Archive for September, 2010
September 29, 2010 – Bee and Orange Daisy
Posted by Dave in Animals, Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day on September 29, 2010
Bee and Orange Daisy
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2002
Hey everyone! Happy Tuesday! Except that, umm, it’s Wednesday. Yesterday sort of didn’t really happen, at least as far as this blog is concerned. Whatever, get over it. It’s Wednesday! That’s awesome! And you get a bug picture today! Yesss!
There’s not many bugs up here in Seattle. At least, not in my neighborhood. There’s one kind of spider, and there are bees. So, that’s what I get pictures of when I go out to get bug pictures. Really, I should take some field trips to the woods specifically for bug pictures. Maybe I’ll do that at some point, and actually see some different bugs. Actually, that’s really not a bad idea. But it hasn’t happened yet. Well, it happened once, I went to Carkeek Park and actualy found some different bugs. But I mean I should do it again. As far as the flower, I keep calling these things orange daisies, but I actually don’t know if that’s what they actually are. They have a whole bunch of them planted right at the entrance to the south parking lot at the zoo here in Seattle, so I take a lot of pictures of them. Because they’re pretty. And I like to take pictures of pretty things. That’s the way this blog works.
Also, it seems like having a claw sticking out from right next to your eyeball could be useful. I’m not sure for what, but I’m sure you could figure out something to do with it. It’d be a bit creepy, sure, but man, that’d be handy for reading the newspaper and stuff. Or if you had a pair of broken sunglasses, you could totally still use them.
In other news… It’s been awhile since I’ve talked about it, so I’m going to go ahead and give another plug for Flattr.com. Flattr is based on a really cool idea: you pay a couple bucks every month, and then when you see a website or article or something you enjoy or find useful, you click the Flattr button (that looks like the one below). Basically, it’s like a Facebook Like button, except that, at the end of the month, everybody you Flattred that month gets an equal cut of your couple bucks. (Or, it all goes to charity if you don’t find anything you like in a given month..) It’s nice because it’s only a couple bucks, and it makes a big difference to small- and mid-size blogs and such that aren’t big enough to make any money from advertising (or, alternatively, don’t want to bother their readers with advertising. Hi! I’m Dave!) I’ve been doing it for a couple months now, and it’s very cool. The biggest problem I’ve found so far is that the number of websites that have Flattr buttons is still pretty small, so it can be difficult to find things to Flattr. So, if you have a site or a blog, you should absolutely sign up, and let me know! Okay, plug over, that’s the last you’ll hear about it for awhile (other than the boilerplate stuff at the bottom of every post and on the sidebar, but, whatever.)
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 90mm Macro lens, Phoenix macro ring flash. 1/160s, f/18.0, ISO 100. I think I may have also used an extension tube or two.
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September 27, 2010 – Stuart Lake Trail
Posted by Dave in Fall Color, Picture of the Day, Washington State on September 27, 2010
Stuart Lake Trail
Monday, September 27, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1936
Hey everyone, here it is! This year’s first fall color picture! (Meaning, the first one *taken* this year. Obviously, it’s not the first one *posted* this year…) The forecast for nice weather on Saturday held true, so I took full advantage. I ended up staying up until about 2am Friday night trying to pick a trail though, so that made getting out of bed early on Saturday pretty difficult. The difficulty was because I was trying to figure out based on very incomplete information what the colors were doing and where. Also, I of course needed to pick a trail that would actually have the kind of plants that would be changing. Even if I nailed the elevation and location (eastern vs. western slope of the Cascades), if I had ended up on a trail with just evergreen trees, that wouldn’t have helped anybody.
I ended up settling on the Colchuck Lake trail, which is near Leavenworth, up Icicle Creek Canyon, and takes you into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. (You’ll notice that the title of today’s post is “Stuart Lake Trail”, not “Colchuck Lake Trail”, that’s because the Colchuck Lake trail branches off from the Stuart Lake trail 2.5 miles in. So at this point, it was before the junction.) In the end, I feel like I made a pretty decent choice. Down low, there were a lot of yellows and lime greens, and as you got higher up there were a few oranges and reds tossed in. It was mostly the lower ground-covery bushes and such that were changing, but that was all I was hoping for at this point in September. And of course, the payoff of the big lake basin at the end, while not being very fall-color-y, is still absolutely fantastic. Maybe I’ll post a shot of that here in a few days.
