MikeMooreMedia
Carla Cahill, Nature Photographer 10.10.24
Mike Moore Media. Little something different on this podcast. I'm talking to a family member, which I don't do, usually other folks, and I don't think I've ever done this before. So this is going to be fun. I'm talking to Carla Cahill, my first cousin. She's out in California, but we go back to our childhood days and when she was in Norfolk, Virginia, we'll get into all that in a minute. But first let me say, "Hello to Carla, hey, how you doing?" Hi, Mike, and I want to say that you were always my favorite cousin because you were about six years older than me and I was 10 and you were 16 and you always had a reel-to-reel in your bedroom and that was my first exposure to technology and you let me play with that reel-to-reel. It was really fun. Oh, wow, well that's a flashback, yeah, and you know, believe it or not, I never throw away anything. I still have that same reel-to-reel machine, but I don't use it. It's kind of stored away in the basement somewhere, but yeah. So wow, what a good memory that is. So thanks for reminding me of that, yeah. That must be an antique, you could probably sell it for a lot of money. Well I'll have to check on that, yeah, that might be an idea, yeah. It's a Sony, it's a good name brand. Oh wow. Yeah, I always like those good Sony's and pioneers and all that, yeah. So yeah, I wanted to, before we get into some things about you and what you're doing, first tell me, you're in California, so how do you say the name of where you live? I live in Ojai, it's spelled O-J-A-I, and it's a Shumosh word which means Valley of the Moon. Oh, Ojai, okay, well now that we know where you are, so we're doing this in the noon hour here, so it's at nine o'clock hour out there, but I want to tell everybody kind of a connection here because your dad, my uncle Carl, and my mother were brothers and sisters, brother and sister, and they were the only two in that family, and then, of course, we have your aunt Lee, and your father and mother were reporters there in Norfolk, your dad. I really idolized him way back in my childhood because he was a famous newspaper man, everybody knew Carl Cahill, followed his reporting and his writings, and then, and you just had to remind me before we started this podcast that your mom was also a reporter, I knew she was a writer, and how they met, so tell us that story real quick. Well, they both, I believe it was Morehead City where they met, I'm not 100% confident that they were working on the same newspaper together, and that's how they met. Okay. And then they eventually moved to Virginia, I'm not, and they got married, I believe, in Virginia, and they both worked for the Virginian pilot, Ledger Star, the Ledger Star was an afternoon noise newspaper, which no longer exists, but that's pretty much the papers they worked for, they're there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, a whole different world in the newspaper business now, that's for sure, but that was a time when, you know, your dad's byline Carl Cahill was important, and he was well known, and I remember going around visiting up there and, you know, just kind of his haunts and the places that he went, I always thought that was just really cool, yeah. But at any rate, and my mother and brother there, very close, growing up, and kept that connection all through their life, and you and I have kind of reconnected here just recently, but I know you are very passionate about nature and outdoors and your photography work, and all of those things that mean so much to you, but, and I see your videos, your bike videos, and those are always fun to watch, but before I forget, if someone wants to check out your photography, where can we find that? You know, I used to have a website, and I recently got rid of it for a couple of reasons, one is, well, I won't get into it, it's just complicated to upload and download and remove things from that particular, I was using WIC, this is a bad advertisement for WIC. So I'm exploring some other methods to do that, but in the meantime, if you're on Instagram, if you just look for Carla Cahill, and you'll see my, I post just photographs there and some videos on there, so that is a good place to find them, and on Facebook, same thing, Carla Cahill and Ohai, O-J-A-I, and I make my photographs and videos public, so anybody can view them. Oh, wonderful, okay, and your photography, did that, it kind of maybe inherit that from your, your parents perhaps? Well, it's interesting, my father always had a camera, and he actually bought some, he's always buying things from pawn shops, he bought some used dark room equipment from a pawn shop so he could develop black and white, so he got into that for a while, and he was always taking pictures of me and taking pictures of everybody, so it's possible that it feels rated, you know, subliminally in me, and I pretty much always had a camera as well, although it used to be point and shoot, and now I have a