National Geographic ADVENTURE

The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro Molokai Wins Development Fight, But At High Cost

Text and photos by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

The hand-painted signs are posted on trees, mail boxes, and front porches all across Molokai. “No to La’au Point”, they say, or simply, “No”. Living’s not so easy on the Friendly Isle, where jobs are scarce for the 7,500 residents, as I found out when the magazine sent me there last November to shoot a cover. But the people cling to their way of life, resisting the tourist pox of other islands, and have doggedly fought the proposed La’au development on the pristine southwest corner of the island.

Now the developer has fought back: The Singapore-based landowner closed its beautiful lodge at Molokai Ranch and fired all 120 employees.

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Field Reports: ADVENTURE Contributors at Large

Photographer Aaron Huey's Sufi Survival Guide: 11 Essential Dance Moves

Text and video filed by photographer Aaron Huey from Cairo, Egypt

I knew I was in pretty good with the Sufis when they started putting their snakes on my head (see it for yourself in the video posted above). They don't just give their snakes to anyone you know. It was Imam Hussein's birthday, I was in Cairo, Egypt, at the place his head is supposed to be buried. I was ten hours into my second night of dancing.

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The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro Adventure Photography: Tie the Knot, Already

Now competing for the title of world’s smallest photography tip…if you have a wrist strap on your point and shoot camera (and you should), tie a simple overhead knot in it, leaving just enough space in the strap to slip your hand through. (Check out the incredible action photos.) You’ll be much less likely drop the camera and more likely to keep it on your wrist, ready to shoot anything cool that pops up. It also adds another level of security when you're stretching to shoot from funky angles. You are shooting from funky angles, right?

Before: Lame!

After: Amazing!

The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro Adventure Photography: Stop and Shoot the Roses

Text and photograph by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

Over the years, I have received countless tips and bits of advice on photography. Only two resonated and stayed with me. Yes, just two. But these two are so powerful, they run through my brain every time I shoot. Together, they’ve made improvements in my photography so big I can only begin to measure them.

I’m going to give you one today. Hey, when you only have two, you need to ration them.

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The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro Gear Review: No Lasik, But I Can See Clearly Now

Dramatic rendering of BEFORE and AFTER. Text and photographs by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

Lasik? No way. Not when there’s something better and safer.

The 95 percent success rate of Lasik eye surgery is a small comfort to the other 5 percent (up to 600,000 people) who have had complications or complaints. And even if the rate is just 1 in 100, it still seems a pretty big risk to take on something as precious as your vision—especially to athletes, photographers, and the other folks who might use their eyes from time to time.

Indeed, prompted by complaints over failed, botched, or ineffective surgeries, an FDA panel is meeting today to look at whether doctors are overselling the procedure and underselling the risks.

But like I said, there’s something a lot better.

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The Adventure Life with Steve CasimiroSurf and Ye Shall Be Asked: The Curiously Interrogative World of Gabe Sullivan

Text by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro. Photographs by Sierra Sullivan, Tom Servais (top, bottom)

Flipping through Surfer Magazine goes something like this: blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, shocking lime green, blue, blue, blue.

There in each issue, jumping out from Surfer’s sea of epic waves and countless board short ads, is a rusty but glowing, chartreuse 1972 VW camper van, the icon and motorized doppleganger of Curious Gabe, Gabe Sullivan, who, every month, poses to ten complete strangers the kind of existential questions you’d expect to be asked in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly or in a dorm room at 1 a.m. Questions like, Does surfing improve with age? Would you rather be an East- or West-Coast surfer? And, a real brain scrambler, What’s worse—being a hoser or a poser?

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The Adventure Life With Steve Casimiro: Into the Wild Flowers

Text and photographs by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

The desert in bloom is a terrestrial Milky Way, the bright blossoms standing in sharp contrast to the dry vacuum surrounding them. Across the Southwest, last winter’s consistent rains have created one of the best wild flower seasons in years. And while flower sniffing has always seemed a soft pursuit to me, it makes one heck of a good reason to throw on a backpack and get out there. So, last weekend, we did.

See more photos and discover seven great places to see springtime flowers in California and Arizona >>

Steve Casimiro's Digital Photography Tips: Four Ways to Protect Your Photos

By West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

Losing your camera stinks, losing your photos is heartbreaking.

When Santiago, Chile’s professional soccer team won its big championship at home last spring, the bad boy futbol fans went wild. There was rioting. There was tear gas. In the melee and confusion and crowds that spilled into the downtown plazas, someone unzipped my friend Lisa’s purse and stole her point-and-shoot camera. And it was not just her camera, but the photos of her 21st birthday and a week of adventure in the Patagonian outback (as seen in the photo above). Fortunately, there were three other cameras on the trip, but still: Every picture she shot was lost forever.

When it comes to digital photography, don’t wait for something to go wrong. Memory cards are cheap, and it’s easy to buy the biggest one and store all your photos on it. Even a 1 GB card can stash hundreds of snapshots. But don't do it. Cards corrupt themselves, get lost, are stolen. I’ve had four simply die and who knows how many I’ve lost. When I’m shooting a story, I use 2 GB Compact Flash cards even though my camera can take much bigger ones; that allows 120 pictures per card and reduces my loss if something goes wrong. The extra work swapping and storing cards is nothing compared to the cost of losing irreplaceable pictures.

Here are four simple, yet essential digital photography guidelines >>

Adventure Photography: The Road to Morocco

Driving the backroads of North Africa is nothing less than a total immersion in the exotic—from casbahs and markets to mountains and desert sands. Get a glimpse of Morocco's unique mix modern and medieval in West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro's stunning photo portfolio.

Photography: The Insta-Classic Camera

Rarely is perfection achieved. But Leica cameras . . . well, put it this way: Henri Cartier-Bresson, the godfather of modern photojournalism, was obsessed with his. So was Alfred Eisenstaedt, who used his beloved Leica to shoot that sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on V-J Day, 1945. Indeed, for the past 50 years, the venerated M series—known for its super-compact chassis, top-shelf optics, and supremely silent shutter—has accompanied some of the biggest names in the photo business (Sebastião Salgado, Ralph Gibson, countless National Geographic photographers).

Imagine the excitement, then, when the first digital iteration of the series, the M8, debuted in 2006. Camera connoisseurs went wild over its intuitive controls and über-crisp images produced by a 10.3-megapixel sensor, but most of us just gasped at the price ($5,500, body only).

Leica must have heard our rumblings of disapproval: In January a fledgling line of “budget” lenses called the Summarit-M hit stores, shaving about a grand off the camera kit. The new 35mm, for example, costs $1,500, compared with $2,600 for its cheapest predecessor. All four Summarits—35mm, 50mm, 75mm, and 90mm—are still handcrafted in Germany, but they are slightly slower, with the fastest f-stop at 2.5. I’d prefer the original with 2.0, but that’s a price worth paying to get your hands on greatness.

--West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro