We finally had our Week Without Walls trip, and went down south. We left the school around 9 in the morning, and rode for 4 hours. Twisting and turning in small streets made for tuk tuks or cars in a massive bus was quite entertaining for the first hour of the trip, before taking the highway.

When we arrived to Back of Beyond at Kahandamodara, we received our roommates, and unpacked in our rooms. The ride was tiring and we got some time to unwind. We had a great Sri Lankan lunch, with some dahl, what we thought was potato curry but turned out to be another type of tubercle, and fish curry. We weren’t too hungry from all the snacks we shared on the bus, but the food was good enough to get seconds.

Afterwards, we had an hour or two to relax before we were going to the beach. Some of us went for a dip in the pool, with an ideal temperature thanks to the sun (not too hot, not too cold). But I decided to explore the area and start taking photos. There were goats with HUGE droopy ears, 2-3 times the size of their heads, the flowing lagoon filled with mangrooves which connects to the sea, and some lovely wildlife.

While looking at the lagoon, I noticed a flying black dragonfly which kept returning to the same place in the air, it was a good 3 to 4 meters from me. I was intent on taking a photo of it. Setting my my zoom to manual and my shutterspeed to 1/800, and started to try and find it. due to its small size, it was hard to see where it was through the camera, which made focusing on it really difficult. But, after a good 10 minutes of struggling, taking the photo and checking to see if the iso was high enough, or if the shutter speed was right, I finally took some clear photos of it. One thing I would have done differently now, is increase the shutter speed to maybe 1/1000 or 1/1250, just because the wings are a little blurry.

Afterwards, something happened that really changed the whole trip for me: The shutter malfunctioned! I have to say, I feel like I went through the 5 stages of grief during the trip. I was hopeful, I turned off the camera and back on to see if that would fix it, I tried to maybe adjust the focus, to remove the battery even. But as I troubleshooted, the dreaded realization that maybe it was not just a simple issue dawned on me. Mr. Lockwood gave me some advice in regards to troubleshooting, but to no avail. Still, I was hopeful that it would be resolved by the end of the day, by maybe looking at some guides online. A shame I wouldn’t get to take photos with it this afternoon (oh, you naive soul, it only gets worse..).

We headed down to the beach on foot, with an aura of exitement. Upon our arrival, we were greeted by the water. We took of our shoes and went for a dip. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring a swimsuit, so I could only get knee deep in the water. Those of us who stayed outside ended up playing ninja, where we would take turned making one movement in order to tap another person’s limb. Only while we were moving could they move. It was a blast, you could choose to play it safe, since after your turn, the person you attacked could easily counterattack.

We stayed at the beach for a good hour before heading back. Upon our arrival, we went to our cabins and took turns using the shower, from which the top of our heads would stick out. We got changed and headed to the main area to relax before dinner. We started a game of One Night Werewolf, but were interrupted before we could finished by the news of dinner.

After dinner, I used Mr. Lockwood’s phone to research methods of repairing my D90.

It was now time for our frog watch, or rather, creepy crawlie watch. We saw some termites and a praying mantis in a spider web, who managed to break free after struggling (the act of which ended up scaring everyone). As we were moving along, a small snake sneakily slithered up to us, before disappearing in the grass. We ended up stopping and looking up, to see the beautiful night sky, free of light pollution.

It was almost spiritual. We tried to identify some constelations, but only got as far as Orion’s belt.

Learning objectives:

• Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.
  • I challenged myself with taking a photograph of a small, moving dragonfly, which kept moving out of my focus. I developed additional patience, better tracking skills with my eye through the lens, improved manual zooming and focusing skills with the DSLR camera, and a better understanding of the ratio between lighting, shutter speed, and ISO, in order to paint a clearer picture of what I was photographing.