Archive for January, 2010
January 29, 2010 – Baby Ostrich
Posted by Dave in Animals, Picture of the Day on January 29, 2010
Baby Ostrich
Friday, January 29, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=414
Awww, look at that, a baby ostrich. Sorry for the late post! Enjoy your weekend!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Quantaray 70-300 mm lens. 1/100s, f/5.6, ISO 100. Focal length, 300mm.
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Popularity: 32%
January 26, 2010 – Aspens
Posted by Dave in Colorado, Fall Color, Picture of the Day on January 26, 2010
Aspens in the Fall
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=654
I know, I know, I promised that I’d write something meaty today. Well.. have you considered vegetarianism? I ran out of time and content both today, so you’ll just have to keep waiting for another soliloquy. To make matters worse, I’m going to be on jury duty the next couple days, so unless I feel like tossing something up later on when I get home (umm, yeah, unlikely), this is all you’ll get until at least Friday. At least I’m setting you up properly for disappointment instead of springing it on you and leaving you sitting there wondering if something happened to me. Because I know you’d do that too, you’re always looking out for my back. That’s why we get along so well. I’m glad we’re friends. C’mere, gimme a big hug. Awwwwww.
These are some aspen trees, in Colorado. This has always been one of my personal favorites, I think because of all the little details in there. I love shots with a lot of little details, which also helps explain why it bothers me so much when pictures are just a little bit out of focus. And THAT helps explain why it’s not uncommon for me to over-sharpen a lot of my pictures. I tend to err way on the side of too much sharpening, which a lot of times makes a crappy result. But that’s okay, it’s something I’m working on. One of these days, when I actually sit down to learn how to use photoshop, I’ve promised myself that I’ll cut back on the sharpening a whole bunch, and instead spend all of my time playing around with levels and curves. I mean, that’s what all you photoshoppers do, right? Hmm, if I only knew…
One of these days I’m thinking about having a week dedicated to pics from you, my dear readers. I haven’t decided when, and I haven’t decided what a good theme would be, and I haven’t even decided yet if it’s a good idea. When I see super-cool-awesome pictures from other people, I sometimes feel bad, like “oh man, I could NEVER take a picture like that. I might as well just give up”, so I’m afraid doing so would send me into a tailspin that would take my whole weekend to recover from. So maybe I’ll make it a rule that you’re only allowed to submit crappy pictures. Yeah, actually, I kind of like that. It’ll be a “send me your best crappy picture” kind of thing. I can’t wait! Anybody have any thoughts on that? Possible themes? Let me know – either comment here, on my Facebook page, or just email me at dave (at) davefry (dot) net. We’ll see how this goes.
See you guys on (maybe) Friday!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Quantaray 70-300 mm lens. 1/250s, f/7.1, ISO 100. Focal length: 50mm.
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Popularity: 19%
January 25, 2010 – Grass
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Picture of the Day on January 25, 2010
Grass
Monday, January 25, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1091
Another weekend, come and gone. Would have been nice if I had gotten out of bed to enjoy it. Oh well, too late for that now. Today’s picture takes us back to this fall, when I was up in Whistler for the weekend. The weather wasn’t what I’d call ideal, but of course complaining about it doesn’t help anyone. It still turned into a great weekend, because how could any weekend away from home not be great? This picture was a bit funny, because I just happened to turn around when I was walking the other way, and I thought it looked kind of cool. I didn’t actually think it would turn out though, or even if it did I figured it’d just be a throwaway. Heck, even on the camera screen I was kind of meh about it. But I liked it on the big screen. I mean, it’s not like my favorite picture ever or anything, but it’s good enough to look at. I think the contrast in the sky saves it.
That’s all the time I have for today, I’ll try to make tomorrow’s post more substantive, it’s been a while since I’ve really written anything meaty.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-75mm lens. 1/400s, f/16.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 40mm.
