17-03-2023
Billy Newman Photo Podcast | 259 Astrophotography Lenses
Show notes for the Billy Newman Photo Podcast.Communicate directly with Billy Newman at the link below.
wnp.app
Make a sustaining financial donation, Visit the Support Page here.
If you’re looking to discuss photography assignment work or a podcast interview, please drop me an email. Send Billy Newman an email here.
If you want to see my photography, my current photo portfolio is here.
If you want to read a free PDF eBook written by Billy Newman about film photography:
you can download Working With Film here.
If you get value out of the content I produce, consider making a sustainable value-for-value financial contribution, Visit the Support Page here.
You can find my latest photo books on Amazon here.
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Instagram https://www.instagram.com/billynewman/
Website Billy Newman Photo https://billynewmanphoto.com/
About https://billynewmanphoto.com/about/
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/billynewmanphoto
Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/billynewmanphotos/
Twitter https://twitter.com/billynewman
Communicate directly with Billy Newman at the link below.
wnp.app
Make a sustaining financial donation, Visit the Support Page here.
If you’re looking to discuss photography assignment work or a podcast interview, please drop me an email. Send Billy Newman an email here.
If you want to see my photography, my current photo portfolio is here.
If you want to read a free PDF eBook written by Billy Newman about film photography:
you can download Working With Film here.
If you get value out of the content I produce, consider making a sustainable value-for-value financial contribution, Visit the Support Page here.
You can find my latest photo books on Amazon here.
View links at wnp.app
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/billynewman/
Website Billy Newman Photo https://billynewmanphoto.com/
About https://billynewmanphoto.com/about/
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/billynewmanphoto
Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/billynewmanphotos/
Twitter https://twitter.com/billynewman
0:14
Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. Yeah, this summer, I've been trying to do a lot to work to get together some new photos, some new stuff to try and kind of build a base, and then move from there a little bit. But I'm excited to try and put up a bunch of the older portfolio photographs that I have. And I was really happy to work on the website a lot this summer, I kind of redesigned a bit of that, you check that out, totally think of it, it's a billion human photo.com. And I tried to strip out a lot of the unnecessary parts, and I'm trying to kind of hone it down a little bit. So it's a little cleaner, but it's gone. Well, I've tried to set it up a little bit more. So it's stream-based if that makes sense. You know, we've kind of moved toward like the Facebook stream, the Twitter stream, the Instagram stream. So I'm trying to kind of move it to were like I talked about on the podcast before where a lot of the media stuff that I put together, the video clips, the photographs, and stuff that wherever they do end up going whatever sites I am populating, like flicker and Instagram and Facebook and all the rest of it, that's kind of what's shown on the website or you know, have the websites kind of try and automatically pull that stuff and ingest that into the website. So I don't have to do it as much. And that's kind of been fun. It's kind of been cool doing that. But the thing that I need to do, the part that is still left is I need to go through my photo portfolio, kind of the long-term portfolio of images I have, and I'm trying to go through and select what would be good to show the work that I've done so far. And I'm trying to do that in a way that's more developed than I had before I've gone through and I've selected, I've kind of picked the photos that I liked a lot. But I've tried to do a couple of different things. And hey, another truck. Man, that looks like a few times of gravel in the back. So what I want to do them, with the photo stuff, and what I've kind of been trying to work on a little bit is to go through Instagram, or to go through Facebook and to try and select my favorite photographs, but then also just select the ones that have been sort of chosen by the market. That's another idea that I'm trying to go for what do people actually like about the pictures that I take? What are the ones that people seem to connect with the most. So on one level, I'm trying to find all those photos. And then I'm trying to sort of remake those photos or re edit them or you know, kind of re republish them in a way that looks sort of new. And that's cleaned up a little bit in the way that I can I can edit and create stuff now. So part of the step is that and then the other part is sort of learn what people like are the photos I make. And then I want to go out and try and make more of that. Or try and dig in a little deeper on on the part that seems to get the most traction or that seems to be seen as the most valuable. So what are those, like what I've noticed?
