Archive for July, 2009
July 31, 2009 – Mt. Shuksan and Picture Lake
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on July 31, 2009
Mt. Shuksan and Picture Lake
Friday, July 31, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1
Once again, I’ve got to send out a big welcome to all of today’s new subscribers. We’re up to 224 now, so welcome, welcome, welcome!
When we passed 100, I told number 100 that she could pick out today’s picture, so this is the one she chose. It’s pretty similar to another picture from a month or so ago, but it’s still worth talking about.
This is Mt. Shuksan and (the very aptly named) Picture Lake. It’s in the Heather Meadows Recreation Area, just outside of North Cascades National Park in Washington State. It’s somewhat interesting to note that I’m standing about a quarter of a mile from what serves as the parking lot for the Mt. Baker ski area in the winter. This place gets A LOT of snow in the winter. In fact, Mt. Baker holds the world record for snowfall in one season, with 1,140 inches (29 meters, 95 feet) of snow in the 1998-99 season. As you can imagine, that amount of snow takes quite awhile to melt each year, so it’s well into the summer (sometimes into late August) until this area is snow-free.
It’s pretty simple to get a fantastic picture from this spot. Just about any time of day is great, but I’ve found that the ideal time is around 4 or 5 pm. The sun at that point is shining directly on the mountain, and the daytime breezes are usually starting to settle, so you start to get a really nice mirror-like reflection. (Not as much so in this picture as in several others I have, but hey, this was the one that was picked. What am I going to do, pick my own picture or something? Pshaw.)
Quickly worth noting: the other picture that I mentioned I’ve already posted was taken about 4 or 5 years later (almost to the day). I figured it would be worth heading back up there since I had much better equipment than I had the first time around, and the weather conditions were working out to be almost identical. Okay, now that that’s been said…
One of the themes I’ve touched on several times in the past was that you don’t need a big fancy camera to get some fantastic pictures. Don’t get me wrong, having a big fancy camera is awesome, and no, you can’t have mine. There are definitely pictures you can get with that type of camera that you can’t get otherwise. But just because you don’t have one doesn’t mean you can’t still get fantastic pictures. This was taken back in 2002. At that time, I usually carried two cameras with me: my old 35mm fully-manual SLR, and my **2 megapixel** pocket point-and-shoot. The idea was, since it was so much easier to take pictures with the point and shoot, and since I didn’t have the limitation of only a set number of pictures on a roll, I’d take most of my pictures with that one. Then, if there was a picture that I thought I’d potentially want to enlarge later, I’d bust out the 35mm.
This picture was actually the first big step I took toward fully adopting digital, and tossing the 35mm in a box in the basement. I took this scene with both cameras, and found that I ACTUALLY LIKED THE DIGITAL ONE BETTER. As in, the picture from the stupid little pocket sized camera with only 2 megapixels and the little tiny lens gave me a result that I felt was at least as good as that from the SLR. I enlarged both of them up to 12×18, and they both looked fantastic. This went against everything I had thought I “knew” about digital up to that point. It was a really earth-shattering moment for me. Since then, of course, I’ve gone through a whole smattering of cameras: a 3.2 megapixel (Canon), a 5 megapixel (Canon), an 8 megapixel (Fuji), a 7 megapixel (Canon), another 8 megapixel (SLR – Canon), and.. I’m losing interest in the list. Whatever. There were a lot of them. That’s the point. But after taking this picture and seeing the results, I only ever busted out the 35mm SLR a couple more times, but even then I knew that it was over between us.
So, don’t use your lack of expensive equipment as an excuse. Just take pictures. The concepts are all the same no matter what you’re using. The most important things are the composition and the exposure, and even those can be tweaked easily after the fact if you’re shooting digital. There, how’s that for inspirational? 
Don’t get used to it, I’ll be grumpy again next week.
Have a great weekend! And tell your friends!! (Also, for the new folks: You can also follow the picture of the day at http://davefry.net/potd – the quality of the images themselves is much higher over there, since they don’t have to go through Facebook’s shrink-it-down-for-web-viewing cycle.)
Map: http://bit.ly/425qlY
Notes: Canon PowerShot S200 (Point and Shoot). Details unavailable.
