Galley Gossip: Laviators unite! (mile high headshots)

by Heather Poole on

Recently I wrote a post, the hottest trend on the airplane since the mile high club, about something disturbing, yet quite intriguing, that was taking place not just on the airplane, but behind the locked lavatory door at 35,000 feet. Passengers, and I’m talking all kinds of passengers, have been photographing themselves in the bathroom. Alone. Doing what, I don’t know. But they look like they’re just standing there. And I wanted to do it, too.

I had written, “Oh you better believe I’ll be taking my own self portrait in the lav on my next flight to New York on Wednesday. Until then, check out these interesting shots.” And then I added a photo gallery I’d put together of passengers I’d found on Flickr.com standing in the lav, camera in hand.

One Gadling reader responded, “Heather, if you do photograph yourself in the lav, please spare us the picture! I think people will lose any respect they have for you.”

Sounds to me like someone needs to lighten up, and they can start by grabbing their camera and joining the club – the laviators club. I did! Yep, that’s me up there in the photo looking not so hot on a flight from Los Angeles to New York. Hey, it was late and I was tired. But I just had to do it. Even though my seat mate did look at me a little funny after he caught me trying to sneak my camera into the front pocket of my pants.

The first thing I did when I got home was download the photo, that photo right up there, onto my personal blog. I had a good laugh and I honestly thought that would be that, end of story. But a few days later I got an email with a photo attached from a Gadling reader. “This one’s for you,” Nate wrote, and that’s all he wrote, and it cracked me up!

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The very next day I got another one! Jeff wrote, “I made you a picture.” I clicked the link and thought to myself, Oh. My. God. What have I started?

Next to join the club was one of my favorite flight attendants, Sodwee, also known as Airboy. He works for Emirates. He wrote, “Heather, I was thinking of you from CDG to DBX.”

Airboy wasn’t the only one thinking about me in the lav. Leesa wrote, “My daughter and I flew to LA last week and thought you might want some lav pictures for your collection.”

Well Leesa and her daughter were right! Not only do I have an interesting collection of mile high headshots from readers like you, I want more, more, MORE! So next time you’re on a flight don’t forget to take your camera and make sure to think of me – in the lav. Please, I beg you, join the club – the laviators club. And I’ll add your photo to the gallery above. Hmm…I wonder if Karen Walrond, our own resident photogapher, can give us a few tips?

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Photo of the Day (4.25.09)

by Brenda Yun on

Who said that only landscapes can be considered as “scenery”? Gadling photographer Max Waugh (a.k.a. fiznatty) proves this theory wrong in this beautiful sky shot that he calls “Cloudscape.” He writes, “While stopping to admire the milky blue waters of Lake Pukaki, it was impossible to ignore the funky cloud patterns lingering above. The Central Otago seems like a haven for lenticular clouds, but on this day there were also these long streams of fluffy white. I was noticing hills, peaks and valleys stretching across the sky.”

As Gadling writers Jeremy and Mike continue their “In the Corner of the World” feature detailing their travels through the heart of New Zealand, it seems fitting, that this is my Photo of the Day pick. Though I’ve never been to New Zealand, this photo shows us how it is just as lovely down low as it is up high.

If you have some great travel shots you’d like to share, be sure to upload them to the Gadling pool on Flickr. We might just pick one as our Photo of the Day!

Brit cops delete photos, fight terrorism

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Two Austrian tourists ran afoul of local police when they took pictures of the city’s famous double-decker buses. Klaus Matzka and his son, Loris, were clicking away on the streets of London while on vacation. Shots of a bus station in Walthamstow (in east London), however, got the cops interested.

The tourists were told by local police that they were not allowed to photograph anything related to transportation. They were thanked not only with deleted photos but with the collection of their passport numbers, hotel addresses and other personal deals.

After all, taking pictures of buses and bus stations could be a sign of terrorist activity.

London’s Metropolitan Police Authority says it has no knowledge related to a ban on transportation pictures in the city. Matzka observes, “Google Street View is allowed to show details of our cities on the web, but a father and his son are not allowed to take pictures of London landmarks.”

Test Driving the Olympus Stylus Tough-8000

by Grant Martin on

When we see “tough” in a product’s name, its got big shoes to fill. Travel bloggers are the sort of people who shred digital cameras, so when Olympus gave us an opportunity to test out the STYLUS Tough-8000, we jumped at the opportunity.