Sony A7R for mirrorless camera, it's a very powerful machine, actually, I mean, it's just, it's magnificent, and I have two lenses, I have a 200 to 600 millimeter zoom, so I can get close-ups of the eagle flying, and I have a 2470 wide angle, so I can get landscapes and portraits and that type of thing, and I really started to take off in 2011, I believe, that's when I got removable lenses and DSLR cameras. What kind of photography do you enjoy most, what do you enjoy shooting? Well, it's becoming mixed now, I love wildlife photography, I guess that's really my passion because where I live in Ohio is pretty much a wilderness, we have mount lines and bobcats and coyotes, and I've actually gotten captured coyotes and bobcats in my camera, I haven't yet encountered a mount line for a bear, we have lots of bears, they're on my bucket list, but recently this past weekend I went to, I had participated in a Scott Kelby photo walk, which is a worldwide event that takes place in lots of countries and in California alone, I think it was six or seven cities participated, and so Vintura promenade of the Vintura boardwalk was the place where we met, and because it was a foggy cloudy day, I go this is perfect for black and white, it's a black and white day, so I took a whole series of black and white photographs which I kind of like, so most people aren't really attracted to black and white because they like color, you know, and black and white is more, I guess, like fine art photography, so I'm kind of playing around with that as well. Well it has its place, and sometimes I'm not a photographer, I have some photographer friends, but black and white sometimes is better than color, yeah, I find that, yeah, okay, all right, so the Scott Kelby photo walk, so what are some shots or some of those up on your Facebook and Instagram pages now, they are, they are, and I gave them all a title, one word title, for example, one was a photograph of, behind to the side, these people did not know I was taking their pictures, sitting on a bench overlooking the very foggy, dense foggy sky with the pier faintly in the background, and I titled that solitude, and then I took another one of a surfer standing in the water with a surfboard, largest fan of very foggy water with a foggy pier in the background, and I titled that one longing, and then I had a few where people were interacting, like these two guys on a bike with fishing poles were, you know, putting their fists together, you know, like a, you know, I said a shaking hands, you do your fists, and that, and there were a couple, one another one, two surfers, they were interacting, and I titled those interpersonal, yeah, I'm looking at these photos now on Instagram, yeah, I'm looking at these, oh these are really cool, oh thanks, thank you, yeah, and they're actually, they're owned, Kelby, Scott Kelby, worldwide photo walk website, there's a play, there's now an online gallery where people that participated can upload their photos, I've already uploaded mine, and right now, for our particular walk, I'm the only one that's uploaded photos, because a lot of people that went, had this idea and expectation of getting a sunrise, one who is going to be foggy, so I didn't even go there, so when you have a certain expectation when you're photographing, forget it, you know, you kind of have to make the day, go with whatever, adapt to what the day is presenting you, sure, that's exactly right, yeah, that can change from minute to minute almost, yeah, yeah, I've always been big on sunrises and sunsets, and I see some beautiful shots here on your Instagram page, yeah, our daughter, Lori, likes to at least a couple of times, three times a year, they're in Ocean City, Maryland, catch a couple of sunrises there on the beach, and they're always just absolutely beautiful, and we have some, this time of the year here, where we are, some some really lovely sunsets, oh, I'm just kind of scrolling down, licking at some of yours, oh, but a lot of these eagle shots, kind of, you get some really good eagle pictures here, Carla. Yeah, I've had a lot of practice with those eagles since, I think, since 2016, I've been photographing, it's a family, it's a male and female, and they return to the same nest all the time, and eagles are very territorial, and every year, pretty much, they have one to two eagles, and last year, they had one eagles, the year before, they had two eagles, and you go there and you watch them catch fish, and sometimes occasionally, I get them carrying a fish, that's my prize shot, when I get them carrying a fish, that's what you always want to capture, and there are a few other photographers that show up there as well, of course, and so, sometimes we ask each other where the eagle is, and have you seen them today, and did I miss him, and yesterday, I missed a flight shot, because right as the eagle was about to launch, the fly started buzzing in my ear, and it totally distracted me and that's when the eagle turns off, so, yeah, you kind of got to roll with the punches. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, I want everyone to check out your beautiful photography here, Carly K. Hill on Instagram, and on Facebook, and you said again, it is Carly K. Hill at Ojai, O-J-A-I, right. Yeah, O-J-A-I. Okay, okay, I'm going to make sure that. And what I have to look forward to this weekend, I'm hoping there's a comment now. Oh, okay. And I did capture Neo-Wise the comment a couple years ago, but that was a brighter comment and it was higher above the horizon. This comment is called the Comet C2023, I think, and it has a long lat name to go with it, too, but it's going to be very low on the horizon, so I have a very short window to capture it before it steps, so I'm not sure how that's going to happen, but I'm going to try to capture that comment. Okay, well, good luck with the Comet. Okay, before our time completely gets away, wow, I wanted to talk about your most recent trip to Australia, not your first, so I kind of give us an overview of that, Carla. Okay, since 1992 is the first time I went, there's a speaker, Prem Rawat, P-R-E-M-R-A-W-A-T, and he holds, and of course, he does events around the world, and he just did one yesterday and see old South Korea, it's the first time he's ever been there, but those are smaller events. This one in Australia is in an outback, it's not really an outback because the real outbacks are in the middle of Australia, but it's a wild area where there are wallabies and koalas and kangaroos and these odd-looking big lizard-type things, I'm not sure what they're called, and it's in a big open space and there's an open amphitheater and in times pass up to 5,000 people have come from around the world, this time it was 2,700 people from 58 countries, and I was one of four event photographers there, and so I now take pictures of the Milky Way, which in Australia is a different side of the Milky Way, so it kind of looks upside down, which is kind of cool, and when I capture the Milky Way in the northern hemisphere, I was photographing the people there and the speaker, as he was speaking about, he speaks of, it's basically inner peace, conference on inner peace, which is really nice, and afterwards, they compiled, after the five-day event, there were nine events basically, two a day almost, they compiled a slideshow of some of the photographs that we all took and contributed to, and quite a few of them were mine, I was pleased to say, and one of the people that was one of the organizers said to me that my photographs are her favorite ones, because I photographed it, local events too, well, local meaning in Boston and Asheville and Denver photographed those events too, and so, and I've noticed that they do use more of my photographs, I think, I know this sounds strange, but I think photographing the eagles really helped me with that, because you just focus, and in a way, human beings are less predictable than animals to me, an animal is pretty predictable, you know, they're going to fly out, you know, they're going to feed their young, you know, and they almost have a schedule, but people are less predictable than what they do, and they're facial expressions, so I just learn to be patient, and I don't take, even though I have my cameras, I don't do consecutive shooting, I don't do consecutive shots, I focus, wait for the speaker to pause, I take the picture, focus, wait for the speaker to pause, take the picture, and I usually every single one of my pictures comes out with a good expression, because you don't just want a clear expression, you want a flattering expression, you want a, you know, you want a person to be flattering as well, and because when you take pictures, you can get some really odd expressions of people, which don't look very well, because I just, yeah, so you just have to have, or I just have to have a lot of patience, and just really concentrate and be very focused, yeah, I'm on your, your Facebook page now, looking at, this is what I was talking about earlier, your bike ride, 11 mile bike ride, oh my gosh, and you've condensed it into about a minute and a half, but this, this is really cool, but I see some of these pictures here from Ventura here on your, on your Facebook page, and hummingbird shots in your, in your backyard, and I stepped out earlier to go get a bite of breakfast, and there was this huge praying madness on our front porch, and you'll appreciate this, years and years ago, my father, stepfather, Milton actually brought a nest, praying menace nest here to the house, way, way back when we first moved here, and when Annette and I got married, and he, he planted a lot of shrubbery around the house, and all kinds of stuff, not, that's not here anymore, it's all been redone, but, but he was determined that we would have, he loved praying manaces, and so he was determined that they were so good for their yard, the garden, everything, and that he would make sure we had praying manace families