Subscribe to the Picture of the Day via: Popularity: 6%
July 30, 2009 – Olympic National Park
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on July 30, 2009
Mt. Constance and Warrior Peak, Olympic National Park
Thursday, July 30, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=555
First of all, I need to once again say WELCOME to all of the new fans of Dave’s Picture of the Day. This was my 2nd day of running Facebook ads, and we now stand at ** 195 ** !!! Welcome, everyone!
Today’s pictures is one of my all-time favorites, and I was saving it for the day when I finally passed 100 fans. So, turns out that’s today. You’re looking at Mt. Constance and Warrior Peak, on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. I’m fairly sure that all of the mountains you’re looking at are inside the boundary of Olympic National Park, but the point where I was standing isn’t – it’s in the Buckhorn Wilderness, just north of the park.
Many of you already know that I like to use little knobbly trees like that in my foregrounds – they add a lot of character, and they play nicely against the craggy, rocky background that you see in alpine environments. This one was the only tree that was anywhere near us at the time – clearly not an environment that was tree-friendly, so the fact that it was growing there at all was pretty remarkable.
This photo also does a good job of illustrating a situation where you want to deviate from the normal exposure settings suggested by your camera. If you’re using any mode other than full-manual (I use aperture-priority, but I won’t go into that here), your camera will do it’s best to expose the picture “correctly”. (Meaning, it will adjust the aperture, shutter speed, and sometimes ISO (depending on the camera) to try to allow the correct amount of light to reach the sensor (or film), such that it’s exposed properly. Too little light, and the picture will be dark, and some sections may even be completely black. To much light, and all the color will drain out (particularly from the sky), and everything will be too bright. Now, of course, the concept of what’s “correct” is entirely subjective. You can make some blanket statements, like you probably want to limit the amount of the picture that’s totally black or totally white (because that means you’re losing data), but other than that, it’s totally based on preference. (In general, in my opinion every camera I’ve ever used tends to overexpose by just a bit, so the first thing I do when I pick up a camera is to adjust the exposure down by 1/3rd of a stop, but that’s just me.)
Now, that’s all fine and dandy if you’re taking pictures in the middle of the afternoon, but if you’re taking a picture like this one, when it’s clear that it’s just before twilight, having the picture turn out kind of dark is actually desirable, because *that’s what it actually looked like*. So, to more accurately recreate the feeling of the moment in the image, it was necessary to step back the exposure almost a full 2 stops. (You can do this via the manual mode of most point-and-shoots, but even if you can’t, you can simulate it by pointing the camera at a bright point – the sky – and holding the shutter button down halfway to “lock” the exposure settings.) This also had the added benefit of bringing out the nice blues and purples in the sky, since if the camera had been able to use the exposure that it wanted, the sky would have turned out completely white. (Although you’d then be able to see more of the detail in the nearby mountains too.)
For tomorrow, I decided to let the person who was the 100th fan to sign up (Heather Wotton) to pick one. She picked one that’s really similar to another one I already posted, but I suppose that’s excusable, given that she just signed up. 
So, see you all then!
Map: http://bit.ly/bJlJv
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Quantaray 70-300 mm lens. 1/400s, f/8.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 70mm.
Popularity: 11%
July 29, 2009 – Harts Pass, PCT
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on July 29, 2009
Pacific Crest Trail near Harts Pass
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=950
Before I get to today’s picture, I’ve got some news for everyone: yesterday I decided to go ahead and start buying Facebook ads for my page! I’m not sure what led me to decide to do that, but it’s probably some combination of boredom and the heat getting to my brain. BUT – they actually worked, and I got a whole *army* (well, a small one) of new fans! Woooo! (With Mr. Feker Belay leading the charge and being the first one to click on my ad) Welcome everyone!! It didn’t last too long though – it only took about an hour to max out my daily budget, which is a whopping buck fifty.
Right, so, the picture.
This was taken along the Pacific Crest Trail near Harts Pass. Harts Pass is at the end of a 25-ish mile forest road that basically parallels Highway 20 in Washington State (the highway that takes you through North Cascades National Park), but runs just north of the park boundary. It’s notable because you can drive up to 6200 feet, which is pretty rare in Washington, it’s right up there near treeline, way up in the alpine, and there are great views of some of the rocky, craggy peaks inside the park.