3:03
Well, yeah, what I've noticed anecdotally so far is that the low light stuff, or the Astro photography, the night photography, the landscapes, where there's stars matched in the background seem to really perform really well. And I really love trying to take those photos and I know a lot about how to lay out the stars that I would want in that foot or you know, I know where the stars are, I know how to kind of line some of the landscapes I thought that I know how to expose for it. So that's a part that I'd really like to get into and push for more what seems to be a draw the photos that I take. But on the other side of that too, I really want to do more, more fine art photography, that's what I really liked, and was kind of drawn into when I first started taking photos, even way back on film, before I knew how at all but I really liked the fine art side of it, where you could go through and try and put the nicest elements together or, you know, try and put a landscape together. But I like that side of it a lot more than the product or production side of it. In, in a sense at least. And I've always been really interested in the fine art photographers that are out there, or the fine art landscape photographers where you see some of the advanced kind of work that they put together some of the ways that they're able to put real pieces real elements into a photograph, it's always seemed so cool, when you're really able to be in tune with that sort of stuff. And I've just always loved the old landscapes and, you know, old Fine Art images from the past. So that's got to the stuff that I'm trying to get into. But organizing this stuff has been interesting. So I'm trying to use this program called Scrivener. And maybe I talked about it before or maybe a while back. I talked about it. But Scrivener is kind of interesting. It's this, and I talked about it yesterday. No, but it's this writing application that I'm trying to get into and it seems like it would take a few tutorials to really figure out it's a little bit more in depth. Hey, gravel truck. It's a little bit it's quite a bit more in depth than something like Word. Even though Microsoft Word is sort of an industry standard that every One has sort of learned on for the last 1520 years, it really is a little bit more specific to like an essay for at least the way I've learned it. But it's more specific to the an essay format of word processing, where you're trying to get a page accomplished, and you're trying to edit through that or you're trying to edit through kind of a single document. And Scrivener is sort of laid out in a way where there's a few more pieces on the side of it, where it's really supposed to be a research applicant, or you're supposed to kind of compile
5:28
different documents of text research or photo research and kind of put that together. And then you're able to sort of assemble a larger writing projects from there, which I think is kind of interesting. Like I figure like book authors would use a writing program like this to work on their character outlines, and their story outlines their plot summaries, and then they would work that into the manuscript that they would make into their book later. So I just think it's kind of an interesting way that they seem to be going, or that the program is built to sort of go about it. So I'm trying to get into that and do it well, but one of the aspects I'm trying to do is to put in all the portfolio photographs that I have, into this Word document, and then sort of sort those photographs, and write about those photographs a little bit to see which photographs really seem to connect with me, or connect and connect with an audience the most and, but also, what photographs sort of have a story associated with them, I love that. Like, if you would follow me for this for a second, you would kind of see that there's a difference between the photographs that are going to be the most monetizable the ones that you can make money from like, let's say portraits, let's say business portraits for some company, you could get, you could get some money for that. But you wouldn't really want to post that in your portfolio of work necessarily, you'd want to like, at least in my case, what I'd like to do is show some photos from the in the high River Canyon, like where we were last week on our photo trip. So you kind of want to move into that stuff. But you don't, it's not gonna be the same sort of thing. Like there's landscape, fine art photos, or just, you know, the landscape, travel, adventure, tourism sort of stuff, that's all gonna be on one side of it. And then the other is going to be, you know, senior portraits, business portraits, event photography, wedding photography, that sort of stuff. So there's sort of two sides of, of a portfolio one of them's a photo product that's valuable for money. And the other one's a, an art piece that's valuable because of its aesthetic. And those are sort of different things that you've kind of, as a photographer, you're trying to build both of those up at the same time, it's sort of like two different routes that you have to work on at the same time until they sort of merged together and unify. So just got him an interesting part of it. And that seems to be part of the process that I'm in right now is trying to figure that stuff out. So some weeks it's, I'm working really hard on the aesthetic side of the photography and then some weeks and working really hard on the monetizable compensation based side of the products that I want to try and build as a photographer that's in business, right. And there are those are interesting challenges. But I guess I've been doing it for a couple years and it's kind of fun at least to to get to still be doing it. So a couple things that I'm trying to do is I'm trying to go through a build a new Lightroom catalog of all the photos that have taken this year and all the photos from the last couple years second, organize