Archive for October, 2009
October 30, 2009 – Whistler Mountain
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Mountains, Picture of the Day on October 30, 2009
Half Note Trail - Whistler Mountain
Friday, October 30, 2009
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1142
What’s up Dan, Diane, Shannon, and my other Facebook reader?! (Richard.) Hello too to my nameless Picture-of-the-day.com readers! And to my Picture-of-the-day.com readers that have names but whose identities I don’t know. And, of course, hello to Will also. Today’s picture was taken near the summit of Whistler Mountain. Julie and I took took the gondola up there to go hiking around, since it’s an easy way to get up to the high country, without having to, you know, walk all the way. This particular little pocket (right along the Half Note trail) was a bit odd because it was all white granite everywhere, whereas most of the rock up there is much darker. Since none of us are geologists, that’s probably not interesting, but there’s still two interesting nuggets in there, so the quota is fulfilled. That’s how I work: I do just enough to get the job done, but I don’t have the drive to do any more.
I used my new new wide angle lens for this shot. I say “new new” because the first time I bought it, it had this weird distortion in the middle, so I had to exchange it for another one. I would normally use a polarizing filter for this kind of shot, so that the clouds would really stand out against the blue sky. But I don’t have one yet for that lens, so that will have to wait until next time I guess.
Summer (and fall) is a great time to visit Whistler. Whistler is hosting the Olympics. The Olympics are cool. I’d say more, but I’ve run out of sentences.
That’s all for today folks, have a great Halloween!
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Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tokina 11-16 mm lens. 1/400s, f/10.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 13 mm.
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October 28, 2009 – Shi Shi Beach
Posted by Dave in Picture of the Day, Tropical/Beaches, Washington State on October 28, 2009
Shi Shi Beach
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1016
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Hello message. Interesting comment about picture. Second interesting comment about picture. Snarky comment. Slightly self-deprecating joke.
Comment about camera gear. Comment about other camera gear that I want.
Tangential commentary. Tangential commentary. Tangential commentary.
Goodbye message and well wishes.
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Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 10-22mm lens. 1/125s, f5.6, ISO 200. Focal length: 10mm.
Popularity: 11%
October 27, 2009 – Picture Lake
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Picture of the Day, Washington State on October 27, 2009
Picture Lake
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=201
Hey everyone. In the past I’ve posted a couple of pictures of the view of Mt. Shuksan with Picture Lake. This is also Picture Lake, but seen from the other side. In fact, if you know where to look, you can see where I took those pictures, on that opposite shore.
I just realized now as I’m writing this that this isn’t the picture I intended to post today. Meh, whatever.
Notes: Canon PowerShot S230 (Point and Shoot). 1/500s, f/2.8.
Popularity: 7%
October 26, 2009 – View from Burroughs Mountain
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on October 26, 2009
View from Burroughs Mountain, Mt. Rainier National Park
Monday, October 26, 2009
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1137
Today’s picture was taken on the way up Burroughs Mountain, in Mt. Rainier National Park. The trail leaves from Sunrise, which is on the eastern side of the park. This was just a few weeks ago – I had hoped to find a hike with some good fall color, but as you can tell, I aimed a bit too high. There was plenty of color a couple thousand feet down (I was about about 7 or 8 thousand feet), but up here it was all well past the peak and covered in a dusting of snow. Oh well, it was still really pretty.
There are of course two ways (well, two EASY ways anyway) to get into the high country in the park – Sunrise and Paradise. Sunrise being, as I mentioned, on the east side of the park (near Crystal Mountain), and Paradise on the south. For whatever reason, I’ve spent much more time at Sunrise than at Paradise. They’re both fantastic, but it’s worth mentioning that if what you’re after is awesome views of Rainier itself, and you’re hiking in the afternoon, you may want to head to Paradise. The sun of course sets in the west, so in the afternoon Rainier is backlit, so it’s much harder to see all the detail of the glaciers and such. But that’s not the point here.
That last sentence sort of implies that there *is* a point here. I’m pretty sure that’s not true. But if there was one, it wouldn’t be that.
Map: http://bit.ly/3HWFBu
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-75 mm lens. 1/500s, f/6.3, ISO 100. Focal length: 62mm.
Popularity: 8%
October 23, 2009 – Frangipani
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Picture of the Day, Tropical/Beaches on October 23, 2009
Frangipani - US Virgin Islands
Friday, October 23, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=454
These are some flowers that I saw while on my honeymoon a few years back. We were in St. Thomas at the time, part of the U.S. Virgin Islands. There’s a huge number of really pretty flowers down there that you won’t see anywhere else. Wait, let me rephrase that. There’s a huge number of flowers down there that *I* won’t see anywhere else. They may very well exist in lots of other places, but they sure as heck don’t exist up here in the Pacific northwest. And I don’t go anywhere, ever. I go days at a time without going outside.