If you were curious about my methodology for finding where the color was, I used (as I do often) the website for the Washington Trails Association, http://wta.org. Their website has trail guide write-ups for a huge number of trails around the state, and they allow users to write up trail reports and include photos. So, I browsed the list of the most recently submitted reports, to look for people talking about fall colors, hopefully mentioning how far along they were, and even more hopefully including pictures so I could see for myself. Based on those reports, and the location and elevation of the trails they came from, I decided to aim for about 5000 feet of elevation, on the eastern slope of the Cascades. This trail fell right into that category, taking you from 3400 feet up to 5600 feet. This picture was taken at just under 4000 feet, for what it’s worth.
In other, completely unrelated news today: Amazon had a contest to create your own commercial for the Kindle. They just released the list of winners, and it turns out my cousin Deanne won the grand prize!! Here’s a link to the page with the winning videos, definitely go check it out. Also, here’s a link to her personal blog. It doesn’t look like she’s got an entry yet about winning the big contest, but that shouldn’t stop you from checking it out. In addition to making prize-winning commercials for Kindles, she also paints semi-professionally (sometimes using my photos as source material!) so she posts time-lapse videos of her working on the paintings. It’s awesome! Check it out! Doooooo it! Now, dang it, do it NOW!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-55mm f/2.8 lens. 1/200s, f/7.1, ISO 200. Focal length: 17mm.
Popularity: 7%
September 24, 2010 – Fitzsimmons Creek
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Picture of the Day on September 24, 2010
Fitzsimmons Creek
Friday, September 24, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1669
I’ve got a huge (huge!) pile of pictures that I got while I was up in Whistler a few weeks ago, and I haven’t been slowly doling them out like I intended to. Until today, I’ve only just posted the one. In hindsight, posting a completely unrelated picture from Blackcomb yesterday doesn’t really help with that effort, especially because I chose one from when I was skiing in basically the exact same spot where I was hiking. So, rather than using the image I had originally earmarked for today, I’ll instead use this one.
This is Fitzsimmons Creek. It runs down through the lowlands, basically right between the village and the upper village. The water in the creek is very milky, because it’s got a lot of glacial meltwater running through it, which tends to be really silty and full of minerals and such. (Basically the same idea behind the White River that flows out of Mt. Rainier National Park and all of the crazy aquamarine water in North Cascades National Park.)
So, I’m not sure if this picture has the same effect on anyone else that it does on me, but for some reason the color of those rocks in front just does something to me. For whatever reason, that’s what drew my eye in originally when I was walking past, and now I can’t stop looking at this picture. It’s inexplicable, but it eats away at me. Weird, right?
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/250s, f/6.3, ISO 200. Focal length: 41mm.
Popularity: 7%
September 23, 2010 – Merritt Lake Trail
Posted by Dave in Fall Color, Picture of the Day, Washington State on September 23, 2010
Merritt Lake Trail
Thursday, September 23, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1147
So, as promised, here’s a shot of some fall color, to officially welcome autumn! Well, it wasn’t really promised per se, it was more sort of vaguely hinted at. But that’s as good as a promise in my book! (Probably explains why I’m habitually disappointed by everyone around me.)
This picture of course comes from my favorite fall-color hike: the Merritt Lake Trail, which is along Highway 2 a little ways east of Stevens Pass. If there are any east-coasters reading this that find themselves stranded here in the Pacific Northwest and missing the colors found in the sea of deciduous trees out there, they should totally check this trail out. At least the first couple miles of it anyway. Most of the forest out here is of course coniferous, which means you don’t get any fall color. But you can find pockets that are spectacular. Specifically, there’s a lot of color in the lowlands, there tends to be a lot of oaks and such along rivers in the mountains, and here and there you’ll find random pockets of color like along this trail. Also, the little bushes and such at higher elevations tend to have some nice color displays, but you have to work a little bit more to get to those.
