Four-Years Ago (27-August-2009) — Washington

Gone to See North America Road Trip. Day 06: Lake Chelan, Washington.

Darwin Award Candidate: Losing It. Jet Skier on Lake Chelan trying to jump the wake of “The Lady of the Lake II” ferry. Image taken with a Nikon D3x camera and 70-300 mm VR lens (ISO 400, 300 mm, f/10, 1/1000 sec).

Losing It. Jet Skier on Lake Chelan from the rear of "The Lady of the Lake II. Image taken with a Nikon D3x and 80-400 mm VR lens (ISO 400, 300 mm, f/10, 1/1000 sec). (David J. Mathre)
Losing It. Jet Skier on Lake Chelan from the rear of “The Lady of the Lake II. Image taken with a Nikon D3x camera and 70-300 mm VR lens (ISO 400, 300 mm, f/10, 1/1000 sec). (David J. Mathre)

Wednesday (14-August-2013) Norway/India

News Item: Indian Sindhurakshak Submarine

It was reported on the news this morning that the Indian Sindhurakshak submarine that I photographed in Tromsø (09-Feb-2013) experienced two explosions a fire, and sank while docked in Mumbai last night.

Indian Navy Diesel-Electric Submarine INS  #Sindhurakshak   Docked Next to the Hurtigruten MS Finnmarken in Tromsø. The 16-year-old Russian built submarine was returning from a 2 year upgrade in Russia. This was the first time that I saw a submarine with glass windows in the conning tower. Composite of 3 images taken with a Nikon 1 V2 camera and 18.5 mm f/1.8 lens (ISO 800, 18.5 mm, f/1.8, 1/30 sec) combined using AutoPano Giga Pro.

Indian Navy Diesel-Electric Submarine INS Sindhurakshak. Composite of 3 images taken with a Nikon 1 V2 camera and 18.5 mm f/1.8 lens (ISO 800, 18.5 mm, f/1.8, 1/30 sec) combined using AutoPano Giga Pro. (David J Mathre)
Indian Navy Diesel-Electric Submarine INS Sindhurakshak. Composite of 3 images taken with a Nikon 1 V2 camera and 18.5 mm f/1.8 lens (ISO 800, 18.5 mm, f/1.8, 1/30 sec) combined using AutoPano Giga Pro. (David J Mathre)

Sunday (16-June-2013) — England

Gone to See Europe. Semester at Sea Spring 2013 Enrichment Voyage on the MV Explorer. Day 51: Southampton, England.

Queen Elizabeth (Cunard Lines) Docking in Southampton, England. Image taken with a Leica X2 camera (ISO 100, 24 mm, f/5, 1/200 sec). In camera B&W.

Early in the morning I saw a large cruise ship all lit up from the window in my cabin. The ship passed us relatively quickly. Once we arrived in Southampton we saw that the large ship that passed us was the Queen Elizabeth.

Queen Elizabeth (Cunard Lines) Docking in Southampton, England. Image taken with a Leica X2 camera (ISO 100, 24 mm, f/5, 1/200 sec). In camera B&W. Semester at Sea Spring 2013 Enrichment Voyage. (David J. Mathre)
Queen Elizabeth (Cunard Lines) Docking in Southampton, England. Image taken with a Leica X2 camera (ISO 100, 24 mm, f/5, 1/200 sec). In camera B&W. (David J. Mathre)

Wednesday (12-June-2013) — Germany

Gone to See Europe. Semester at Sea Spring 2013 Enrichment Voyage on the MV Explorer. Day 47: Kiel Canal, Germany.

I was part of a team of six photographers that took ~30,000 images as the MV Explorer (Semester at Sea Spring 2013 Enrichment Voyage) transits the Kiel Canal in Germany.Howard Ignatius used the images to create this time-lapse video of the passage through the canal.

Monday (10-June-2013) — At Sea

Gone to See Europe. Semester at Sea Spring 2013 Enrichment Voyage on the MV Explorer. Day 45: At Sea between Stockholm and Copenhagen.

Late night or early in the morning (hard to tell this far north when there isn’t much darkness at night) I looked out my cabin window on the MV Explorer and saw the electric blue Noctilucent clouds. I read about them before (http://www.spaceweather.com/), but had never seen them.  The clouds are ice crystals that are very high that you can only see for a short time when the sun is below the horizon. One theory is the crystals are nucleated when micro-meteors pass through the upper atmosphere. We were in the Baltic Sea traveling from Stockholm to Copenhagen and the sun doesn’t set until very late I set up a camera in my cabin and took a set of 99 images that I made into this time-lapsed video (Nikon D4 camera, 28 mm f/1.8 lens (ISO 200, 28 mm, f/1.8, 1 sec)).