those and do a little bit of what I'm talking about. So I have this kind of tighter collection to maybe the top 100 Top 200 Top 50 some number in there of of well laid out photo essays and stories with an image you know that's kind of what I'm trying to get to especially for like the the social media content side of it, I want to try and have that ready to go with a higher frequency almost all the time. So I'm trying to get everything kind of pre produced right, if that makes sense when all the portfolio photos pre selected and then ready for me to go if I want to if I want to post those I get those out on any given day. So it's interesting, it's kind of a cool project. I worked on it a little bit. I'll work on it a little bit here and there when I can but that's another part that's kind of tough. I mean Gosh, I haven't even finished my website yet. Which I guess the last part is still just this I need to it's kind of what it's been waiting for is I need to finish the selection of the portfolio and then I can build the portfolio gallery and put that up on the website. But so far, it's been working great just to send the y'all over to Instagram. I think that's where most of the stuff goes. That's where all the current content goes anywhere to it's fine. And up on here. You can see more of my work at Dooley Newman photo comm you can check out some of my photo books on Amazon. I think if you look at Billy Newman under the authors section there and see some of the photo books on film on the desert, on surrealism on camping. You cool stuff over there.
10:03
really trying to do a lot of scouting stuff, which I've enjoyed to doing some scouting stuff through the summertime, it's been pretty cool, where I'm really trying to go through some of these backroads I'm trying to like Mark spots in the map where there's good campsites, which I hadn't really done before, you know, it was a lot of places, I've driven a lot, a lot of roads I've been on, especially, you know, like back country roads, to Forest Service roads, BLM roads, and I know a lot of good dispersed camping areas. And really, I understand the context of how to find those areas so much better now that I'm older than when I was young. I mean, when I was young, and I go camping with my dad, you know, we'd go out to Eastern Oregon we'd find some spots and they'd known about those spots since you know, he was a kid and he was going over there and hunting camps and stuff with his grandpa. So it's cool for me to get to go over to those same spots and get to check out that area and stuff. But I think there's been or at least when I was a kid, I didn't really understand that the land, like the public land rights that you have, and really how those are organized, like how public lands are organized and what you can do on them and sort of how it operates. I didn't really understand the difference between national forest land and BLM land or national Parkland and state Parkland or wilderness areas, National Wildlife Refuge areas, man there's just so many different distinctions of different things and then also just private property so I didn't really have a clear recollection of any of those things. And really a lot of time when it's public land, you can go on it but there's some things you can't do on it like I there may be hunt in some circumstances, like, like a national park, or I think you can't discharge a firearm inside a national park but for specifically permitted events maybe probably national wildlife refuges, I think those hunting opportunities are are limited also though you can still do some things in those areas, I think you have to get permitted and you have to draw a tag for that location I think is what it is. But But yeah, it's kind of interesting sort of learn about that learn how these things go and also finally getting some maps that you can use that you can kind of trust better while you're in the back country I think that's something that's really helped me kind of understand where I can go and what I can do and i don't know i mean, we've had those map books you know, like that, that 50 page or 100 page book of Oregon and you know, every every page is 25 mile map of that area is always super useful, how they kind of grid out everything and show you that you know, the mile by mile marking and the topography of the area, the different little roads and stuff but even those roads, those mapmakers still got things wrong. I remember to go back in like, was it 2004 I think we were out in an area in Southern Oregon near the Nevada border was a Druze reservoir somewhere South a Gearhart mountain and I remember we were on some some little some little road I don't even know if it was if it was a national forest area I think it was just in the in between private and public lands as a kind of jumps back and forth and those pretty remote areas all of it is just remote desert and forest and sagebrush and Juniper but some of it goes into like ranch land, it's more managed and some of it cuts back into BLM land as this as this little roads sort of meander through it but I remember being out there and noticing that the map on the page was just totally different than the map or than the other real world ground truth of where the road went and I saw oh wow yeah, you can't really trust the maps to show you the information that you want to see when you need it other times to you know, you'll see like Oh hey, like it shows there's a road right here. Good deal we'll take that road Well, you know, it shows it's on the map so you cut down there you get on the road and then it's washed out like crazy or it's super bumpy and like and just terrible, right? And but it's the same green roads the same label, the same marking is the road next to it that was graded and, and
13:53