As far as when to go, that depends on your target. The high country is probably showing some really nice color *right now*, and potentially for the next couple weeks. The mid-country (like this trail) shows some really nice color in early/mid October usually (this picture was taken on October 11 last year, although the year before it wasn’t quite this far along that early), and the lowlands tend to peak around the end of October, maybe into the beginning of November. It’s of course tough to know how things are looking up there until you’re actually out there, so it can be a real bummer if you guess wrong, and aim too high or low. (Yeah, been there, believe me – last year in fact, I thought it was still high-country time, so I did a hike up at Mt. Rainier, but instead of seeing any fall color I ended up just hiking around in 3-6 inches of snow the whole day. Still awesome in its own way, but not quite what I had in mind.) I’m actually super curious to see what’s going on this year. Since the weather’s been so atypical all summer long, I have no clue when all the different colors will come out. They’re predicting about a day and a half of decent weather this weekend though, so I’m hopefully going to find out. My absolute fear is that this nice weather will land too soon, and nothing will be changing yet. We’ll see.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens. 1/250s, f/5.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 37mm.
Popularity: 10%
September 22, 2010 – Blackcomb Mountain
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Mountains, Picture of the Day, Winter/Snow on September 22, 2010
Blackcomb Mountain
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
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So since it’s about to be fall (later tonight), I suppose I should start thinking about posting some fall color shots to get everyone in the mood. Perhaps I’ll start hitting that up later this week. In the meantime, you get winter. This is (yet another) shot from Whistler-Blackcomb Ski Resort. As with the last picture I posted from the area, this is from the 7th Heaven area on Blackcomb. (Although, that one was just taken a couple weeks ago while *hiking*, not skiing. And, I’ll be posting several more shots from that hike in the next couple weeks.) It’s totally true that the area around Whistler (including Squamish) have been represented more than their fair share of times in this blog. But, quite frankly, it’s because the area is probably the prettiest area that I go to with any frequency.
When I took this picture, back in 2003, I had some weird practices for taking pictures. First, this picture was also taken in that period between when I used my 35mm SLR and when I got my first digital SLR, so I used a pocket point and shoot digital exclusively. (I used the word “also” because I posted another picture a week or two ago from the same general time period, if you were wondering.) I suppose that’s not “weird” per se, but roll with me here. Next, associated with Moore’s Law, flash memory is a heckuva lot cheaper now than it was even a few years ago. Or, to say it in a way that’s more applicable to the discussion, flash memory was a whole lot more expensive per-byte than it is today. So, back when I shot this picture, I was using a 128 mb memory card in my camera, that cost more than the 8 gb card I currently use in my SLR. That’s pretty ridiculous. It also meant that I found myself needing to download the images off my camera pretty frequently. And, related to that, it meant that I spent a fair bit of effort strategizing about what image size to take my pictures at.
Wait, what? Yeah, whereas these days I just leave the camera set at the largest size and highest quality, back in the day I’d take the vast majority of my pictures at a very small size (640×480 for my first camera, incrementally larger with the next couple), and then if there was a picture that I thought I may want to blow up or something some day, I’d bump it to Large. (Most of my pictures were just of my buddies and stuff, so the large size wasn’t needed. But if I was, for example, taking a picture of a mountain, I’d bump it up.)
So, why does this all relate to this picture? Well, because, I umm, took this picture at 640 x 480. Meaning, you’re looking at the full-size image. Meaning, if you loved this picture and wanted it printed out nice and big and hung on your wall, you’d be out of luck. It’s unfortunate too, because I like this picture. When I took it, I didn’t realize it was set on small until after I took it. So I then moved it to large and “took the picture again”. It was bright sunshine out though, so I couldn’t really see the details to see if I had actually gotten the same shot again or not, I could just basically see that the sky looked basically the same. Of course I realized later that the full-size version was crap, and only the little tiny one (this one) was any good. So, whoops, live and learn. That actually burned me a couple times before memory cards actually got cheap enough to just leave it set on Large all the time.
So, there you go. Not only was today’s picture taken with a point and shoot, it was taken with a point and shoot set to the smallest picture size that the camera could do.
Notes: Canon PowerShot S230 (Point and Shoot). 1/1500s, f/9.0.
