of fun to visit.

My favorite photos are in the Gallery.

Click to see the photo gallery!

One of the fun things about living in a different state is all of the new travel opportunities. Not only are there tons of fun road trips to be had, but a lot of interesting places are now a lot closer and cheaper. So when we found a killer deal on tickets to Costa Rica for spring break, we jumped on it. We had to drive four hours south to Miami to catch a plane run by some airline that we’d never heard of (TACA, the national airline of El Salvador), but doing so saved us a bunch of money… and we made it back in one piece!

We rented the cheapest 4×4 we could find, a tiny little SUV called a Suzuki Jimny. It turned out to be perfect as it had just enough room for me, Melanie, and our luggage. While gutless and bumpy, it always made us smile with its Tonka truck looks.

First we headed up to a town called La Fortuna (map) near the Arenal volcano, pictured above. The volcano is fairly active but not TOO active; we saw a bit of steam in the day and some brief lava flows at night. There was a ton of stuff to do in this area, and we chose some more adventurous options including whitewater rafting and ziplines. Both were amazingly fun. We also went on a really nice walk at Arenal Hanging Bridges, which has a series of trails and suspension bridges through the rain forest. We saw all kinds of flora and fauna, including a sloth and monkeys. The place we stayed, Hotel El Silencio de Campo, was excellent as well. We would have liked to stay a lot longer, but we also wanted to include the beaches in our trip, so we headed off after a few days.

Our next stop was an overnight in Jaco (map), which is a touristy and Americanized town on the Pacific. We stayed there just as a halfway point to our final destination and didn’t do anything in the town, but we really liked the place we stayed, Aparhotel Vista Pacifico. It is perched up on a hill overlooking Jaco and the Pacific, and had a really nice vibe to it. It was really cheap as well.

After Jaco we headed through palm orchards down to Dominical (map), where we stayed a few nights and enjoyed the beaches. Not only was the sand soft and the water bathtub worthy, we had the beaches pretty much all to ourselves. Unfortunately the waves didn’t make for very good swimming or snorkeling, so don’t count on Costa Rica for those activities. But we still had a lot of fun walking, wading, finding cool sea shells, and seeing crabs, birds, lizards, and spectacular views.

The town of Dominical was small and quiet, which we liked. Just enough stuff, like a grocery store and a burger joint, but not touristy or crowded. We stayed at another excellent place, Shelter from the Storm. (Thanks TripAdvisor.com for helping us find all these great places to stay and things to do.)

Overall this was one of our favorite vacations; the country was beautiful, the people friendly, and there was lots of adventure to be had. Just be sure to avoid touristy areas like Jaco and Manuel Antonio (Quepos). We felt very safe the whole time we were there, had no problem driving around the country with a good map, and language was not a barrier as everybody we encountered spoke at least a little English.

Click here for the photo gallery. The video is below. (After you press play be sure to pick 720p or 1080p if your computer/connection supports it!)

Back in February Melanie and I took a quick trip to Las Vegas. I’ve posted a few pictures to the gallery from this trip. Once again all pictures were taken with the Panasonic DMC-LX3. This is a great little camera.

While there we stayed at the South Point hotel, which is really a great deal if you don’t mind being a 10 minute drive from the strip. The place has nice rooms and fun stuff like a huge bowling alley. We also saw the Titanic exhibit at the Luxor which was simply amazing and is very highly recommended to anyone remotely interested in the Titanic. Well worth whatever it was we paid.

Wow, it really has been a while! I took a bit of a hiatus from Seansense, but I’m back. I’m working on quite a few updates about the various things I’ve been up to for the last few months, but I thought I’d start here since it’s simple. Back in March, Melanie and I needed a quick escape so we took a road trip to the Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. I only took a few photos, but I think they turned out pretty well. All are handheld with my Panasonic DMC-LX3. Gotta love 24mm and f/2.0 in a cave! Check out the gallery.

Most Popular Seansense of 2008

• Post: Sony HDR-SR11 First Impressions Review with 5,706 views.
• Video: Sony HDR-SR11 First Video with 8,940 views on Vimeo.
• Photo: Unknown (I don’t have a good way to track this since I switched galleries mid-year. The most viewed photo in the new gallery is currently Road to the Campsite with 49 views. Weird.)

Most Commented Seansense of 2008

• Post: Sony HDR-SR11 First Impressions Review with 37 comments.
• Video: A Day in the Life of Anini with 40 comments in various places.
• Photo: Unknown. (Again I don’t have a good way to track this.)

