Just one of those threads that has no real relationship to the boards, but maybe there are some Floridians or South East U.S. coast residents like myself carefully watching where Hurricane Matthew goes, since it looks now to be closer to threatening the U.S. (and my hometown!).
Not many people have been to the remote parts of Haiti away from the capital (for that matter, not many people have been to Haiti PERIOD), and even frequent cruisers like myself have rarely been close enough to even see anything of Haiti's remote west coast off the Tiburon peninsula other than distant silhouettes of mountains. One cruise, years ago, for some reason made an unusual very close pass to Haiti's Tiburon coast, enough so that we could make out buildings, even people, with binoculars. It was just a day at sea, but for me, especially since I had my long lenses with me, it was a fun opportunity to do some extreme telephoto and cropping to see that coastline, and the isolated, poor, but generally better off people in those small towns and villages (though almost all of Haiti is desperately poor, those who are removed from the corruption, crime, gangs, and mess of the capital Port-Au-Prince and other larger cities have it better off most of the time). Unfortunately, those communities were hit fairly hard by the earthquake in 2011, and now, this is the very location where at 7am this morning, Hurricane Matthew made landfall at Category 4 intensity - I don't have too much hope that these tiny villages right on the beach will have faired very well, and hopefully the people evacuated to the hills and a solid shelter.
It made me go back and look at some of my snaps of that beautiful, mountainous, and lush coastline on that one cruise where we got close enough to see...and I figured it might be fun to post them.
A wide shot, taken with my NEX-5N, of the cloud-shrouded mountainous terrain:
A wide panorama taken with the NEX:
A look at the coast with a 55-210mm lens:
A more distant look at one of those small villages, Carcasse, Haiti:
A local herder with his flock on a steep hillside:
A closer look at Carcasse with a 300mm & 1.4x teleconverter, shows that while the mountains are very high, the villages themselves are extremely low-lying:
Another distant village, seen with the 300mm & TC:
Stand-up boater moving along the rugged coast:
I hope these little villages, or at least the villagers, made it through safely today - and we Floridians, along with the Cubans and Bahamians, are all keeping a wary eye on where Matthew goes next!
Not many people have been to the remote parts of Haiti away from the capital (for that matter, not many people have been to Haiti PERIOD), and even frequent cruisers like myself have rarely been close enough to even see anything of Haiti's remote west coast off the Tiburon peninsula other than distant silhouettes of mountains. One cruise, years ago, for some reason made an unusual very close pass to Haiti's Tiburon coast, enough so that we could make out buildings, even people, with binoculars. It was just a day at sea, but for me, especially since I had my long lenses with me, it was a fun opportunity to do some extreme telephoto and cropping to see that coastline, and the isolated, poor, but generally better off people in those small towns and villages (though almost all of Haiti is desperately poor, those who are removed from the corruption, crime, gangs, and mess of the capital Port-Au-Prince and other larger cities have it better off most of the time). Unfortunately, those communities were hit fairly hard by the earthquake in 2011, and now, this is the very location where at 7am this morning, Hurricane Matthew made landfall at Category 4 intensity - I don't have too much hope that these tiny villages right on the beach will have faired very well, and hopefully the people evacuated to the hills and a solid shelter.
It made me go back and look at some of my snaps of that beautiful, mountainous, and lush coastline on that one cruise where we got close enough to see...and I figured it might be fun to post them.
A wide shot, taken with my NEX-5N, of the cloud-shrouded mountainous terrain:

A wide panorama taken with the NEX:

A look at the coast with a 55-210mm lens:

A more distant look at one of those small villages, Carcasse, Haiti:

A local herder with his flock on a steep hillside:

A closer look at Carcasse with a 300mm & 1.4x teleconverter, shows that while the mountains are very high, the villages themselves are extremely low-lying:

Another distant village, seen with the 300mm & TC:

Stand-up boater moving along the rugged coast:

I hope these little villages, or at least the villagers, made it through safely today - and we Floridians, along with the Cubans and Bahamians, are all keeping a wary eye on where Matthew goes next!