Popularity: 11%
September 21, 2010 – Vesper Peak and Lake Elan Basin
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on September 21, 2010
Vesper Peak and Lake Elan Basin
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1859
I’m still making progress on all of the pictures I took two summers ago. I know, impressive, right? At this rate you’ll see the pictures I took this weekend sometime in the 2020s. I actually posted another picture from this same hike way back in the day. It was the third picture I ever posted, in fact. (Well, I also posted one last week, but whatever.) The takeaway from that is that I often go through and grab images here and there from past hikes and such, but it takes awhile for me to actually take the time to properly parse through the whole set. I’m still only about halfway through the pics from this hike, but I’ve found several decent ones, that I’m sure you’ll be seeing here sometime or another.
You’re looking at Vesper Peak. The spot where I was standing is accessible via the Sunrise Mine Trail, which is sort of near Monte Cristo on the southern side of the Mountain Loop Highway in Washington State. You hike up into a big huge basin, then up and over one of the ridgelines, crossing at a place called Headlee Pass. Then you hike along a ridge over to this spot. The water you see there is drainage from a lake which I’ve seen called Headlee Lake (named after the pass), Vesper Lake (named after the Peak), and my preferred name, Lake Elan (named after the ski company. Duh.) It’s looking like we may actually get 12 hours or so of nice weather this weekend (fingers crossed!) so I’m actually considering coming back and doing this hike again. When I was there, I just stopped at the lake, but this time I want to hike up Vesper a bit, because I think there could be some nice views. But I’d need to get an early start, which may not be possible, we’ll see.
How about you? Any awesome plans this weekend? Hmm, small talk seems a bit awkward in this context. Forget I said anything…
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/125s, f/10.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 8%
September 20, 2010 – Some Weird Plant
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day on September 20, 2010
Some Weird Plant
Monday, September 20, 2010
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Anyone have any idea what the heck this thing is? I found it earlier this summer in the Rose Garden. I’m going to call it a “flower”, but I don’t even know if that’s true. I like the texture though. That’s it for today, short post, eh?
UPDATE: Somebody identified the plant as an “Astilbe”. Now I (and you) know!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Quantaray 70-300mm lens. 1/100s, f/6.3, ISO 800. Focal length: 183mm.
Popularity: 10%
September 17, 2010 – Cascade Pass
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on September 17, 2010
Cascade Pass, North Cascades National Park
Friday, September 17, 2010
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It’s Friday again! Yesssss! Unless you’re reading this on Monday. In which case. Umm. Booooooooo. This picture was taken on the Cascade Pass trail in North Cascades National Park. It’s on the western side of the pass, probably about a quarter of a mile from the crest. It was taken in late July, last year, if that’s useful information at all. Cascade Pass is one of the more popular trails in the park, although I get the feeling that it’s more people that are local to Washington State than the alternative. (That’s actually pure conjecture, I truly know nothing about the demographics of the people that visit the park – but my feeling is that it’s much less of a destination park than, for example, Yellowstone or Yosemite or the Grand Canyon.) But, regardless, there are a fair number of people that take this trail, and if you plan on staying overnight, it’s very important to get to the ranger station early to get a permit for the campground you want.
This picture was taken at an odd time in my epic comedy of misadventures relating to my preferred lens(es). I had somewhat recently decided that the Tamron 28-300 mm VC lens (VC = image stabilized) was crap. I had sent it in for warranty repair, since the autofocus was just plain wrong the majority of the time. I had gotten it back, but still wasn’t convinced that it was working any better. (And there was no clear indication that they had actually done anything to it.) So, I had decided instead to use my previous lens for this hiking trip, which was the *non-VC* version of the same lens. It’s also never been my favorite lens, but especially as I go back and look at pictures from both of them, it seems to perform significantly better than the other one. (Although, to be fair, I used them differently. Knowing your lens has image stabilization means you’re not afraid to try using slower shutter speeds, etc.) For some inexplicable reason, I decided to leave my ISO at 400 for the whole trip. As in, it wasn’t that my ISO was set at 400 and I just didn’t realize it. No, I made a conscious decision to leave it there. I can’t possibly fathom why I would have done such a thing, it really makes no sense. The fact that I did that frustrates me to this day. Oh well, nothing I can do about it now. Anyway, getting off topic there… So, I took the regular 28-300mm with me on this hike, and it did okay. I’m less disgusted with the results than I was with the previous several sets of shots I got with the IS version, but I’m still not really happy with them. It was very soon after this that I made the call to go first with a super wide-angle (I decided on the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8), a different mid-range lens (the Tamron 28-75, which was/is a FANTASTIC lens – showing that there’s definitely no problem with Tamron as a brand, just with their attempt at a superzoom – and I suspect I would have had the same experience with ANY brand of superzoom), and for the telephoto end, I fell back on my trusty old Quantaray 70-300, which was dirt cheap, and was the first lens I bought to use with my first digital SLR.