Right, as I was saying. Lots of flowers down there. Pretty ones too. I’d love to go back down there just for that reason alone, much less all of the, you know, other reasons for going to the Caribbean. (I’ve heard there’s a few…) My ham-fisted internet searches led me to believe that these are called “frangipani”, so I’d put the likelihood at around 50-50 that that’s indeed what they are. But we’re going to go with it.
Now, I should probably say something interesting about this picture, right? How about this: it looks like it’s taken like any other flower picture, using a macro-ish lens, from really close up, right? Nope. It was taken with a big ole’ telephoto lens, since I was standing on the patio at our hotel, and the tree with the flowers was down below me. Yeeeeeaaaah, that’s interesting. You don’t even KNOW how interesting that is, that’s how interesting it is.
Have a great weekend everyone, try not to break the little tips off your shoelaces.
Details: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Quantaray 70-300 mm lens. 1/250s, f6.3, ISO 400. Focal length 248 mm.
Popularity: 14%
October 22, 2009 – A Bit of Color
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Fall Color, Macro, Picture of the Day on October 22, 2009
A bit of color
Thursday, October 22, 2009
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Hey everyone! It’s still fall out there, so here’s a bit more color for ya. Taking pictures of good fall color is harder than it should be, or at least it seems that way to me. It’s so beautiful to just look at, so my gut instinct is that it should just naturally make for an effortless great picture. But it never quite seems to work out that way.
You of course need to decide what kind of role the leaves are going to play in the picture. Are they going to be the subject? Or are they going to just help set the scene? Are you going to try to emphasize the leaves themselves? Or focus more on the tree (or bush.. or whatever) as a whole? The amount of detail in a tree that’s changing for the season is both a blessing and a curse. There’s a lot of interesting stuff to look at, but it’s way too easy for that to end up just adding too much chaos and complexity to the picture. That just ends up leaving my eye confused. It’s a fine line between having that much detail enhance a picture, and having it just give the person looking a headache.
This picture is obviously going the “color as subject” route. I keep walking around and seeing individual leaves that are just astoundingly beautiful, with sometimes 3 or 4 distinct colors. There’s got to be SOME way of turning that into a great picture, but it never quite turns out the way I want it to. It’s hard to have it tell a story, instead of just saying “oh, yeah, there was this leaf there.” I guess what I’m trying to get at is, it’s hard to present it all such that the viewer’s eye is definitively drawn to a distinct subject, instead of just perceiving the photo as a jumble of lines and colors that aren’t really coherent. I’ve seen some really fantastic examples, and every time I do, it just seems like it should be so easy. When I wrote that last sentence, I was visualizing this picture that my friend Nina took, it’s got this brilliant red leaf all alone on a bunch of gravel. So simple, yet so maddeningly hard to capture. I’ll try to track down a link to it, you really should see it.
Not really applicable to this picture in particular, but I also have trouble when I try to capture a really pretty tree when I see one. When I do see one, it instantly just puts me in that fall state of mind, which I love. So I try to capture that in pictures, I want a picture that recreates that mood. But I almost always just end up with either a shot that contains a pretty tree along with a bunch of boring ordinary stuff like power lines and/or buildings, or I get a shot looking up at a tree, which when I look at it, makes me say “yup, looking up at a tree”, but it doesn’t put me in the mood like I’m looking for.
Man, I’m afraid to go back and read all that crap I just wrote. I honestly don’t even know if I used complete sentences or not. I’m running on 2 hours of sleep here, and I was interrupted twice. Meh, maybe it makes sense, maybe not. The sheer number of words I used sure looks impressive, so I’m sticking with what I got. See you all tomorrow!
Details: Canon EOS Rebel T1i. Tamron 28-75 mm lens. 1/200s, f3.5, ISO 100. Focal length: 68 mm.
Popularity: 7%
October 21, 2009 – Mt. Baker
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on October 21, 2009
Mt. Baker from Heather Meadows
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=628
Hey everyone. You may have noticed that my Picture of the Day efforts this week were a big fat fail. I’ve been sick the last couple days, and absurdly busy. But, I didn’t want to let it slip three days in a row, so here’s a pic for today.
This is Mt. Baker, in northern Washington State. It’s a big volcanic peak, just like Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood, and several others that stretch along the Pacific crest from California to British Columbia. Not much else to say here, and I’ve got to get back to work. Enjoy!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, 18-55 mm kit lens. 1/400s, f5.6, ISO 200. Focal length: 22 mm.