The PCT runs right through there, so it’s a great place for scrubs like me to see it. (While I was on the trail that day, I came across three people who were doing Canada-to-Mexico!) Harts Pass is basically the first real landmark along the trail (if you’re starting from Canada), so all of the thru-hikers I met were only on day 3 of their cross-continental trip. Anyway, it’s really pretty up there, definitely worth checking out.
This picture was right near the beginning of my hike, probably about half a mile from the trailhead. I had slept in the car the night before, so I got a really early start (7 am or so – really early for me, anyway), which worked out really well. As I’ve mentioned several times, the light during the middle of the day can really suck (today was no exception), so the early morning sunshine put a nice warm glow on everything.
The frustrating part of the hike was that my go-to lens, my 28-300 mm do-everything lens with image-stabilization, STOPPED FREAKIN’ FOCUSING RIGHT! It would THINK it was focusing (it would beep and tell me “Yeah, I’m focused, right on that spot over there”, but it would just plain be WAY off.) When you’re as obsessed as I am with taking pictures (that’s honestly the only reason I was up there), it’s truly heartbreaking when your equipment malfunctions. The day turned out to not be a total loss, as I was able to revert to manual focusing, with mixed results. Usually, you should avoid manual focus at all costs if possible, because if you’re even slightly off, you probably won’t realize it until you get home and look at it on the big screen (which is obviously too late to do anything about it). But since focusing is essentially logarithmic (the difference between focusing 5 and 10 feet away is huge, but the difference between focusing 5 and 10 MILES away is basically nothing), as long as I kept my subjects pretty far away, I could mostly get away with it. Also, I bumped up my ISO for most of the day, letting me use smaller apertures, which meant my depth of field was pretty big. So even if my focus point wasn’t exactly on my subject, it was generally close enough. Thus, this picture.
I’ll go ahead and stop here before I take up TOO much room in your news feed, I don’t want to scare away all of these new fans that I literally paid for out of my own pocket. Once again, welcome! (And, as long as I’m going to call out Feker for being the first, I may as well round out the rest of the top 5: Drew Mortvedt, Ryan Rizzuti, Monika Alvarez, and Terina Wahab. Thanks for signing up! That goes for the rest of you too, btw.)
Map: http://bit.ly/1WuypV
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm VC lens. 1/160s, f/7.1, ISO 200. Focal length: 109 mm.
Popularity: 7%
July 28, 2009 – Snoqualmie Falls
Posted by Dave in Picture of the Day, Washington State, Waterfalls on July 28, 2009
Snoqualmie Falls
Tuesday, July 28, 2009.
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=949
Alright, here it is then, that picture of Snoqualmie Falls that I’ve been promising for a week now. See? Not a bad picture, but not really worth the hype. Well, the imagined hype, because I was actually the only one talking about it. Whatever.
You probably also noticed that I didn’t post a picture yesterday. I was pretty busy, so I just didn’t get to it until later, and by then I figured I’d just as well wait until today.
So, Snoqualmie Falls. The falls are about 30-45 minutes out of Seattle, right near the town of… umm… Snoqualmie. There’s a super-nice resort hotel, the Salish Lodge, at the top of the falls. I’m sure it’s a great place to stay (one of the movie award ceremonies a year or two back (not the Oscars.. the Golden Globes or something) gave out a stay as part of the goodie bags they gave to everyone), but it adds an interesting challenge for pictures of the falls. Because, the hotel is RIGHT next to the river. From down here at the bottom, obviously it’s not a problem, but for pictures from up top, you either have to suck it up and accept the fact that you’ll have a hotel in your picture, or you’ve got to get pretty creative with the composure. Also a factor is the fact that there is a hydroelectric power plant there, so a couple hundred feet or so off the top of the falls is some related stuff for that. It can also be composed around, but it’s definitely not ideal. (Well, not ideal for picture taking. I do, however, enjoy electricity, so I’m not going to complain.)
There’s a nice overlook at the top of the falls (you’ll probably eventually see a picture or two from up there – maybe not from the overlook exactly, but somewhere nearby), and there’s a half-mile or so trail that leads down to the bottom of the falls. You have to jump a fence (next to a huge sign talking about how you shouldn’t jump the fence) and scramble down a rocky slope to get down to the rocks next to the river, which is where this was taken. I’m not as much of a rebel as I sound though, there were literally hundreds of people down there. Enough so that it was a serious challenge finding a vantage point without any of them in it.