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Popularity: 16%
January 22, 2010- Anemone
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day on January 22, 2010
Some kind of flower
Friday, January 22, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1076
Hey look, it’s Friday again. So, I’m not really a flower person. And by that I mean, I love flowers, I think they’re really pretty, and I love taking pictures of them, but I really know nothing about them. Like, unless it’s a rose or a daisy, I have no idea. (And when in doubt, I usually just call it a daisy anyway.) So, I apologize for having no clue what we’re looking at here. But I thought it was really pretty. Pretty enough for a Friday.
And yes, I posted this before 8am. That’s weird. But I’m busy all day, so I tossed it up here now to get it out of the way. See you all on Monday.
UPDATE: One of my Facebook friends told me that this is an anemone. So there you go.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Quantaray 70-300mm lens. 1/400s, f/10.0, ISO 800. Focal length: 300mm.
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Popularity: 25%
January 21, 2010 – Mt. Shuksan
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on January 21, 2010
Mt. Shuksan and Picture Lake
Thursday, January 21, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=619
Today brings us back to Mt. Shuksan, and the Heather Meadows Recreation Area in northwestern Washington state. This was taken from the usual viewpoint, but it’s a bit of a different setup than you usually see. It’s of course hard to argue with the usual shot, because if you can time it right when the lake is mirror-smooth, it’s such a classic image. But I still like this setup too. I’m actually a bit disappointed in the quality of this image though. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to try to use a small aperture and keep the mountain totally in focus, or if I should open it wide and really focus on the tree. So instead I went to this annoying in-between state, where it looks like it’s supposed to be in focus, but it’s just not quite there. And then I over sharpened it a bit to compensate. Sigh. Oh well, good enough for a Thursday. And, actually, at the time I probably THOUGHT I was getting it perfectly in focus. This was back when I was still using my Rebel XT, which had a tiny little screen, so it probably looked razor sharp at the time, just not on the big screen. That’s one of the big reasons I upgraded this summer to the T1i, to get the nice big high-res screen. It definitely doesn’t *eliminate* moments like that, but it definitely does make them less frequent. (That’s not meant as a dig on the XT though, it was still a fantastic camera, and I was really happy with it for the entire 3 years that I used it.)
Okay, see you all tomorrow…
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Quantaray 70-300 mm lens. 1/200s, f/5.6, ISO 100. Focal length: 70mm.
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Popularity: 16%
January 20, 2010 – Whitefish Mountain Resort
Posted by Dave in Picture of the Day, Winter/Snow on January 20, 2010
Whitefish Mountain Resort
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1279
As promised, here’s a shot from Montana this weekend. I’ve only barely started going through them, so this is just the first one that I snagged that seemed post-worthy. (Actually, that’s not even true, it’s the third one, and the first two are more awesome, but I want to save them for later. This one was just barely far enough above the bar that I felt it would be perfect for a Wednesday.)
As a quick refresher, this is from Whitefish Mountain Resort, formerly known as Big Mountain, which is just outside the town of Whitefish, Montana. You get there via Amtrak, or you can fly into Kalispell which isn’t too far away. This was up near the top of the mounain, and those chairs are part of I believe Chair 5, which wasn’t running while we were there. (According to several locals, that chair very rarely runs, as it serves only terrain that’s already served by other chairs, so it’s only needed on super crowded days, which there are very few of in Montana, certainly not while we were there.)
Those ice-encrusted trees are pretty common at the top of the hill. They’re called snow ghosts, and I’ve only ever seen them in Montana, Idaho, and interior BC (which really are all basically the same place). That’s absolutely not a claim that they don’t exist anywhere else, that’s just the only places I’ve seen them. They make for fantastic pictures, because even when it hasn’t snowed in awhile you can still make a picture look like it’s a powder day. I played around with them a bunch this weekend, you’ll certainly see them again.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 lens. 1/400s, f/11.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 44mm.