Popularity: 4%
October 16, 2009 – Heather Meadows
Posted by Dave in Fall Color, Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on October 16, 2009
Artist Ridge trail - Heather Meadows
Friday, October 16, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=623
This is the 100th Picture of the Day! Pretty incredible, right? I figured I would have lost interest a LONG time ago. But no, 100 pictures, in 100 days (more or less, not counting weekends…) So far, I’m still doing just fine on the picture supply too. (Sure, I’ve posted a couple duds this week, and will no doubt do so again quite a few times in the future, but hey, without the crappy ones, how would you recognize the good ones??)
I started this knowing that there would certainly come a day when I would just run out of usable pictures. Obviously reusing them is an option, one that I haven’t ruled out, but it feels kind of wrong. Of course, I can push that day back by continuing to take more pictures, but if I add fewer than 5 to the pile every week, that doesn’t solve the root problem. Overall this summer I did a decent job keeping the pile about the same size. But this winter may be tough. It’s a lot harder to get out in the winter, and even when I can, the weather tends to suck (out here anyway.) We’ll see how it goes I guess. As it is, I think I’ve got at least another hundred in me, give or take a couple.
Here’s how the stats are looking: I’ve got 361 fans on Facebook. The majority of those arrived via the Facebook ads that I was buying for awhile (I bought ads for about a week, but that was awhile ago…) I’m not actually sure how many of those folks actually ever see any of the pictures though, they’re certainly quiet on the comment/like threads. On http://picture-of-the-day.com, I’ve got 17 more people who check the RSS feed every day. That’s pretty cool. I know one of them is Will Cothen. Because Will Cothen is cool. Will Cothen also just had a baby. Congrats Will Cothen!
Anyway, here’s today’s picture. It’s from Heather Meadows, near Mt. Baker, just outside the boundary of North Cascades National Park, in Washington state. I’ve posted a couple pictures from there before. In the winter, this spot would be under about 20 feet of snow, solidly in the backcountry of the ski area at Mt. Baker. In fact, even as late as July it’s still usually buried several feet deep. But it’s got some nice colors come late September. Lots of blueberries too, good stuff. It’s a great day trip, heading up there. It takes about 3 or 3 and a half hours to drive up there, but there’s a number of little trails that you can knock off with just an afternoon (this photo is from one of the short ones – the Artist Ridge trail). There are of course longer trails too, some of which cross the boundary into the national park, some of which head toward Mt. Baker itself. Somehow I always seem to end up there at least once a year, which is nothing to complain about.
That’s it for today, have a great weekend, and enjoy the next 100 pictures!
Canon EOS Rebel XT, 18-55 mm kit lens. 1/320s, f7.1, ISO 200, focal length: 31mm.
Popularity: 3%
October 15, 2009 – Snoqualmie Falls
Posted by Dave in Picture of the Day, Washington State, Waterfalls on October 15, 2009
Snoqualmie Falls
Thursday, October 15, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=910
This isn’t the first picture I’ve posted of Snoqualmie Falls, but it is the most recent. Not the most recent picture of the falls, but the one I’ve posted most recently. Unless you’re reading this sometime after Thursday, October 15, 2009, after I’ve posted another picture of Snoqualmie Falls, because then it won’t be any more.
The last photo I posted from the falls (here: http://picture-of-the-day.com/?p=133 ) was taken during the late summer. Summers are dry here in normal years, and this year was exceptionally so. So at that time, the flow was understandably fairly low. This, however, is what the falls look like in the spring, ripe with snowmelt. I didn’t have time on the day I took this picture, but I would have loved to head down to the bottom to see what they looked like from that vantage point. Maybe next spring I will.
I’m going to start including some of the specs from these pictures down at the bottom, when they are available. I don’t actually keep track of this stuff, but fortunately most of it is in the EXIF data in the image files themselves. How thoughtful. I’ll probably start going back and updating older entries too.
Details: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm VC lens, 1/200s, f11.0, ISO 100, focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 12%
October 14, 2009 – Manarola
Posted by Dave in Europe, Picture of the Day on October 14, 2009
Manarola, Cinque Terre, Italy
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=745
Today’s picture takes us back to Cinque Terre, in northern Italy. If you recall, Julie and I were there a few years back to see our buddies Trevor and Heather get married. (To each other, as it turns out.) We were staying in Vernazza, but this picture is from two towns down the coast, Manarola. Trevor and I were hanging out there a few hours before the wedding. I mean, what better activity on the day you’re supposed to get married than a little bit of sightseeing, right?
The Cinque Terre towns are all built into the cliffs along the Mediterranean coast. The buildings are all crammed together, all painted really bright colors, with little tiny alleyways and staircases in between. Just simply walking around the little towns was an experience unlike anything I had before. It’s magical, really.
