Ben Li-Sauerwine's Notebook: Vacation: San Juan Islands

I used a few more vacation days to explore the San Juan islands with Simiao since she's still in town. We rented a room in Anacortes with AirBNB and used it as our home base while hiking and kayaking around the various state parks. Sadly, my camera did not have a good time, as it was totally submerged in salt water for about a second while we were sea kayaking. This camera has been through countless adventures, exploring urban ruins in Pittsburgh, scaling walls, braving the stinging desert sands of Arizona, taking pictures in the pouring rain without a cover, and even belly-crawling through mostly-flooded passages in a cave in Costa Rica. I'm going to try to thoroughly clean it with an isopropyl electronics cleaner, but I fear that it is now doomed to lose the battle versus corrosion. If I can't fix it, I will rest easily knowing that the Digital Rebel XT died as it lived: bravely documenting the extreme places in our world. I've learned quite a bit about photography from it, and am looking forward to buying a new camera with some features I've come to envy in my friends' cameras: vibration reduction, a larger preview screen, automatic HDR bracketing, active autofocus, and I've been dying to get a 18-200 or maybe even a 17-270 lens.

I've always wanted to try tilt-shift photography, too, and I'm a long exposure fanatic and still haven't gotten around to building my dream remote nor a pinhole camera. Someday, I will make these dreams a reality. For now, you can enjoy some of my favorite shots from this trip!