Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Travelogue while Bike Touring

Picture of bike and pier at sunset during bike photo tour
While showing Jazel some of the local sights for bike photography


Picture of bike touring photograph enthusiast
Warm Showers bike touring guest during a local bike photo tour
While visiting with Warm Showers bike touring guest Jazael Martinez we discussed many of the technical challenges of documenting a bike tour while tent camping and riding most of the day.  He was feeling frustrated that he was unable to find the time or means of getting his content and or ideas on to his blog.  Another frustration was how to back up and access his many photos. 

After sharing what little I knew that could be of help he commented that he wished he would have thought of those things prior to leaving on his tour.  So this post is being created as an effort to help resolve some of those issues.  I installed bluemail email app onto my seven inch RCA Voyager Pro tablet so I could insert photos to accompany this text and emailed it to my blogger posting email address. All the content was created without needing wifi. Photos are resized with the PhotoMate app and saved to an SD card.  While composing this content I added the resized photos you see here from the SD card in the body of email message with the blog title entered in the subject line of the email.  BlueMail also allows you to insert photos from google drive, amazon photos, google photos, pretty much anywhere you might have photos backed up.

I then installed a free Blogger app called Blogger User Panel onto the same tablet for editing which requires wifi access.  Editing consists of adding links to information, editing photo placement and adding caption information.  To summarize blog photos resized and placed with text content for posting can be done offline.  I can use my phone for wifi access and simply send the email content.  Later, with wifi access that doesn't use up phone plan data the content and can be edited for better search results and appearance. Anyhow, I have been pleasantly surprised by the results and looking forward to a much improved ease of use for sharing content while traveling and hope this information is helpful to anyone looking to document their own travelogue in whatever way that means to you. Jazael also asked me if I do any cooking while bike touring but that's for another post.  Here's a link to Jazael's blog which documents his ride from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Orlando, Florida by way of Mexico : )

Sent from BlueMail

Here's a couple more photos from our evening ride and photography session with Canon G16 and SLIK Mini Tripod

Picture of bike touring with touring bikes and photographer using cell phone


Picture of Bridgestone MB 1 converted to touring bike for photography

Bike Posing for Bicycle Photo Prints

Picture of mountain bike with cameras and tripods for bicycle touring photography

After receiving the Canon G16 at the beginning of the year I decided to purposefully shoot a series of photos that could be printed and put on display to help support the Natural Living Country Store and Juice Bar.  In order to complete the project required coming to terms with a significant learning curve of befriending digital photography methods and technical methods of adapting to the new technologies.  For example importing raw files to an inexpensive tablet for editing and sharing while on the go.  

Picture of mountain bike on hill top cloud scenic

Twenty years ago when I would gather up my edited fuji 50 slides and bop over to the old Photo Craft Studio in Portland, Oregon it was a fairly simple process of getting some high quality cibachrome prints made for clients.  After creating an account with Photo Shelter and sorting out the "can's and cant's" of ordering prints I chose to give Pro DPI based in Englewood, Colorado a try.  After downloading their software the process of ordering several prints was a very simple process and I received some very good quality prints very quickly.  Not to mention the print prices are excellent.

Here are a few of the images which were selected for prints and happy to say folks are enjoying them.

Picture of vintage mountain bike with tall grass in meadow

Picture of mountain bike and valley wash with tall grass and trees


Picture of mountain bike and trail side foliage

Picture of mountain bike and tall grass