Now, a few notes about the picture itself… As you probably realize, I’m primarily interested in landscape photography. I have very little interest in pictures of buildings and such, so consequently I have very little experience and skill taking them. I’m a horrible city tourist, because to me, a city is a city. I’m typically much more interested in seeing the landscape surrounding a city than the physical buildings that make up the city itself. While I was here, walking around these little villages, I of course tried to get the best pictures I could, but as I mentioned, I haven’t developed those instincts for what makes a great shot and what doesn’t. So I did some experimenting, with some good results, and some … not so much. I can’t decide how I feel about this one in particular. There’s definitely good parts to it (the tightly jumbled, chaotic-yet-orderly buildings, the vibrant colors, the focus on the sunny patio), but there’s other parts that are ho-hum (the cheeseball fake texture on the right side, the ugly gutter drain, the fact that I cut off that turquoise building at an awkward spot, etc). But this is how it works – you take a picture that’s pretty good, decide what the good parts are, and figure out how, next time, you can cut down on the not so good parts, so that the next picture you take will be that much closer to being great.
And that idea doesn’t just apply to your own photos either. If you’re trying to improve as a photographer (I certainly am), every time you look at a photo, figure out what you like about it, and what you don’t. You can get a lot of great ideas for your own pictures by looking at what other people have come up with. I keep harping on this idea, because it’s really the best way I’ve come up with to improve. It’s a gradual, incremental process, with no finish line. Am I a better photographer than I was a few years ago? Without a doubt. Am I as a good of a photographer as I can possibly be? Not even close. I’ll save that for next week!
Map: http://bit.ly/1a1HEC
Popularity: 28%
October 13, 2009 – Merritt Lake Trail
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Fall Color, Picture of the Day, Washington State on October 13, 2009
Fall color on the Merritt Lake trail
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1136
Hey everyone. I mentioned yesterday that I’d try to post a picture from this weekend, and that’s exactly what I did. I took Julie and Wes along with me on the Merritt Lake trail, which is 5 or 10 miles past Stevens Pass along Highway 2. I had been on the trail before (last year at about this time, actually. In fact, I think it was exactly 1 year ago today), but that time Julie stayed home, since she was 8 and a half months pregnant. That’s right, I left my wife who was about to pop at home while I went to go play outside. I am truly that awesome.
Anyway, my first thought was to try out a different trail, but the colors were so nice on this one last year that I kept telling myself how much Julie would like it, so I figured now that she was actually able to come along, we may as well hit it up again, and we weren’t disappointed at all.
Western Washington has some stupendous fall color action, although you wouldn’t know it. We tend to be known much more for pine trees and rain. But we’ve got the whole spectrum out here, everything from brilliant reds to golden yellows to flaming orange. Up in the mountains, it’s usually in little islands within the seas of evergreens, but down in the lowlands we get full hillsides of mind-blowing color that rivals anything New England can boast. You don’t believe me, do you? Yeah, I wouldn’t have either, until I saw it myself. This particular trail is a particularly good place to go for color, since you get to walk through these huge canopies of autumn goodness. Everything from the bushes down by your feet to the tree canopy just glows. It’s fantastic. You’re up at around 4,000 feet, so the trees up there tend to change earlier than those down here at sea level. So we’ve still got a couple weeks yet before we see the best of the show around town.
I hope you all are enjoying this time of year, wherever you are. You should get out and take some pictures, it only comes around once a year. Remember: underexpose by 1/3rd or 2/3rds of a stop, otherwise the color will get washed out. You want those leaves to GLOW. Okay, that’s it for today.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens. 1/200s, f/4.5, ISO 100. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 6%
October 12, 2009 – Aspens in Autumn
Posted by Dave in Colorado, Fall Color, Picture of the Day on October 12, 2009
Aspens in autumn
Monday, October 12, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=680
Hey everyone, it’s fall now! I mean, it’s actually been fall for a little while already, but it really feels like it now. Probably because I took the wife and kid out for a hike yesterday though a bunch of color. Not this color, no. I haven’t gone through the pictures yet, I’ll try to post one tomorrow.
These are aspens, from Colorado. They usually turn around the end of September, and they go golden yellow, like these here. It’s a beautiful sight, well worth a trip out there if you can time it right. (But, they are only at their peak for a weekend or two, so that’s a lot harder than it sounds, especially when you consider that the weather may just suck, in which case you’re out of luck.) They can be really magical though, especially in the late afternoon golden sunshine, when a little breeze rolls through and sets all those little leaves quaking, which makes the trees look like they’re shimmering and sparkling. Good stuff.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Quantaray 70-300mm lens. 1/320s, f/5.6, ISO 100. Focal length: 248mm.
Popularity: 8%