We just embarked on our week long autumn coastal trip. We do these trips a couple of times a year - spring and autumn - and have done so for decades, literally.
We pack up fishing gear, camera gear, fly tying and food to sustain a small village for a month, and go to a rented summerhouse of some sort near water and good fishing. After having filled the fridge, lined up the bottles and unpacked the photo stuff, we get ready for the first fishing and look forward to a week of good company and great times on the water.
Same thing this year. Our house is close to the water on the Danish island Fyn, and after breakfast the first day, we were all wound up and ready to go. I would as usual use my pontoon boat since my wading capability isn't what it used to be due to my health. At a certain point during the pumping and the assembly of the boat, my good friend Henning asks: "where are the oars?" at which time it dawns on me that they are back in my basement - a three hour drive and an expensive toll bridge away!
Bummer!
Well, we're a sea faring nation and there's a boat and motor shop in the town. According to their web site they have oars and all necessary gear. They are closed on Sundays, so tomorrow we'll go shopping.
But since I can't fish without the boat, I have opted for a home office day, and have started a small project that I have had planned for a while.
Many of you may remember my good friend Niels Have whose flies we have featured here before. He has left a whole bag of large fly boxes with me, and as you can see his flies are not exactly of the boring, gray type.
My plan is to shoot pictures of as many as possible on a plain, white background and use the images for different products such as T-shirts, coffee mugs, posters and whatnot.
So being grounded due to lack of essential equipment, I thought I'd start shooting he pictures today. I brought the flies and more photo gear than one man needs in a lifetime (nah, kidding!) and had a simple setup in mind with a flash, a small shoot-through umbrella, a tethered camera and my 85mm macro. As you can see from the first images here, that will work as intended, and I have shot the first eight flies and only have about 60-70 to go...
By the way, I'm using Duka Istvan's excellent NCC (Nikon Camera Control) software. If you're a Nikon shooter, I warmly recommend you to get it and try it. It remote controls your camera, gives access to live view and has all kinds of neat features including remote operation through a built-in web server, enabling you to use a smartphone or tablet as a control. And it's open source, so in other words free - even though you can consider donating a small amount to the development. Neato!
The others are fishing, but have just seen and caught a few smaller fish, so I'm not desperate. I'm sure that once I have new oars on the boat, the fishing will explode!
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