aren't was that paved, right? It's graded gravel, they put more gravel down, I think is what I'm trying to say they've, they've made it an easier going road to to drive on. But then you get those washboard sections out there. I don't know if you guys have been on that where you're driving around in the Forest Service roads and those gravel roads. And I think it's a natural process of erosion that occurs that creates these waves in the material. You know, as I think as a rainwater comes down, it sort of naturally over time generates these, these little ripples. And that's the washboard effect that you get when you're driving. That's also the thing that kind of kicks your car sideways when you're, you're going a little too fast on a gravel road. So I started doing today I think I kicked it pretty hard side before you know like it's pretty loose on the traction and it was starting to tip sideways in my truck. And so I slowed down and threw it into four wheel drive after that, and was able to cruise around out here pretty freely. But yeah, I wanted to talk on this podcast about hanging out in the Fremont National Forest and I just got finished with a huge thunderstorm. came through it just really finished raining a little bit ago we were kind of I think when I arrived here today at this Meadows still a few hours before sunset So I walked around and kind of went along the perimeter of the meadow and then and then I noticed that you know, I mean it's cloudy it's been kind of cloudy today and there's been Thunder heads that have been building up over the location that I've been ever since I kind of came over the past the Cascades had been in like a pretty solid string of, of thunder heads that have sort of coalesced into big mass over the Cascades some of the here over the Fremont National Forest whatever mountains these are that I'm in and and yeah it seems like this section in Eastern Oregon was getting hit with a good Thunder a good summer August thunderstorm today which was kind of fun to sit through and go through it was cool if I got rained on pretty hard earlier when I was driving over. I thought I'd get out here and be a little bit more free of it. But it seemed like that storm kind of drifted over this way and that was sort of drifting north from here. And and yeah, it is a new system, but man, there's just a bunch of lightning that was coming through and huge cracks of thunder. Just big, deep Rambo's. I haven't heard Thunder like that and in years and yours probably you know we're just kind of stays and like hangs and rolls for 10 seconds 15 seconds it seems like you know you just really can't like whoa is Can it really still be just cracking and rumbling and rolling. And, and there was enough activity and if lightning activity that was going on where you'd hear thunder I mean, it was almost like 45 minutes there were there was just a crack and a roll of thunder almost continuously, like it was a it was pretty intense. It's it's, it's really I think one of the more strong lightning storms I've been in in a while. But that's sort of how it goes out here. When you're at these higher elevations. I think I'm floating around up in the 50 or 100 feet or so above sea level. And so it just means I'm up in the mountains where these these thunderstorms get started, you know, they get there, they get there. I think that's where they they'll kind of coalesce over these big mountain tops and then float over in the hot weather. I don't really understand the weather enough to say I know how a thunderstorm starts it doesn't start now. I've just gotten cold enough I'm trying to throw jacket on. Now you got to live through it. I'm really camping. It's been good. But I'm gonna be out here for two nights I think is what I'm going to do and then tomorrow I'll cruise out and I'll try and hit some of these Forest Service roads for a bit. drive around do some exploring mark a couple spots on the map as a as I'm cruising around. I think that'll be that'd be a good time But yeah, I haven't been out here before. I think I've heard of a couple friends that have been out in this area that have done some. I think they did a couple scouting trips for a hunting trip that they were going on in the fall I think this is an area where we're one of my friends goes I think they try and draw a tag for not this area. I think it's a drainage over from here but I think I've heard about this area a couple times from from people talking about it. So yeah, it's cool it's cool spot it was out taking pictures earlier taking some photographs I've been working mostly probably for almost a year and a half now. I've been working a lot with this 17 to 40 millimeter wide angle Canon lens and it's a pretty inexpensive lens and you can get it for like 400 bucks maybe a little less if you're lucky and you get it on a sale time sometimes in the fall as we're kind of ramping down toward
18:33
toward Thanksgiving I think you can get some good deals on it but it's it's sort of in the the the $400 range I think sometimes maybe it's more around five or something but I picked it up a couple years ago when I was starting to do some real estate photography or was working for Airbnb for a while where they had hired me as a photographer to go into these Airbnb plus listings and get a new set of photographs I was interested in kind of learning about how specific they wanted all those this photographs and this this really specific art style and and you know format of it and that was fine. It was interesting to do for a while but but what was cool is that I picked up that lens to get in and do that work. But really after that I've been appreciating how much I can do with that wide angle lens and then you know 40 millimeters isn't way different than 50 millimeters it's certainly different for the effects of portraits and stuff but when I'm out here doing landscape stuff and I'm trying to take pictures of a lot of this stuff is kind of sketch photos to where I'm sort of going around and midday I'm taking some photos of some different things I want some cat photos in my truck and my my little cooler set up in the back here.