here, and so we, we actually, you know, they hatched here, and we had, you know, they were here and little babies and everything else, we saw them for years and years and haven't seen a lot of them lately, but every time I see one, I automatically think of him, it's another generation from, from those praying, the praying manace nest that he brought from Spencer, so I'm just about sure that that's, that's a relative, distant relative this morning, and I just took a quick shot on the front porch, and I'll send it to you here, but, but it's a, it's a neat little picture of the praying man who Scott, she's about four inches long, but what really makes it neat and neat is because the sun, well, your sun was, the shadow of the praying manace's head is better than the picture of the praying manace, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah, I knew it, I know what you're saying, exactly. Yeah, so, yeah, it, it kind of that, that just, that silhouette that kind of made the picture even better, but, I don't know if I'll do anything with it, I'll probably post it on somewhere at some point, but, you know, our time is up, but we're going to take another extra minute or so, because I'm so glad we got to connect, I said some time back, we would do this, and it's taken me a long time to finally make it happen. Thank you for your patience about like waiting for a bird, and the right, the right time. Well, it was a lot of fun actually. Yeah, yeah, okay. So, the, the comet is your, your next thing you're focusing on. That, and we may possibly get the aurora borealis down here, oh, oh, oh, oh, really? There are solar flares going on, and then may I did capture them down here, which is highly unusual for them to be this far south, and it's possible, if it's not cloudy, it's a little cloudy today, I may check those out as well. Great, okay, well, you know, this has been fun to kind of reconnect here, and just kind of catch up on what you're doing after many, many years, and maybe we'll do this again sometime. Hey, the next time to go to Australia, because you've been so many times now, maybe we should do a podcast from Australia. That would be, yeah, that their time is really different. I know, it's crazy there, yeah, so it would have to, it'd say it's noon here on the east coast. What time? It's, they're, they're like 17 hours ahead, the next day. 17 ahead, wow, okay. The next day, the next day. The next day. They're only only like five hours behind, but it's the next day, so it makes it 17 hours ahead. I've never been, I've never been that far from home. Is that hard to get adjusted to make that trip? Oh, yeah, you never really, I mean, I was only there for 10 days, so it's a 15 hour flight. Going there's not too bad, but when you repeat it again, within 10 days, flying back, another 15 hours, and then adjusting from being back here, that, that's more difficult actually. Yeah, yeah, well, I know you've, you've been there a number of times, and that's always a fun trip, it sounds like, well, maybe we'll have a chance to connect again. Carl, this has been fun, thank you, and, and for your good, your passion with your photography work and, and sharing that with, with us, so we can enjoy it too. That's wonderful. Yeah, and if anybody wants to buy a print, just message me. Oh, yeah. Okay, good. Yeah, so we can tell us again, I've written it down and I've mentioned it here, but you tell us again, where we can find your beautiful nature photography on Instagram, Carla Cahill, and on Facebook, Carla Cahill, and there are other Carla Cahill, believe it or not. Yeah, there are. So mine has a, for one of the profile pictures, is a picture of me with a camera, so that should help, and also you can look for Ohai, the city. Oh, J-A-I. Okay. Right. All right, Carla, thanks a lot for everything, and, and the, and the good memories going back to way, way back, all, all, all the best, and we'll, we'll try to connect again soon. Okay. All right. You do too. All right. Bye bye. All right. There. Oh, wow. There, my, my first cousin, and that's Carla Cahill, I wanted you to hear a little bit about her and a little family connection there, but I normally don't do, and proud of her, and some, yeah, good memories for sure with her mom and dad, my, my uncle Carl and her Aunt Lee, and her Aunt Lee, always so kind to cause the uncle Carl's been, and gone a long time. Aunt Lee just just recently died not too long ago, and that's how Carla and I have kind of reconnected here, but yeah, her mom always was good to send cards at special times in the year and pictures, and she shared a lot of old black and white photos mainly of some family things from the past that I'd never seen, and always good to get that little packet of photos from her too. So, okay, and that's our program for today with our photographer, Cousin, again, go to Instagram, Carla, C-A-R-A, C-A-R-A, Cahill, C-A-H-I-L-L, Carla Cahill, Instagram, and Facebook, Carla Cahill, @ohai, O-J-A-I. [BLANK_AUDIO]