An article on Engadget, U.K. spectrum auction to enable low-cost fixed wireless services, might be great for travelers passing through England. It seems that next year, some small “fixed-wireless service providers” may pose a threat to major cell companies by offering low price calls in what are being called “coffee zones”.
The new services will be the beneficiaries of a spectrum auction, in which the British government will be selling off the “guard band†— frequencies left intentionally open when earlier frequencies were sold, in order to avoid interference. The government will let providers use the spectrum for any service, provided they keep it below 200 megamilliwatts.The first company hoping to take advantage of this is the aptly named fixed-wireless provider Coffee Telecom, which plans to set up low-wattage cell towers in what it calls “coffee zones,†where cellular users will be able to roam from their existing service providers onto Coffee’s VoIP network. Of course, Coffee has to cut roaming agreements with the bigger providers — and win the auction.
But if it comes together, British callers willing to sacrifice some mobility for lower costs may soon find themselves making their mobile calls while standing still. All Coffee needs to do to complete the experience is install bright red boxes in their Coffee Zones — and make the service coin-operated, of course.
We’ve been living on the road full-time, in some fashion or another, since 1996. The first four years were spent living in a trailer, pulled by our truck, cris-crossing North America, photographing nature as we found it. The last few years have been in Israel, traveling outside the country every three months to explore Europe.
As you research your destination and subject interest there, go beyond your main interest. If you are visiting 
Be careful not to limit yourself to a subject matter like “only birds”. If you arrive and there are few birds, be open to the other possibilities. Different wildlife appears at different times of the day, so schedule your time to take advantage of the full course of the day’s events, if possible, instead of just showing up and expecting nature to “be there” waiting for you.
Your writing is not the only writing to be inspired by travel. As a travel writer, take time to learn from others how they described an adventure or area, from the ancient classics to modern works. There are a ton of books about travel that are now in the public domain and available in digital form from the many 
Describing the weather is a hard cold fact for any writer, no matter what genre they work in. No matter where you are, inside or out, you are affected by the weather, as are the people and places you write about.
Close your eyes and feel the weather. Think of a situation where you might be under such weather conditions. Visualize the location in your imagination, the activity, and all the elements around that
subject is, people will look at the brightest spot in your photograph first. It can be the sun, a piece of out-of-focus trash, a garbage can, a rock – anything that is bright or reflects light. One technique to find distracting things in your background is to unfocus your lens a bit. Anything bright will become a large white blob. Depth of field can make this blob small or large on your final image depending upon how out of focus the blob is. If it is too much, recompose to exclude the distracting element or remove it.
Humans are great creators of trash and they spread it all over the place. It has become such a consistent part of our lives, we forget to pay attention to all the litter around us. It isn’t just bits and pieces of plastic bags, napkins, fast food containers, and candy wrappers. It is the garbage of our lifestyle. Look for phone or electrical wires sweeping across your landscape. Garbage cans are everywhere. Old cars litter the streets. Keep an eye out for all the manmade distractions that litter our lives. Pay attention to them and judge their value inside or outside of your photograph.
What is going on behind your main subject? If it is part of the story, fine, but if it isn’t, then it can grab the attention away from your subject. If there is movement in the background and the subject is still and the shutter speed slow, the movement can be even more accentuated. Photographing in populated areas, like busy farmers’ markets or cities, it is difficult to get away from the action around your subject. Nature subjects can also include action such as the wind blowing flowers and trees around, or animals moving behind the animal you are photographing. Either think of a way to incorporate the action into your story, or recompose or wait for the action to stop.
In the photograph to the right, I took a picture of the Haradim, ultra-orthodox Jews, standing at a table assisting other Jews to pray. Their table was set up outside of one of the largest and busiest shopping malls in Tel Aviv. I wanted to show the extreme contrast of modern Israel vs. old world Israel. Do you see the story I wanted to tell? No. I was so caught up in what interested me that I ignored the motorcyles, election posters, and all the typical distractions moving in and out of the mall. With no central subject, the viewer cannot tell the important point from the rest of the clutter.
The middle of the day finds the sun overhead casting dark contrasting shadows into the bright light, often disguising wildlife in the forest, and filling our images with distracting elements. In the example here, on the left, Brent photographed an elk resting in the forest of Jasper, Alberta, in Canada. The shadows make the elk almost invisible as they stripe across the large mammal. For a few minutes, a cloud passed over the sun and Brent was able to get the photograph he really wanted of the elk. The animal is now distinguishable from the forest and the shadows, the background now a complementary part of the photo.
Similar to inappropriate backgrounds, when the background is too bright or too dark in general, it can overwhelm a subject. We like to look at the brightest things first, like the sun or a big white blob. A dark subject against a bright background puts all the attention on the bright background and it can make it hard to look at the darker subject. There needs to be a compromise in tonality, in the shifts between bright and dark. The extremes hurt our eyes and make us feel uncomfortable when viewing the photograph. White backgrounds, such as the fog in the photograph of the deer to the right, can be the “kiss of death” composition. Dark backgrounds tend to work fine, but forget white backgrounds as they typically overwhelm the subject.
inclusion, but 
Photographing dark subjects against a light background or the reverse helps the subject stand out against its background. But photographing dark subjects against dark backgrounds (or the reverse) may lose the subject within its background. Small animals often have black whiskers and insects have dark or black legs and antenna which disappear into black backgrounds. These delicate parts of your subject need a constrasting background so they can remain visible.
Working in a confined environment like a zoo, conservatory or studio can help restrict the animal and can give you the time to choose more favorable backgrounds and lighting situations, but working in the field is much harder. You have to not only think about your subject, but the background as well. It takes a lot of trial and error to get all the pieces of the puzzle to come together: a great subject against a perfect background.
In the photograph to the right, Brent photographed a black-tailed deer in Yosemite National Park and almost missed the out-of-focus branch sneaking into the foreground. It didn’t help that the deer was looking right at the branch, as if to call out “hey, did you miss something?” By simply stepping to the side, Brent was able to shift the branch out of the foreground and still improve the photograph.
Foregrounds are part of the framing of the photograph. What lies within this frontal area can lead the eye to your subject or away. If the foreground is cluttered, clean it up. Feel free to move a stick or distracting piece of dry yellow grass in the foreground. Or use the elements in the photograph to enhance the subject, as with this crab spider in the lupine framed by the out-of-focus lupine flowers. The wash of color directs the eye to the spider instead of distracting the viewer from it. Become like a painter, paying equal attention to what you include as well as what you exclude from your masterpiece.
Flash changes the background. Electronic flash creates a bright white light, usually overwhelming any ambient light on the subject. It’s usually easy to spot a 
Let’s examine this process with a fiddlehead fern in a dimly lit forest. We needed to use the flash because the wind was blowing just enough, and the light level was so low, we’d end up with a blurry picture of the fern moving in the wind over the several second exposure. So we photographed it first with flash. Notice the reflections of the flash light on the hairs of the fern. The green color of the fern appears to be darker than our eyes “saw” the color. The fern stands out against the black background, but it is almost overwhelmed in constrast.
When you don’t have a longer lens, and your background isn’t cooperating, you can use an artificial background. This is simply something used to replace the background in your image. We’ve used a variety of clothing items like shirts or jackets, or our camera bag, or whatever we have with us.
There are many different kinds of backgrounds you can make out of different fabrics and materials. The colors should look like the natural habitat or background of your subject, and they need to be made to look like they are out of focus. Using clearly defined borders between colors will create blobs of color in the background if you are using a shallow depth of field. But one of the key reasons to use an artificial background, especially with closeup subjects, is to increase your depth of field without worrying about the background being in focus. By blurring and softening the background color shifts, you are creating an out-of-focus background without worrying about your depth of field.
Work with colors and tones that 
Making your own artificial background isn’t hard. We’ve created backgrounds with fabric and dyes, We’ve used a plywood board and painted it to resemble a fairly natural looking background. Be sure and carefully blend the colors while still damp or as you spray to soften the lines between the shifts of colors. Don’t be afraid to blend them over and over again, running one into the other to soften the lines. We’ve found fabric works well, and folds up easily for travel. You can become fairly creative with designing your own background and you become more sensitive to the ones you see through your viewfinder.
A perfect background doesn’t just happen. Attention is paid to it. For a moment or two, the photographer lets his or her attention drift from the main subject to the background and foreground to give it serious consideration. The eye should sweep back and forth across the viewfinder, examining all the items inside the frame. Then it should move around the inside edge of the frame, checking for any little bits sneaking into the frame from the edges. When time is available, some photographers using zoom lenses will pull back on the zoom a bit to see if there is anything that might sneak into the frame and then re-zoom into the final position. Take 
a second to lift your eye from the viewfinder to check for anything moving into or out of your background that could be distracting or in the way, and check the scene to see if it still matches what you want in the viewfinder. Then take a last long sweeping look around the viewfinder, considering each element, before you press the shutter. After some practice, this effort will become second nature to you.
The things that are in the background of any photograph might be important to the story of the photograph, but if it isn’t, how distracting is it? Is it small enough not to matter or is it brightly colored enough that it will attract attention? Is it a brighter or darker color than the background or the subject? How much attention does it attract? Is the amount of attention greater or less than your main subject?
Some backgrounds help your subject, while others ruin it. How does the background interact with the subject? Should it? Is the background habitat critical to the story of the subject? Or should it be easily ignored and not part of the story? If your subject is a part of the background or is looking at the background, then the background helps the subject as it is part of the story of the photograph. But if the background is merely a detail in the photographic story, ask yourself if it helps or hinders the story you are telling.
Sometimes the background is part of the story, and sometimes showing less of it gives the photograph more power, more importance in the story. How much of the background can you leave out and how should you do that?