19:42
And so all that's been good in addition to that the the Astro photography stuff that I can do with it is pretty cool because it drops down to the 17 millimeters. It's an autofocus lens, it's a sealed lens, it's it's pretty it's it's pretty good in most ways and I've really noticed over time that I'm not as good As absolut have a mandate for me to be shooting at a really wide open f stop you know if I'm shooting at a wide open aperture almost all my photos early on were 1.8 or or 2.0 or two eight or something and I would do that really because I was trying to I was really trying to get because I didn't have very many lenses I was really trying to get as much effect out of that boat Kay out of that soft background as I could so I was really trying to lean into that and get some photos with it and I noticed with my camera and equipment at the time that it just it just looked better. They just did look better when it was at you know f1 eight I think I just said that nifty 50 Nikon 50 millimeter for the longest time that's what I did I did my early trips on and did a lot of my portfolio building stuff on that but but I've got a different 50 millimeter lens with me now I've got it on my film camera in my bag right now which I need to take out too and I'm trying to finish a roll of avatar film it's been on there for a while and I've enjoyed shooting it it's cool it's a it's a new Canon camera to me at least I got it used on kth and spent 35 bucks on it 10 bucks to ship it and it takes a weird battery to it's one of those 90s film cameras it has this weird it almost looks like a battery pack this it's like two so it was almost like two double A's if they were a little fatter but are bonded together in this little plastic pack and then you pop that in there and shoot for a little while I guess and it runs a meter okay so I'm getting by with it but I've noticed the film camera stuff it's it's fun to have an awesome film camera it'd be cool to have a Leica and all the lenses I wanted but a lot of time with that you know the good lenses I have this this new or like canon l glass that I get to shoot through and for film photos and for the variety of images or the variety of lenses i have i can i can do telephoto I can do prime I can do really wide angle all with the modern digital Canon lenses that have you know chips in them to read well that meter well that make contact with or that send information back and forth or at least from the lens to the camera I think xao works that works in the autofocus stuff for the digital camera this is this is autofocus Yeah, it's an autofocus digital camera. It's sending information back it's working Yeah, that makes sense yeah, so it's it's cool like and that's something I didn't really have available to me for a long time you know, I think when I've probably on this podcast if you go way back in the archives I'm talking a lot about film with a Nikon f4 you know i mean that just had autofocus that was the first camera like 88 to get autofocus period. So it's cool to have that in a more flexible way now but what I remember talking about in the past that was that I had like limited options with glass all the time, I didn't really always have the lenses that I would have preferred and so I've kind of made a collection of that now with this canon stuff I got a Canon camera and so I can throw all those lenses on and have that same flexibility that I have with my digital set. But just with this, this film body that I get to shoot a roll through so I kind of save the film stuff for when it's a thing that I want but what I've noticed though for a little while is that I miss a lot of those moments and I ended up just having the the norm you know the regular digital camera with me with a bunch of my other gear. When I've been going out I've been trying to kind of just take the camera with me and then I'll leave the bigger bag back at the truck so that I'm not really carrying as much stuff with me I've also started carrying like when I'm out here in the woods and stuff I'm carrying that binocular harness with me which is kind of cool you can get them in different sizes but it's sort of like if you imagine like a backpack but what they do is they strap on to the front so it's right on your chest. And what you can do is fill is put like a pair of binoculars in there so you can pull them out and then scatter around with your binoculars, do some glasses and then pop them back into your into your harness and then kind of carry on with whatever you want to do but if you leave that empty without the without the binoculars if you have a smaller Camera Rig probably like a mirrorless or a Sony camera you know like one of those Sony A 6000s man if you were a backpacker, and you had a Sony A 6000 and this this front carry
24:16