Least Popular Seansense of 2008

• Post: Photography – The First 90 Days with 1 view and 0 comments. (There are others, but this is the only one with original content and more than a couple minutes work put into it.)
• Video: Hellhole Canyon with 188 views and 1 comment.
• Photo: My Pizza Fail utterly failed to impress anybody, even though we thought it was pretty funny.

Sean’s Favorite Seansense of 2008

• Post: Fifty-Five Hours in Israel – This was a fascinating journey and probably my best writing of the year.
• Video: NIN – Discipline (Unofficial Video) – Although this video wasn’t a huge internet sensation (804 views, 13 comments across various places) and gathered mixed reactions from friends and family, I put the most amount of work into it, and it came at the biggest cost; the camcorder’s screen was accidentally scratched while recording and we wasted quite a bit of perfectly good food to get all the shots.
• Photo: This is a tough one, but I think this picture is probably my favorite of the year, just because it makes me happy to look at it.

Sean’s Worst Seansense of 2008

• Post: In retrospect, I feed kind of bad for lambasting smart cars. After all, as far as fashion statements go, they are (were?) a positive trend.
• Video: My Torrey Pines Time Lapse experiment is rather headache inducing to watch. (Not recommended for epileptics.)
• Photo: Again it’s a tough choice, but this one is pretty bad.

Please share your own stats and best (or worst!) post, video, and photo of the year!

Happy 2009 to all, and thanks for reading, watching, and viewing!

Three different houses, three different house cats.

Marc’s cat Polly.

My mom’s cat Sashi.

My mother-in-law’s cat Dolly.

Well, I did it. I bought myself an early Christmas present: the Panasonic DMC-LX3 I’d been drooling over.

It is an interesting camera; when it comes to the specs everyone knows and loves, it doesn’t stand out. Its megapixel count is “only” 10.0, and the zoom is just 2.5x. Novices will shrug their shoulders and move on. In order to appreciate the camera, you have to know what an aperture number means (f/2.0 to f/2.8 anyone?) and have a feel for what a 24mm lens will do for you.

First impressions are very good. It feels nice in the hand, with a smooth metal case and a hefty piece of glass up front. The camera body is only about 1 inch thick, but the retracted lens adds close to another inch. The screen is very large and bright, and the controls seem decent, although the Menu button seems to function different from my brain, as I keep pressing it at the wrong times.

I bought this camera to fill a gap between my DSLR (Olympus E-500) and my little waterproof point-and-shoot (Olympus 770SW). Both cameras are are good in their respective elements, but neither excels at social occasions. The DSLR is too large to cart around to many events and can make people uncomfortable when you point it at them. The 770SW takes nice photos outside during the day, but is quite poor at night or indoors, when many gatherings take place.

So enter the DMC-LX3. With its fast, stabilized lens and small size, it seems to fill the gap nicely.

I played around in the house last night snapping pictures of every little thing I spotted and was quite impressed with the initial images. In macro mode at wide angle it can focus on things that are practically touching the lens, which is fun but dangerous! Below are some samples. Click here for a couple more.

f/2.0, 1/15 second, ISO 400, 16:9, standard color mode, hand-held

f/2.0, 1/30 second, ISO 160, 4:3, dynamic b&w, hand-held

I’ve been in a bit of a creative rut the last few months, but I feel that I’m finally starting to come back around with a renewed interest in my favorite creative hobby, photography. To get my mind back on track (and to help convince myself I’m not such a miserable failure), I thought it would be fun to look back on my first 90 days of being serious about taking pictures. On December 26th, 2001 I received a Canon PowerShot G2 for Christmas. This was my first good camera, and I had wanted it for quite a while. I really enjoyed using it and took some really fun pictures those first 90 days.

(Note: The photos have been “remastered” for your viewing pleasure.)

My first good creative picture.

One of my all-time favorites.

Statues can make good models.

+7 more in the the gallery.

Over the Thanksgiving break I went bowling with Mel, her brother Dave, and his friend Matt up in Oregon. I took a few photos with my Olympus Stylus 770SW, and despite the grain/blur, they’re fun pictures.

A couple of my favorites are below. There’s more in the gallery.

The quintessential bowling picture…

The Matrix is a system, Neo. A bowling system.

This was a fun situation to shoot in. It makes me want a small camera with manual controls that’s good in low light.

A few weeks ago, my job gave me an incredible opportunity: Travel solo halfway around the world to meet with a customer in Israel. The catch? The meetings would last just two days. If I wanted to stay longer it would be out of pocket. Since brining Mel along was not financially plausible, I decided to go ahead and set a personal time-distance record: 16,000 miles over 5 days.

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