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Popularity: 6%
January 19, 2010 – Green Bottle Fly
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Macro, Picture of the Day on January 19, 2010
Green Bottle Fly
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1040
Alrighty, I finished up with that whole travelling to Montana thing. Now, back to real life. My original plan was to use something from that trip here, but honestly, I haven’t had a chance to even BEGIN going through them yet, so instead today I’ll fulfill one of last week’s requests. (If you want to request anything, either leave it in the comments or contact me directly – dave (at) davefry (dot) net. I’ll see if I’ve got anything that works.)
This is a green bottle fly (or at least that’s what my (really) brief research on google suggested), seen through a reverse-mounted 18-55 mm kit lens. I talked about this already at length in this post, so if you’re at all interested in this kind of stuff, please do yourself a favor and read that entry too. But, long story short, you buy a little adapter for your lens, and then the magic happens. Wooo!
I’ll try to at least do something resembling a first pass on the Montana pics tonight, at least as far as finding one worthy of posting here. We’ll see how that goes.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, reverse-mounted 18-55mm kit lens. 1/320s, ISO 200.
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Popularity: 17%
January 13, 2010 – Shi Shi Beach Trail
Posted by Dave in Picture of the Day, Washington State on January 13, 2010
Shi Shi Beach Trail
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=989
God, another Shi Shi Beach picture. Seriously, right? Whatever. This one was specifically requested, although maybe not in so many words. (Somebody told me how much they like it, and expressed surprise that I hadn’t posted it here yet, so that’s as good as a request in my book.)
I think I’ve covered this ground several times already, but the trail (pronounced shy-shy, not shee-shee, by the way), is mostly located on the Makah reservation, at the far northwestern tip of the Olympic Peninsula. It’s not until the very end of the trail, when you actually get spit out onto the beach itself, that it leaves reservation land and enters Olympic National Park. It’s pretty remote out there, it takes a good 4 or 5 hours to get out there from Seattle. Distance-wise it’s not very far (only 118 miles as the crow files, 155 miles by road), but the last couple of hours is on *very* windy roads along the coast, so it’s tough to get above 25 mph on that whole stretch. The drive itself is fine, it’s not ugly, but it won’t blow your mind either, but once you get off on the roads onto a trail like this, it’s *fantastic*, especially once you’re actually on the Pacific coast. (the road goes along the northern coast of the peninsula, not along the actual “ocean”.) Anyway, I’m rambling. Look at the pretty picture. Ooooh, aaaaah.
This is going to be the last post until next Tuesday, because as I mentioned yesterday, I’m minutes away from getting on a train to Montana! Wooooo! So, be sure to enjoy your time not spent skiing in Whitefish while I’m away!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 10-22mm lens. 1/400s, f/4.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 11mm.
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Popularity: 12%
January 12, 2010 – Whitefish Mountain Resort
Posted by Dave in Picture of the Day, Winter/Snow on January 12, 2010
Flathead Valley, seen from Whitefish Mountain Resort
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=333
This is a view looking out over the Flathead Valley from Whitefish Mountain Resort (formerly Big Mountain) in Whitefish, Montana, at something-like-sunset. This is where I’ll be in a couple of days. I am extremely happy about this. The weather isn’t looking like it’ll be perfect (it’ll be mostly cloudy with a chance of only a half inch of snow or so each day), but it will still be fantastic. Because I will be there, and I make everything fantastic. There’s a lesson in there for the rest of you.
Last time I was in Whitefish, I only had a point and shoot camera with me. Because at the time that’s all I owned. This time though, I’m bringing the big guns. Actually, I’m only bringing one big gun. I was originally intending to bring two big guns, intending to use my *old* SLR (the XT) just in case I fell on it. I didn’t want to risk the fancy new one. But, my buddy Dan is borrowing it, and I was too lazy to ask for it back. So I may just have an excuse to spend more money when I get home, we’ll see. But that’s the real reason why I have mixed feelings about the weather. I’m afraid of boring light. Oh well. I’m sure I’ll still have plenty of fun. Do you even realize how cheap the beer is out there?! Oh man, it’s heaven on earth, I swear.