like binocular pack, you'd be really sad that would be like all the camera bag that you'd need in fact really if I'm thinking about ever doing some like over you know some longer backpacking travel where I just have to pack everything in a way it's gonna be something I'm more conscious of than I think that's really like the way to go is I've kind of been thinking about it a little bit it's like get get a lighter camera. Or I mean it'd be great like carry like a 360 camera you know if you're going up somewhat laser those are almost nothing as it is anyway but but if you're carrying like an SLR or something that you want to try and do some some more controlled photography was and he had something like a an A 6000 from Sony or an a seven, seven or three or whatever it is something that size with a lens attached to it. You know, that could fit in one of these binocular hearts is harnesses and carry kind of round in your front and then you see something you would take it, pop that open right on your chest, pull it right up to your eyes, got straps on it in the harness, pull it right up to your eyes ready to shoot, and you can take photos, or take photos, you know, as quick as you want to. So it's kind of a cool process. If you're out hiking a lot for what I'm doing, I have my binocular harness, but it's got binoculars in it. And I've been kind of going around and trying to do some bird watching stuff while I'm out here and saw cool Hawk that was posted up who's looking at me, that's about all I've seen so far. So coyote the other day, that was cool. I'll talk about that later that but because I had those binoculars in there, and I've been kind of going out on these, these shorter hikes and stuff that I've been trying to go around and like, just kind of watch them stuff or watch land and kind of keep an eye out. But I just had the camera on my longer strap on my side with that 17 to 40 millimeter lens. And that's worked really good. It's been a pretty flexible kit for me to go around and take a bunch of photographs with so it's pretty easy, pretty lightweight to work with. And I can kind of move back and forth between those things strapped around my neck, you know, it's not everything just hanging around my neck with a lanyard. It's all kind of put somewhere or packed in somewhere. So it's been kind of cool. But it was good going out and taking some photos tonight, I was trying to get some of the i didn't i didn't get anything lightning in the camera though the lightning storm kind of passed as soon as it was getting really dark enough to to do like a long exposure kind of thing where I could I could sort of catch something, something spark and otherwise, you know, you got it, you got to beat the lightning bolt with your shattered finger. And that's a pretty tricky task to do. I think that's how they do it, you know, when you get those, you get those like magazine photos back in the day of a powerful lightning bolt striking. I don't know the center of a road or something like that's what they'd show, you know, some kind of power lightning bolt, but the way that they would do that stuff is I think, I think it was like he was dark out, you know, or pretty dark out. And so they'd set the camera up for just a cycle of long exposures. And then they would just kind of let it ride, you know, so they'd have a couple seconds to expose the image to whatever you know would work. And then they just kind of have that rolling so that when when a bolt of lightning did strike, and it would be captured, and you could go through that collection of captured or, you know, how is it that when a lightning bolt would strike the ground, the camera would have already been exposing for a photograph. Because it's just cycling the shutter on a four second exposure, let's say something like that. And so you know, it takes a four second exposure stops, processes for a second takes a four second exposure stops processes for a second. So I think that's how they did some of that stuff where they, they kind of anticipate. Alright, it's been a couple minutes, let's take a frame now. And then it's just going to be an event in the future. So we don't know if it's going to happen or not. We're going to wait for this event in the future when we boom, see a lightning bolt and then that light then exposes the sensor or the film and the camera and then you're left with an image that has that lightning bolt represented in the frame when you're shooting on a tripod or something like that with with like a short cycle, long exposure. And I thought that was pretty cool, but I didn't really get a chance to get all that stuff set up before the storm kind of passed me by I did get a lot of cool handouts, stuff that was that's great of the thunderheads and stuff and really unfortunately just in the location that I'm at a lot of that and I guess maybe for the better but that lightning storm didn't pass right over my head, it was still a little ways away. So I could see the lightning bolts cracking through the trees kind of out in the distance more. A few they stretched across the sky pretty good too. It's just a big old, you know, from from east to west. It was like, you know, big old chunk of boulders crack all the way across the sky was cool.