Lens perspective is the view of the scene, including the background, that is captured onto the film through the lens. A wide angle lens sees a wider angle of view, therefore it captures a wider perspective. A long telephoto lens sees a very narrow view, therefore it captures a narrow perspective. In these three photographs of a marmot in the Olympic National Park, we kept our subject, the cooperative marmot, basically the same size in the frame. 
We’ve moved either further or closer to our subject and changed the focal length of the lens to change our background, since different focal lengths change the background perspective behind the subject. Across the valley, more than a mile away, rose a mountain with the last of the winter’s patches of snow on its steep sides. A 200mm lens, the shortest lens used in this series of pohtos, sees a lot of the background. You can see the snow on the far mountain, though it’s not clear if the white blobs are snow, clouds, or cartoon thoughts coming from the marmot.
Brent changed to a 300mm lens and moved farther back from the marmot to keep him about the same size in the frame. The 300mm lens sees a bit narrower perspective than the 200mm, so the white snow is just a blurry bit in the corner. Moving even further back, Brent changed to a 500mm lens with its very narrow perspective and the white snow packs are gone and the marmot is isolated against a green background.
In this example, we set up a dried teasal in the backyard. A wider angle lens like a 55mm requires a close working distance to photograph the subject and, as it sees a wider perspective, captures a lot of background. We see the out-of-focus parking lot and buildings in behind as well as the green grass. By moving backward from the subject, keeping it the same size in our viewfinder and not changing the exposure, we increase the magnification by using a longer lens such as a 200mm. Longer lenses narrow their view so you see a narrower perspective of the background. Now, only the green grass in the background is visible, isolating the subject against a neutral and undistracting background. Using a longer lens can help you to choose your background.
Pay close attention to the interaction between the subject and the background. From the earliest moments of life, most animals and humans are taught to watch the eyes. The eyes send and receive messages constantly, warning of friend or foe, and ensuring survival. The eyes play two crucial roles in the photographic composition for backgrounds. Eyes in the photograph attract the immediate attention of the viewer and tell them where to look, and the way a viewer’s eyes move around a photograph adds to the artistic quality of the photograph.
Viewers look at eyes. They pay attention to how they look and where they look. If the subject is looking at the viewer, the direction of the view is outwards. If the subject is looking at the foreground or background of the photograph, the viewer will follow the subject’s eye direction and look there. What is the subject looking at? What will the viewer look at? This becomes your second subject. Is it at some element that is part of the story, like a child looking at a flower, or is the subject looking at a distracting element that shouldn’t be in the photograph, calling the attention away from the subject and towards the unwanted element?
Are you commited to this background? Can you move your subject or move with your subject to a more interesting background choice? By simply changing your position, you can completely change the background. Step to the side, drop to your knees, stand taller, find a position that shifts the background to improve it. Re-examine the background carefully within the viewfinder as repositioning can invite new intruders into your frame. If you are limited in your movement, can the background be moved? In the two photographs shown here of fruit tree blossoms, a 
simple step to the side changed the background completely, from using the other blossoms in the tree as the background to the out-of-focus green grass beyond the tree as the background. The background impacts the story and the character of the photograph.
There are many ways to remove the background by changing the focal length of your lens, adjusting the aperture and depth of field, or simply recomposing so the background is minimized or gone, with all the attention on your subject. There are many times when you don’t want any form of background within your composition, such as when photographing wildlife within a cluttered zoo or enclosure area or working on flowers next to a busy road or housing project. Sometimes you don’t want the clutter in the background to intrude and all you want is the subject. Then fill the frame with the subject or use a technique that reduces the background to a non-event – invisible and undistracting to the viewer.
More than anything, the simpler your photograph, the less subjects and less distractions, the more impressive and powerful it is. Sometimes a dozen roses is a powerful statement, but a single rose can mean even more. Look at how you can adjust the background and foreground to simplify your subject, making it stand alone or be framed by its surroundings and not overwhelmed. It can be balanced against everything else in your viewfinder. Just remember, the simpler the better.
Part of the joy of writing about travel is sharing the knowledge gained from the experience, especially if it is novel – or at least expressed in a new way.
Professional nature and travel photographers are constantly battling the syndrome called “Tripod Holes”. At some spectacular scenic vista, everyone who has ever seen the “first” magical images taken from that vantage point has to place their tripod in the “same holes” as those first photographers, emulating the masters. The famous Tunnel View of Yosemite’s El Capitan and Half Dome is one such Tripod Hole Spot. Writers can get caught in the same tripod holes as they struggle to describe the same places described so many times before. The challenge for both photographers and writers is to step away from the holes and find a new perspective.
Two of our dearest friends come to Israel to explore the country for the first time, and us for the last time for a while, just before we left Israel a few months ago. It was great having them there and made the process of leaving the country much easier. They were also with us when the confirmation came through that our next stop was Alabama. The husband was born and raised in Alabama, so he promised us that the minute we got back, he would flood our email inbox with jokes and lessons about life in Alabama. And he continues to keep his promise. Al, you are just too much!
In a few days we will be starting a series called