As long as I’m on the subject of photographic challenges around the falls, here’s another one: waterfalls kick up a lot of mist. And mist gets all over your stuff. Including your camera lens. So I would only be able to take one or two pictures before my lens was basically completely covered with little water droplets. I’d then clear the lens, and have to set up all over again, hopefully getting a picture or two snapped before a breeze came up and drenched me. But, those are the lengths I’m willing to go to for the benefit of you, dear reader.
I went back and forth over which picture to post here today. In this one, you can kind of barely see a faint rainbow in front of the falls. That was actually the 2nd rainbow, and there was a much brighter rainbow below it and to the left. (You can see the very beginning of it just above the rock on the left). So I had a couple other pictures that really emphasized the rainbow. But, it wasn’t really in a location that played well with the falls. So it basically turned into two pictures in one: a picture of a waterfall, and a picture of a rainbow. Still interesting, and striking in many ways, but technically, this one is definitely the better picture. Or that’s how my thinking went anyway.
Map: http://bit.ly/39exMG (I used terrain mode instead of satellite for this one, because the satellite image was worthless.)
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/320s, f/16.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 12%
July 24, 2009 – Whitefish Mountain Resort
Posted by Dave in Picture of the Day, Winter/Snow on July 24, 2009
Flathead Valley from Whitefish Mountain Resort
Friday, July 24, 2009.
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=334
Yeah, the Snoqualmie Falls thing didn’t work out this week, sorry about that. (And now I’ve built it up enough that it’s going to be a big ole’ disappointment when I *do* finally post it. I mean, it’s a fine and dandy photo, but it’s not earth shattering or anything…)
Instead, here’s a picture from a group trip out to Whitefish Mountain Resort (back then it was called Big Mountain Resort) several years ago. Big Mountain is a FANTASTIC place to ski. Definitely in my top 3 all-time. (Along with Mt. Bachelor in Oregon and Schweitzer in Idaho. And as long as I’m naming states, Big Mountain is in Montana, right near Glacier National Park.) It makes for a great trip from Seattle too, because Amtrak takes you right out to Whitefish. It leaves in the afternoon and gets you there at 7am, so you don’t even need a hotel room for that first night. Great stuff.
Not sure if any of you noticed, but I normally do my best to avoid having people appear in my pictures. But, this one turned out so well that I decided to make an exception. From left, that’s Pat Roby, Mark Buckner, and of course my wife Julie. While we were there, they had this crazy inversion which filled the whole valley with these clouds, and left us skiing in the sunshine with jaw-dropping views every way we looked. Pretty incredible trip.
Enjoy the weekend, see you all on Monday!
Map: http://bit.ly/fVsVT
Notes: Canon PowerShot S500 (Point and shoot). 1/500s, f/13.0, ISO unknown.
Popularity: 6%
July 23, 2009 – Shannon Creek
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Picture of the Day on July 23, 2009
Shannon Creek
Thursday, July 23, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=285
I know, I know, yesterday I promised that I’d put up a new picture from Snoqualmie Falls today. But… well… it got late, you see, because I was at this concert.. and.. well… there were a few good ones, and I ran out of time to decide which one to post. (Some of them have rainbows! Unfortunately, none of what are the best overall pictures do.. hmm.. dilemma.)
So instead, here’s a shot of Shannon Creek, which is near Squamish, British Columbia. There’s a nice little park where Shannon Falls is the star of the show (I’ll post a pic of those falls at some point too), but below the falls there’s a nice little path along Shannon Creek.
You’ll notice that most of the stuff in the foreground is pretty dark. Normally I would try to avoid that, because then it’s at risk of becoming wasted space. That’s one of my pet-peeves, an otherwise nice, interesting picture with a large area of non-interesting stuff. Like any rule, it’s made to be broken (minimalism can be dramatic), but if all the stuff in the foreground is too dark to make out, it can suck. Fortunately, in this image, the little spot of sunshine and the subtle green reflecting off the little pool bring out just enough of the foreground to serve as a soothing bit of calmness that I think contrasts nicely against all of the noisy stuff going on in the background (both the turbulent water and all of the thousands of individual leaves on the trees.)
I’ll see about following through with that Snoqualmie Falls pic tomorrow (because I know how excited you all are about it! Yeah, stop laughing.) but I have to pack tonight for my trip this weekend, so it may not happen. Hmm.