A truly rugged camera should be able to go with you wherever you go. Whitewater rafting in New Zealand, Skiing in Utah, Rock climbing in the Red River Gorge? No problem. It should be able to be sunk, dropped, crushed, and frozen without losing any functionality and it should be able to fit in your pocket. Pretty tall order, eh?

In steps the Olympus STYLUS Tough-8000. Olympus has designed this camera to withstand (almost) any abuse that a digital camera will ever see. It’s waterproof to 10m (33ft), drop proof from up to 6.6 ft, freeze proof to -14°F and crushproof to 220lbf. Recently, we went on a 3 day SCUBA/snorkel trip on the Great Barrier Reef, which turned out to be the perfect opportunity to take the Stylus Tough-8000 on a test drive.

Amazingly, it still works (and looks) exactly like it did when it came out of the box. This recent trip brough, situations that allowed us to test each of the manufacturer’s claims. Mind you — Gadling bloggers would never do anything like test the waterproof claims by submerging it in a pint of Victoria Bitter (the biere familiaris of Australians, not Fosters as an oil can chugging Paul Hogan may lead one to believe.) Nevertheless, each test performed swimmingly.The first thought when taking the Stylus Tough out of the box was that it doesn’t look like a waterproof, super tough camera. Waterproof cameras are supposed to be bulky and bubbly, protected by an excessive amount of Lexan and rubber seals. The stylus looks like any other small point and shoot camera — it’s small and light, no bigger than a pack of cigarettes, albeit slightly heavier at 6.4 oz. The body of this unit was glossy black and gunmetal, but Olympus offers 2 other colors. The camera feels really solid, the case is almost all metal and none of the buttons have any unnecessary wiggle. The back has a huge 2.7″ LCD alongside a pretty standard mode selector knob and 4-way navigation buttons.

The menu system of the camera is incredibly intuitive; playing with exposure settings and macro modes right out of the box was simple. The camera sports a 12 Megapixel CCD and a 3.6x optical zoom. Image clarity is excellent — its not a SLR, but takes good enough images so that only the most discerning individuals would be able to tell.

What about underwater? Taking the Stylus Tough out to the Great Barrier Reef brought out spectacular performance. There are no special modes to activate or switches to flip, you just jump in and start snapping pictures. When taking movies in water, the camera recognizes its environment and switches into a special movie mode that helps equalize out colors. The camera also has an integrated manometer, which tells you your altitude above the waves or your depth below.

Topside, the image quality is everything you would expect from a good point and shoot camera. The auto shoot mode on the camera does a great job adjusting the flash and exposure settings to get the best picture possible. We found ourselves in that “auto” mode ~95% of the time because the camera is undoubtedly better at judging the proper settings. The only times the auto mode struggles are in low light situations; switching over to the scenes menu and picking candlelight mode reconciled those problems.

The Stylus Tough-8000 has three macro modes, and it manages macro shots quite well, even underwater. There is a macro and a “super-macro” mode for close shots, but our favorite mode was the “super-Macro LED”. The camera has a small (but very bright) LED near the lens that helps illuminate your entire macro shot. This mode worked great underwater, particularly in low light situations, where we snapped this picture of a Southern Reef Squid.

As light travelers, one drawback we noticed was in the data link. The connector on the side, known as a multi-terminal connector looks a lot like a mini-USB port. Don’t be fooled though, its not. It’s fully compatible with USB, but your mini-USB plug will not fit. Although the connector supports both USB out and A/V out in one plug, the inconvenience of having to carry around one more cable may outweigh the convenience of having one port.

But look at the bright side. you have a camera that can accompany you on all of your expeditions and can handle getting rained on, dropped, and frozen (and maybe even dropped in beer.) If you like to do things that cameras typically don’t like to do, this is the camera for you.

The Stylus tough-8000 isn’t the cheapest camera out there, but it’s undoubtedly worth the price if you find yourself destroying digital cameras on a regular basis like we do. Right now, it can be found online for about $350.

Photo of the Day (4.4.09)

by Brenda Yun on


After being away from home for a month, you could say this photo is a sight for sore eyes. Now, don’t get me wrong, I loved my time in Cuba: the beaches are pristine and the water is crystal blue and clear. But something about the beaches of Hawaii (and in this case Maui) are so special and identifiable.

This photo, which comes to us from superdisco, does a great job capturing the tranquility of Maui’s moon-shaped Molokini island, the romance of Hawaiian sunsets, and the awesome silhouette of a lone (and leafless!) tree.

If you have some great travel shots you’d like to share, be sure to upload them to the Gadling pool on Flickr. We might just pick one as our Photo of the Day!