I’m still planning on putting up another post tomorrow before I leave, but then that’ll be it until at least Tuesday of next week, so you’d better enjoy it!
Notes: Canon PowerShot S500 (Point and shoot). 1/250s, f/7.1.
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Popularity: 9%
January 11, 2010 – Shannon Creek
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, British Columbia, Picture of the Day on January 11, 2010
Shannon Creek, Squamish, BC
Monday, January 11, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1259
Hello everyone, hope you all had a great weekend. I spent a fair bit of time going through some older pictures that are on my home machine, in an effort to get them ready to be archived. Once they’re off of my actual hard drive, they’re much more of a pain in the butt to go through and such, so I’m trying to go through a bunch of pictures from hikes and stuff in the past couple years that I just haven’t had a chance to get to yet. This weekend I was actually only able to work on one particular day, back in July of 2008, when Julie and I drove up to Whistler for the weekend. We stopped at Shannon Falls, just outside of Squamish, and I spent a bunch of time walking around the creek down below taking pictures of the rocks and such.
I’m not sure why I hadn’t taken the time to go through them before, but there turned out to be quite a few that I liked quite a bit. The lighting was really nice, and it worked out really well with the rocks, which were all really pretty, rounded and colorful with lots of interesting detail. I even went against my normal routine and played around a bunch with black and white. Basically what I’m getting at is that “Shannon Creek” will soon become the new “Shi Shi Beach”, because I’ve got a big ole’ pile of these pictures now, so I’ll be doling them out periodically whenever I feel like it’s been long enough since I posted the last one. (And by the way, it’s pronounced “Shy Shy”, not “Shee Shee”.)
Despite the fact that I didn’t have a tripod with me, for many of these pictures I tried to use as long as a shutter speed as possible. (With running water, that’s how you get it to look smooth and soft – since the rocks and such don’t move, they still come out nice and sharp, but if you use a fast shutter speed, you’ll just catch the water in mid-splash.) I was using my Tamron 28-300 mm image stabilized lens (since relegated to the worthless junk pile as I’ve mentioned before), so I think I went as slow as 1/30th or 1/40th of a second for a couple of them (this one’s at 1/50th), which obviously isn’t long enough to REALLY smooth it out, but it’s slow enough for some interesting results.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm VC lens. 1/50s, f/11.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 33mm.
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Popularity: 20%
January 8, 2010 – Shi Shi Beach
Posted by Dave in Picture of the Day, Tropical/Beaches, Washington State on January 8, 2010
Shi Shi Beach
Friday, January 8, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1003
Whoops, I missed yesterday. Sorry about that. By the time I realized I hadn’t posted anything yet, it was already pushing 6pm, so at that point I felt I might as well wait until today. To make up for it, I’m posting this one much earlier than usual. I’m pretending, as I write this, that there are massive hordes of people out there whose sole bit of excitement each day comes from me picking a random-and-probably-mediocre 640×427 jpeg and putting it against a white background for their perusal. Shhh, don’t disturb me, I’m enjoying this fantasy. I’m sure there are a couple, maybe even that aren’t my mom, but maybe not. (Hahaha who am I kidding, my mom doesn’t understand technology well enough to find my page.)
This is of course Shi Shi Beach. A. Gain. It’s apparently the only beach I’ve ever been to, judging from how many pictures of it I have, compared to everything else in the entire world. I mean, really, how many pictures can you really take in a 2 or 3 hour period? Quite a few, it turns out. It’s times like last night, when I spent a couple hours going through a whole pile of pictures from a couple of hikes last summer that were all just garbage because of bad lighting and haze, that I really appreciate hikes like this one, where for whatever reasons conditions are just perfect, and every click of the shutter is gold. Can’t explain why, sometimes things just work out. Like today. I get to have lunch at Chipotle today. The stars are just aligning in my favor. Delicious.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 10-22 mm lens. 1/160s, f/8.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 20mm.