Map: http://bit.ly/hCop3
Notes: Canon PowerShot S500 (Point and shoot). 1/80s, f/3.2, ISO unknown.
Popularity: 3%
July 22, 2009 – Rhododendrons
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day on July 22, 2009
Rhododendrons
Wednesday, July 22, 2009.
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=948
Well hello again. These are rhododendrons, and this picture is the product of a quick trip by the Washington Park Arboretum (across the canal from the University of Washington), that I took one nice sunny day this spring when Julie was busy for a few hours. I was just going through the pics from that day last night, and it turns out that I actually a few pretty good ones. You may see a couple of them someday, we’ll see.
Rhododendrons are a pretty fascinating flower. I had never seen them before I moved out to Seattle, I had no idea they existed. Most of the year, they just look like an ordinary bush. (Or tree, in some cases..) But during the spring, all of a sudden they’ll burst out with thousands of these crazy flowers. And they’re BIG flowers too, they’re really incredible. And they come in just about any color you can imagine. Amazing. Also, they’re EVERYWHERE. You don’t realize it until they bloom, but they’re all over the place. I even have a rhodie bush in my backyard, didn’t even realize it!
I don’t think I’ve posted any pictures from Snoqualmie Falls yet, but I was just there last weekend, so I think I’m going to toss up a picture from that tomorrow. Now you’ve got something to look forward to.
Interested in reading more about rhododendrons? There’s a good writeup here on this blog.
Map: http://bit.ly/39EVR
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm VC lens. 1/200s, f/20.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 135mm.
Popularity: 4%
July 21, 2009 – Venice
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Europe, Picture of the Day on July 21, 2009
Venice
Tuesday, July 21, 2009.
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=851
Ahhh Venice. This of course goes back to that same Italy/Switzerland trip that I’ve already posted a few pics from. Venice was where our trip came to an end. (Well, kind of. The next day we still had to travel back across Italy to Milan, where we stayed one more night out in the suburbs before catching an early flight the next day. But.. whatever.)
To recap: we flew in to Milan, stayed a night, then took the train down to Vernazza (in Cinque Terre) for Trevor and Heather’s wedding. Stayed there a few nights, then headed along the coast with T. and H. (again by train) to Monte Carlo (which was actually quite a let-down.) Stayed there two nights/one day, then up to Torino. From there, Trevor and Heather went their own way, and Julie and I rented a car, and played around in the mountains for a week. We had no set itinerary, but we ended up hanging out in the national park (Gran Paradiso) for a couple nights, and crossed over into Switzerland, where we stayed in Zermatt. From there, we drove all the way across Italy (although, driving “all the way across” west-to-east is a lot less significant than north-to-south) to Venice, where we met up again with Treather for one more night (and dropped off the car.) Right, got all that?
We got in to Venice around 1pm, so we had most of the day to fart around. We basically saw the same stuff you’d see on a bus tour, as in, we didn’t get away from that central touristy part at all. (Do they even HAVE a non-touristy part there?) But, Julie had never been there, so she made me promise we’d go at least for a day. Now, about the picture…
Pictures like this can be hard to take. Anytime you’re trying to include both stuff that is illuminated by sunshine AND stuff that’s in shadow, it can be tricky to get right. Usually, either the bright part is overexposed (and all the color is washed out if you can see anything at all), or the shadow part is underexposed (and is completely dark.) I know I’ve covered this before, but it’s such a common issue that it’s worth going over again. Basically, our eyes have a much higher sensitivity range than a camera does. We can see a scene with both bright parts and dark parts, and make out the detail in both. The camera can only handle a much narrower range. So usually you have to make a choice about which part you want to be subject of the picture, and thus which part gets exposed properly. (Or, you can try to average it out, which sometimes works. Or, you can play games like with HDR photography where you basically combine multiple images after the fact, but I haven’t yet gotten into stuff like that…) There’s of course also the option of a split neutral density filter (which is a filter with one half clear, the other half darkened), which can make the difference a lot smaller, but I never think to carry one of those around with me. (Well, the bigger problem is that I don’t actually own one.)