28:58
So I got photos of the thunderheads, the sunset, the the big field out here. It's cool. It's a nice area. But I was also thinking about some of the other stuff that I want to be doing tomorrow. So I'm out in the Fremont National Forest. I'm going to be heading I think, maybe south from here, and I'm going to try and explore a couple areas that are still open. Or I guess it's all open publicly. This is like a pretty large contiguous section of national forest land here and really, like that's a big part of Oregon overall, right? It's like 53% public lands. It's cool. Yeah, if you look at a map, you'll see the cities and you'll see like the highways and stuff but if you have the right map, it'll show you where the BLM land is and where the different national forests are. And it's cool, this whole area the Northwest is just there's a lot of public land that you get to use and there's a lot of open area that you get to go to and and yeah, now that I've got a good map of the outdoor off road roads, and some of the terrain and stuff with some good notes and I'm able to kind of move around and get out to a lot more places than I had before. So it's been cool the app that I'm using is the Onyx off road app it's I think 2999 a year and so pitch that out picked up this app and then you can download offline these these really detailed off road maps they're supposed to show you all the trails you know even just walking trails, all the roads all of the like the pieces of information you'd need for kind of moving around in the backcountry and really as surprising as it is as remote as a lot of these places are people go yeah you know it's it's also public land is managed by the the forest department forest Forest Service Yeah, I think a lot of this does managed by the Forest Service the BLM stuff managed by the BLM and that's why these roads are as good as they are or maintained and that's why I like when trees are down on these mountain roads you know someone has to go through at the beginning of the year and cut all those out rip them out filling the potholes all that sort of stuff so all these areas are are known about and you know kind of managed in a pretty significant way in fact I think more so to come in the future I think they just announced yesterday or the day before that they've passed the great American outdoors act which I really don't know the first thing about or or what it does or doesn't do or what it puts in or leaves out but I think part of my understanding is that it's supposed to change some of the funding mechanisms that go into supporting the the maintenance of these public lands that are out here across the country but really significantly out here in the western states so it's it's pretty cool I think before that it was like well we should spend you know X amount of money but there's a more important place for that money to go so it wasn't like a guaranteed amount sort of what I understand so if I understand it correctly, there's like
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I think they've said $3 billion a year
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of mandated funding for projects I think here in the back country BLM land Forest Service land and like national wildlife refuges and stuff so pretty cool, but yeah, I think that's gonna well maybe we'll see a change in that I think it's supposed to better fund the operations of BLM and forest service people as they're going through and trying to get these areas ready for for the public to be using more regularly so it's cool, I think it it'll mean a lot over the next few years or what maybe we'll see how it, how it kind of transforms some of the way that these these areas are managed, I think maybe it's more for me and I probably shouldn't even speculate, I'm not sure at all, but it's pretty cool. I'm excited about being out here and doing some camping and stuff dealing with this thunderstorm. I think it's one of those things where by the morning you know it's going to be or at least I was looking at the weather it should be mostly cloudy or partly cloudy, mostly sunny tomorrow for a while so I think that's pretty cool. I'm excited to be hanging out do some cabin stuff, do some podcasting I'm in the back of my truck right now like I was saying it was rain in early after this thunderstorm so I got that canopy on my truck and I'm nice and dry nice and warm. kind of feels like I'm just inside somewhere so it's it's a cool cool rig having a four wheel drive, having the canopy on the back having your staff and your sleeping area just kind of set up back there and I'm ready to go. So I've been having a good time being out here and it's been pretty good. Pretty good trip so far. I so appreciate you guys checking out this podcast from me. I'm gonna do a couple more podcasts while I'm out here on this camping trip and I'll I'll try and try and set up a little backlog of them on my website. I think it'll be a good idea. Now I kind of take the breaks and stuff from it. I'm sure no one no one keeps listening when it when