Anyway, this hike is definitely worth doing, and I plan to make it back there, hopefully soon. Since this summer turned out to be a total wash weather wise, it didn’t end up happening. Perhaps I’ll make it out there this fall, but I’m pretty busy, so it’s definitely questionable. Anyway, the pass itself is totally suitable for a day trip. You can go further up, to Sahale Arm, which I gather is a fairly difficult hike. Still doable as a day hike if you’re in good shape and get an early start, but definitely a butt-burner. There are several campgrounds in the area though, so it lends itself naturally to an overnighter. (There’s one campground just a little ways past the pass that’s a great choice, there’s one up at Sahale Arm that’s always the first one to fill up, and then there’s another one further down the far side of the pass, which is where we ended up.) Despite the fact that I just closed my parentheses, I’m going to expand on that last one – the campground we stayed at. Turns out, it’s further down elevation-wise than the trailhead is. I didn’t realize that going in. Coming back the next day was tough, especially since we had gotten soaked by a surprise thunderstorm the previous day, and so everything was wet, including my shoes. Oh well, that’s all the complaining I’m going to do. It would have been nice to make it up to Sahale Arm, but I didn’t have any juice left in my tank (I can’t speak for the other guys there with me, but I was done). That’s on my to-do list for when I make it back.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/200s, f/16.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 30mm.
Popularity: 8%
September 16, 2010 – Creek Along Sunrise Mine Trail
Posted by Dave in Picture of the Day, Washington State on September 16, 2010
Creek along Sunrise Mine Trail
Thursday, September 16, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1843
Hey, just because it’s Thursday and I’m posting a mediocre picture doesn’t mean I have to call it out. I think it’s already obvious to everybody, right? I’m still going through the backlog of pictures taken with my crappy lens a couple years ago, and today’s photo is yet another result. Granted, not EVERYTHING mediocre about this image came from the lens. For example, I probably could have moved that branch out the way, but I didn’t. Oh well.
This was a creek crossing along the Sunrise Mine Trail. The creek may have a name, but I don’t know what it is. The Sunrise Mine Trail shoots off from the south leg of the Mountain Loop Highway, in the north-central Cascades. The trailhead is right near Big Four Mountain (the one with the picnic area) and Monte Cristo (the ghost town that’s 4 miles in along a former road). You would be forgiven for not knowing or caring where any of these landmarks are, but I do, so I’m stating them here for reference. It’s a really nice trail. It’s fairly difficult, but it’s got some great views most of the way to make up for it, none of which can be seen in this picture. It’s on my list of trails to get back to someday, perhaps a little bit later in the fall when the colors start changing. (I was there in early September, so things were still pretty green at the time.) I’m sure you’ll be seeing a few more shots from this hike here and there, I’m only about a third of the way through the pics from that day.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/40s, f/8.0, ISO 800. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 6%
September 14, 2010 – Alpenglow and the Moon
Posted by Dave in Colorado, Mountains, Picture of the Day on September 14, 2010
Alpenglow and the Moon, near Lake City, Colorado
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=177
Today’s picture is a fairly old one, taken in that odd time between when I used a 35mm SLR and when I got my first digital SLR. When I got my first digital pocket-sized point-and-shoot, I started off by bringing both that and my 35mm with me when I’d go hiking or whatever. The idea being, I’d use the little guy for most of my pics, like taking pictures of my buddies or whatever, but if there was a shot that I would theoretically consider blowing up someday, I’d bust out the SLR. But obviously I quickly came to the conclusion that one of the two was dramatically easier to use, and actually took some decent pictures to boot. So I found myself reaching for the 35mm less and less often.
There were actually two last straws, that both hit at right about the same time. First, I had gone on a hike near Mt. St. Helens, and on that hike I had taken 3 or 4 rolls of pictures with the SLR. It was one of those days where the conditions were absolutely perfect. It was sunny, not too hazy, and there were these little fluffy white clouds that made the skies really interesting (and I had a polarizing filter to really bring them out). I was stoked to get the pictures back, because I knew they’d be amazing. Except.. they weren’t. They all just plain sucked. Four rolls of shots, and not a single gosh dang one was worth anything. It crushed me. And no, this wasn’t the only time this had ever happened to me. But it WAS the *last* time this ever happened to me. And, as if that weren’t enough, about this same time I decided to blow up a picture of Mt. Shuksan and Picture Lake. You know, that one view. I had two versions of nearly the same picture, one taken with my 35mm, and the other taken with my *2 megapixel* pocket point-and-shoot (the one I just linked to is neither of them, but it was pretty similar to both). I blew them both up to 12×18, and as it turns out, the point-and-shoot version was actually better. Even at only 2 megapixels, it looked fantastic at 12×18. Even with a crappy little plastic lens, it looked fantastic at 12×18.
After those two events, I started leaving the 35mm at home, and I never looked back. It was several years until I finally got up the courage to make the leap into an actual digital SLR, and this particular trip to Colorado landed right inside that window. So all I had with me for the whole trip was a little pocket point-and-shoot. I had upgraded to a 3.2 megapixel version by then, but still. Nowadays, I of course wonder about all the awesome shots I missed out on not having the equipment, knowledge or skills that I do now, but that’s never a worthwhile thing to worry about. I’ll just have to go back, right?
This particular picture was taken in the San Juan mountains, in the southwest corner of Colorado. There’s a little dirt mountain road that heads into the mountains from Lake City. Eventually it goes over some pass (Cinnamon Pass maybe? Not sure), but I was just driving a passenger sedan (a Subaru Legacy, AWD, but a sedan nonetheless), and the road got pretty gnarly, so I turned around before I got stuck. I did spend a night up there though, and this was snapped right before the sun went down. Ahhhh, alpenglow, my favorite.
Notes: Canon PowerShot S230 (Point and shoot). 1/500s.
Popularity: 12%
September 13, 2010 – Gnat
Posted by Dave in Animals, Macro, Picture of the Day on September 13, 2010
Gnat - Reverse-mounted lens
Monday, September 13, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1037
Welcome back from the weekend, everyone! This picture was taken almost exactly a year ago, immediately after I had originally gotten my reverse-mount lens adapter. (End of August, to be a little bit more specific.) I chose it today because it’s particularly illustrative of some of the cool parts and some of the not-as-cool parts about using a reverse-mount for macro shots.
First, the good parts. This was taken with a 13 dollar attachment and the 18-55mm kit lens. So, “very minimal financial investment” would be appropriate to say. This bug was freaking tiny. I mean, it’s a gnat. You know how big gnats are. They’re little dots. So to be able to see all of this detail is (I think) really cool. I could go on and on about that, but, that’s the basic idea.
Now, the bad parts. This list is longer than the “good parts” list, but that’s not intended to say that the negatives outweigh the positives, it’s just that I can speak more specifically to the drawbacks. The first is the extremely limited depth of field. One thing I really love about this picture is how well it illustrates that. I mean, you can SEE how narrow of a band you’re working with. That’s a gnat, for god’s sake, and only 2 of his six legs are even discernible. So, forget about using autofocus, you just need to pick a focus point, then move forward and back until your subject is crisp. Then, hopefully your shutter finger is fast enough to get the shot before you sway backwards or forwards by a fraction of a millimeter. (Did I mention that taking these shots is ridiculously aggravating??) This will sound familiar if you read this blog with any frequency, but: a big part of the limited depth of field is just due to macro photography in general. But it’s exacerbated by the fact that you’re using a reverse-mounted lens (as opposed to one that’s macro-specific.) This is because, since the electrical connections for your lens are now at the *front* of the lens, your camera can’t control the aperture, and thus you’re taking pictures with it set wide open. Because of this, using the kit lens (or other less-expensive lens with a usually-undesirable small maximum aperture size) is actually helpful. If you were using a lens that was stuck at f/2.8 or wider, it would be even worse.