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Popularity: 17%
January 6, 2010 – Pacific Crest Trail
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on January 6, 2010
Pacific Crest Trail
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=951
Hey everyone, we’re halfway through the week. Nice job! Today’s picture is from far northern Washington, only a handful of miles from the Canadian border. This is the Pacific Crest Trail, which goes from Canada all the way down to Mexico, traversing the crest all the way down through Washington, Oregon, and California. In Washington and Oregon, that means the Cascades. Down in California, I believe it goes through the Sierra, seems like a logical enough guess, right? I was just out for a day hike that day, but I ran into three distinct groups of folks who were hiking through. Two of them in particular had both left Canada on the same day 2 or 3 days previous, so they were obviously just getting started on quite an adventure. I had driven up to Harts Pass, which is just north of the North Cascades National Park boundary, and camped out there for the night. Then I hiked north toward Windy Pass (which wasn’t, and in fact was located at a DIP in the trail, so when I passed the pass I didn’t even realize it), and drove back to Seattle that night. Hart’s Pass is located a fair ways up a somewhat nasty forest road (meaning it gets a bit steep and rocky and narrow in spots, with some actually pretty incredible dropoffs on the side), but other than that it’s not too difficult to get to. (Except that it takes a LOOOONG time to get out there, it’s not convenient to *anything*.) You could do it in a standard front wheel drive car, although it’d be uncomfortable in spots.
This is another illustration of a common “rule” in photography: that the light is a lot better very early in the morning and very late in the afternoon. This wasn’t taken either of those times, and while the scenery is still nice, the light is uninspiring. The colors came out quite flat, which was disappointing although not really unexpected. I tried playing around with the white balance settings on my camera, and it helped a bit with the flatness, but it left a somewhat dirty-looking brown tinge, definitely not ideal. But it’s a gorgeous area and a nice hike so I left it in there anyway. I had been hoping to get there early enough the night before to catch that magic late afternoon time, but unfortunately I didn’t make it out as early as I had hoped, so I missed it by an hour or so. Sigh.
Also, this was right at the time when I was having huge problems with my image-stabilized 28-300 mm Tamron lens. It just plain wouldn’t focus. It *thought* it was focused, but it was way off. As in, not even close. Super annoying. Which meant all of the pictures I took that weekend were hand-focused. (Essentially meaning I used a super small aperture, focused near infinity, and hoped for the best.) It was shortly after this time that I sent in the lens for warranty “repair” (which didn’t really help), and then decided in sequence that 1) That lens was garbage, and I should go back to using the non-stabilized version, 2) that even the non-stabilized version resulted in me making compromises in image quality that I wasn’t comfortable with, and ultimately 3) that the idea of trying to find one lens that would cover my whole range such that I wouldn’t have to change lenses while hiking sadly wasn’t a workable goal, and 4) I would need to find a whole set of lenses to get it done. That resulted in 3 lenses: a Tokina 11-16 for wide angle shots, a Tamron 28-75 for most purposes (although that’s in the process of being replaced by a Tamron 17-50 – it’s in the mail right now), and my old Quantaray 70-300 for telephoto purposes. (Although that’s not my long-term solution. I don’t use it much, and even though it was really cheap it’s not a bad lens, so there’s not much of a push to replace it with something better yet. Although when I do it’ll probably be something like a 50-200.) As always, if you have any questions about what gear I use and why, please don’t be shy. I’m hardly an expert, but it’s taken me a long time (and an embarrassingly large chunk of my disposable income budget) to get to a set that I’m reasonably happy with, and I’m still not at a point where I’m totally happy. Sigh. Someday, someday.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm VC lens. 1/160s, f/9.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 35mm.
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Popularity: 11%