And then, of course, you can just cheat, which is kind of what I did here. Nowadays, there’s lots of software tools that you can use to touch up photos. (Maybe you’ve heard of them? Nah, probably not..) So, assuming your picture doesn’t have too many areas that are either so bright or so dark that you end up losing data (once something is bright enough such that the values for the data point are maxed out, if something right next to it is slightly brighter, you won’t be able to tell the difference, and thus the data is lost), you can use software to lighten or darken certain areas of the picture. I didn’t do that a LOT in this picture (because I’m too cheap to buy Photoshop), but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t play around with it a little bit.
Map (Right, like I remember where in Venice this was…): http://bit.ly/D9Gy4
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/250s, f/6.3, ISO 200. Focal length: 30mm.
Popularity: 23%
July 20, 2009 – Mt. Rainier National Park
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State, Winter/Snow on July 20, 2009
Mt. Rainier from Chinook Pass
Monday, July 20, 2009.
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=940
This was taken last summer, when Julie and I took advantage of a sunny Saturday to go on a drive around the state. This was at the end of June, so I was surprised that there was still that much snow up there. (The original plan was to have a picnic next to the little alpine pond that would otherwise be right at the bottom of the frame.) We had driven east over White Pass (Highway 12) out to Yakima, then back west over Chinook Pass, which takes you through Mt. Rainier National Park. The ideas for 1) a drive and 2) a picnic in the high country came about because of the ridiculously HOT weather. (It topped out at 102 near White Pass – unheard of for western Washington!!). This way, we would be nice and cool in the air conditioned car, and when we DID get out, we’d be so high up that it’d be a lot cooler.
I was just going through these pictures last night (for the photojournal), so I figured I’d go ahead and post one, even though they didn’t turn out quite like I had hoped. But, this one serves as a decent example of how the haze introduced by looking towards the sun can have a nice (instead of detrimental) effect on a picture. If the haze wasn’t there, you wouldn’t be able to see the edges between the dark trees in front, and the ridgeline in the mid-distance. Plus I felt that the increasing haziness did a good job of providing the depth between each of the three main layers. I’ll be honest, I don’t really like how on the right edge of the frame, I cut off the peak on an up-slope. For me, it makes it feel incomplete, like part of the story is missing. As in, if it was cut off on a downslope, it’d be like “Okay, there’s the peak, that’s what I’m looking at”. As it is, it’s like “Okay, there’s one peak, I wonder what’s just to the right there…” A very nitpicky feeling, but that’s the way I am with my pictures. (And when I tell people to “figure out exactly what it is you like and don’t like about the picture so you can keep that in mind next time”, that’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. And, now I’ve got everyone thinking negatively about this picture and focused on its weakest point. Lovely. What a crappy picture.
Map: http://bit.ly/l8nmd
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/800s, f/7.1, ISO 200. Focal length: 100mm.
Popularity: 2%
July 17, 2009 – Crystal Mountain Ski Resort
Posted by Dave in Picture of the Day, Washington State, Winter/Snow on July 17, 2009
Sunnyside, Crystal Mountain Ski Resort
Friday, July 17, 2009.
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=711
I decided to post another skiing picture today, because I feel like I’m ready for winter again. I mean, don’t get me wrong, summer’s nice and all. But this season, I never had a chance to get my “farewell” run in. Usually, on my last day of skiing for the year, I take a few extra moments to appreciate my last run, I pay a little bit more attention to how each turn feels, to try to burn it into my memory, since I know it’ll be a long hot summer before I get to head up on the hill again. This time around, I was very confident that I had at least one or two more days left, so it didn’t even occur to me that the turns would be the last. Sigh.
All that talk about this last season, but yet this picture isn’t even from then. it’s from 2007. This was a nice sunny spring powder day at Crystal Mountain. Well, it started off as a powder day, but as you can imagine, bright sunshine in the springtime meant that the slopes facing the sun (those that face south-ish, like this one, called “Sunnyside”, duh) got pretty sloppy. But that’s fine, you expect that sort of thing in the spring.
Yeah, I guess that’s all I’ve got to say about this one, have a great weekend!
Map: http://bit.ly/19VXQk
Notes: Canon PowerShot SD700 IS. 1/1250s, f/8.0, ISO unknown.
Popularity: 11%
July 16, 2009 – Orange Lily
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day on July 16, 2009
Orange Lily
Thursday, July 16, 2009.
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=508
I apologize for the late post today, I wasn’t able to get to it earlier. And, you’ll notice that I went with another flower today. Yes, that means I don’t really have the time to do a nice fancy writeup today either. But, hey, it’s a pretty flower! And it’s ORANGE! That’s, like, one of my favorite colors! It’s in the top 10 at the very least.
