Sam Fulbright is a senior leader at New River Academy, and is in his second year traveling with the program. The folks at NOC brought Sam up in kayaking, and really instilled a passion in him for kayaking, particularly freestyle kayaking, and he has been paddling non stop since. Lately a big passion of Sam's has been taking photographs of his adventures and travel. Obviously there is a focus on whitewater kayaking shots, but he also really enjoys capturing the culture and landscapes of the places he travels to. Sam's non kayaking photos can be seen here. Enjoy!

Traveling to the Mekong river was an incredible trip within itself. With a 2 day, 12 hour drive we were drove through some pretty amazing passes as we traveled into a deeply tibetan cultured area. We drove through some passes up to about 14,500 feet. Incredible views of the areas culture and the himilayan mountains. Here are some images from the trip.

Tibetan prayer flags in a high pass of the Himilayas. Photo (c) Sam Fulbright 2007.

Black and White shot of the mountains. Photo (c) Sam Fulbright 2007.

Buddhist Prayer implements. Photo (C) Sam Fulbright. 

Well we've been here in China for a few days now, and its been mostly traveling and a bunch of city shooting. The cities have been wild. A lot of people. The food is very interesting, and pretty adventurous. Shanghai didn't have much in the way of typical older chinese buildings, but offered a lot of interesting street vendors of cats, turtles, fish, and tons of other animals all around. Kunming has offered an amazing view of neon lights at night as well as some cool old chinese buildings to shoot. We'll leave Kunming today, and head up away from the cities and to the rivers. Here's some photos for your view pleasure.

A man in Shanghai wishes us on our way. He talked to us about the best places to shoot photos in the city. Photo (c) Sam Fulbright 2007

A kitten sits in a bike outside a pet shop in the streets of Shanghai. Photo (c) Sam Fulbright 2007.

Students sit in the train. The train ride was 36 hours of small beds and rooms. Photo (C) Sam Fulbright 2007.

 A chinese gate at night in Kunming. This is the view from our hostel in Kunming. Photo (C) Sam Fulbright 2007.

 

The new photo project was to take a closer look at things, and enter the macro side of photography. After walking around for a while I chose to shoot the paddles scattered around the trailer. All of the paddles had very cool patterns and lines through out them. With the typical paddle shot being the whole paddle often with someone kayaking with it, it was interesting to zoom in and take a closer look at the motor behind whitewater kayaks.

This shot is of a paddle shaft. With most of the background as well as most of the paddle being out of foucs it really draws the eye into the one focused section with the diamond pattern. This was shot at a f-stop of 4.8 for 1/50th of a second at an ISO of 100. Photo (c) Sam Fulbright.

This is a very similar shot, but it was focused on the paddle blade. I used the bright light on the left side to wash out that half of the picture and draw the focus to the upper right side. By leaving the top right corner open it allows the viewer a little something extra to think about besides just the pattern of the paddle blade. This was shot at a f-stop of 4.2 for 1/60th of a second at an ISO of 100. Photo (c) Sam Fulbright

This shot opens up to more than one paddle. It keeps the patterns of all the paddles in view, but offers up a few different patterns to view. I kept the main focus on the silver paddle blade because of the black ring in the middle. I think this offers a nice contrast to the pattern of the paddle by having a rugged piece of tape in the middle. This was shot at a F-stop of 8 for 1/250th of a second at an ISO of 100. Photo (c) Sam Fulbright

I found this piece of metal sticking out of the waters of the Ottawa River. The water has calm waves flowing through it with a grass bed sitting underneath the water. The stick breaks this tranquility, and is standing in solitude. It was shot at an f-stop of 3.5 with a shutter speed of 1/400th of a second at an ISO of 100. (c) Sam Fulbright

 

I found this mushroom just sticking out at the base of the tree while walking through the woods. It really stood out against all the green and brown of the trees and moss surrounding it. It just seemed different, and lonely. It was shot at an f-stop of 5.6 with a shutter speed of 1/6th of a second at an ISO of 100

Cutter the dog is found outside in the cold morning. He sits looking around for a friend or partner, but he still stands alone. He was shot with an f-stop of 2.8 with a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second at a ISO of 100.

When traveling to the Ottawa river many people have dreams of flying high and hucknig huge on Garberator, clean spinnning endlessly on corner wave, or bravely punching through Phil's Hole. However, tucked away in a corner off to the side in McCoy's Rapid is a ramp.

Tino Specht prepares for takeoff. Photo by Sam Fulbright (c)

Anything goes on the ramp. Tricks range from blunts and clean blunts to pan-ams and airscrews, and the most popular trick was the face splat. Many of us were hucking huge, and wiping out hard. 

Sean Johnson throws a clean blunt. Photo by Sam Fulbright (C)

 The ramp is always a good spot to have if the line at corner wave of baby face are too long. Most of us start off our session with a one or two rides down the ramp. We snap on our spray skirts and push off to start our slide down the ramp. The boats pick up a lot of speed as they near the kicker, and are launched up into the skies. Then the flight is ended with a big splash, and one happy paddler. 

 

Morgan Tidd about to land a blunt off the ramp. Photo by Sam Fulbright (c)