My other favorite frustrating thing about using a reverse-mount is that you end up working with an extremely small amount of light. This picture was taken with very-late-afternoon light (probably an hour before sunset) shining directly on the subject. But yet, I still had to resort to using ISO 1600 and a 1/80s shutter speed to even get it to expose. (It was “hand-held”, but I had the camera wedged up against the tree. It was an image-stabilized lens, but your electrical connections aren’t connected, remember?) Full-on mid-day sunshine is better, but still, you’re stuck with higher ISOs and slower shutter speeds, unless you’re using a macro flash. So, I apologize for the ugly graininess, it was really unavoidable. I believe this issue is really unavoidable with extreme macro photography. It may not be quite as bad with a regular-mounted macro-specific lens, I’m not totally sure if different optical setups are able to help with this sort of thing or not, to be honest. But, it’s a true fact that macro photography is a different beast.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Reverse-mounted 18-55mm kit lens. 1/80s, ISO 1600.
Popularity: 15%
September 10, 2010 – Moses Coulee
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Picture of the Day, Washington State on September 10, 2010
Moses Coulee
Friday, September 10, 2010
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Hey everyone! Earlier this week, I mentioned that, due to forecasted crappy weather in the Cascades, I ended up heading across the mountains, out to the desert for a night. I still haven’t had a chance to look through all the pics I got, but there are definitely some decent ones. You may also remember me mentioning that I was surprised to see that there’s some really pretty stuff out there. Now you can start to get an idea what I was talking about. It was really nice!
This is taken near the top of Moses Coulee, which is a little ways east of Wenatchee. This spot is actually just up the canyon from the (little) town of Palisades. Driving up the canyon is definitely worth the time – there are these huge basalt walls the whole way up, and most of the canyon is irrigated, so the floor is carpeted with vibrant green crops. It’s a really pretty juxtaposition, it’s truly gorgeous in the late afternoon when the sun is nice and golden. (Or, early in the morning, as I also found out.) As you get nearer to the top of the canyon, the farm (and ranch) lands end, the road turns to dirt, and you get back to natural vegetation. The whole area was deserted when we were there, despite the fact that it was Labor Day Weekend, so we had our choice of hundreds of nice spots to lay down our camp. (We tossed around the idea of backpacking in somewhere, but it was getting late, we didn’t do our research beforehand, and a lot of the land was actually privately owned, so we figured it wasn’t worth the effort.) We very nearly chose a spot right smack in the middle of that big valley floor that you’re looking at, but instead we ended up a little further down the canyon, that still had sunlight until an hour or two after this picture was taken (and also had the benefit of a nice early sunrise).
Moses Coulee is part of the larger land area called the “Channeled Scablands”, which take up a significant portion of central Washington state. If you aren’t already familiar with the area, I strongly urge you to do some reading about it (just type “channeled scablands” into your favorite search engine to get started), it’s really fascinating. Basically, the whole landscape was torn completely to shreds during the last ice age. There was a huge lake in western Montana (Glacial Lake Missoula) that would repeatedly form due to ice blocking off the drainage. Eventually (every 50 years or so) the water would overwhelm the plug, and kajillions of gallons of water would come rushing over all of the Idaho panhandle and Washington state. The flow was absolutely ridiculous, the entire area would get covered in a couple hundred feet of water in the matter of a couple days or something like that (I’m completely making up all these details, but they’re available all over the place). During these flood periods, the spot now known as “Dry Falls” became the largest known waterfall to ever flow on the planet – 3 and a half miles long, falling 400 feet. Apparently the river was about 300 feet deep, travelling around 65 miles per hour when it hit the falls. According to Wikipedia, the flow of water over the falls was equal to **10 TIMES** the TOTAL flow of all modern-day rivers COMBINED. That’s pretty ridiculous. And, this is the result. Cool stuff!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens. 1/200s, f/4.5, ISO 200. Focal length: 11mm.
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