Actually, I just thought of something interesting I can say about it!
So, when you’re taking pictures of things that are really close, such as flowers (macro photography, if you will), you are generally dealing with an *extremely* small depth of field. Part of that is due to the aperture you’re using, but a bigger part of it is the much smaller relative distance of the subject. If you look at a camera lens that has markings on it for focus distance (there’s a fancy term for it, but I’m drawing a blank), you’ll notice that the ratio between how much you crank the focus and the distance to the focus point isn’t constant. Not even close. The first half of the focus gets you from a few feet away to maybe 20 or 30 feet away. (Just tossing these numbers out there without having a camera nearby, so the actual numbers are probably way off, I’m just trying to illustrate a point here.) But the rest of the focus moves it out to 50 feet, 100 feet, 200 feet, out to infinity. The difference between focusing on something that is 300 feet away and something that is 10 miles away is very small. But the difference between focusing on something that is 50 feet away and something that is 5 feet away is HUGE. It all has to do with math and all that, but just remember that the closer something is, the more significant small changes in distance are.
Why am I talking about all of this? Oh, right, flowers. As I was saying, even if you’re using an aperture that should result in a fairly large depth of field, the literal distance that depth of field will cover is pretty small when you’re taking pictures of things that are very close. Small enough that, unless you’re taking a picture of it straight on, you’ll be forced to deal with the question of which part(s) of the flower you want to be in focus. (If the center is in focus, that’s a much different picture than if the front of the petals are in focus, for example.)
As you can see here, in this picture I decided to emphasize all the dangly bits in the middle. (I really wish I was more fluent in talking about flower parts…) I felt that being able to see the crumbly nature of the pollen was more important than being able to make out every last wave and curl of the petals. Is it? Who knows, but that’s the picture I got.
Anyway, all this talk has made me hungry. Fortunately, I found a cake with lilies on it. Perfect?
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Quantaray 70-300 mm lens. 1/640s, f/7.1, ISO 100. Focal length: 183mm.
Popularity: 2%
July 15, 2009 – Diablo Lake
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on July 15, 2009
Diablo Lake
Wednesday, July 15, 2009.
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=938
I was sitting on the couch last night wondering what the heck I would use for today’s picture, when I had a brilliant idea: let Julie pick it! So I did. Almost. She actually picked this one: http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=313 , another very similar picture of the same thing, but I actually liked this one better.. So, umm.. sorry honey.
You’re looking at Diablo Lake (sometimes known as Emerald Lake), which is really near, but not quite inside, North Cascades National Park. It’s actually a man-made lake, dammed by Seattle City Light, and it generates quite a bit of power for the city. This was taken from a big viewpoint along Highway 20, which is the road that takes you through the national park. (The road never actually enters the national park boundaries – the park is split in two pieces, one on the north side of the road and one on the south side.)
I stop here every time I drive through the park, and usually I take a picture from this exact spot. Depending on the time of day, it can be a completely different picture. (This was fairly early in the day – later on, you end up looking straight at the sun, which nicely silhouettes the big mountain and the big tree you’re looking at. Those two, together with that little tiny island to the left of the tree, make up the elements of the scene that I usually play with when I’m here.) The lake itself is actually really striking – it’s very very green, almost turquoise. You can’t tell in this picture though. Which actually makes it somewhat odd that I chose this one, because the green-ness of the lake is probably the most striking part of the view. It’s green because of all the glacial meltoff that drains in from the surrounding mountains, all the minerals and such, if you were wondering.
Here’s a couple interesting tidbits about this picture: Not only was it taken with a fairly old point and shoot digicam (a Canon S230 – 3.2 megapixels!), it was shot at a small image size (640 x 480!!). Back then, to save memory card space, I’d take most pictures at 640 x 480, except for the ones I thought I’d potentially be blowing up later – I’d take those at the largest size the camera would support. So I first took this picture, realized it was on small, then took a larger one. But, the larger one was framed somewhat differently (see it here: http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=222 ), and this morning I decided I liked this one better, so I went with it instead.
Map: http://bit.ly/4j05Z
Notes: Canon PowerShot S230 (Point and shoot). 1/125s, f/7.1.
Popularity: 6%