Archive for September, 2010
September 9, 2010 – Mediocre Image Thursday – Mt. Bierstadt
Posted by Dave in Colorado, Mountains, Picture of the Day on September 9, 2010
Mt. Bierstadt seen from Guanella Pass
Thursday, September 9, 2010
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So, what, yesterday wasn’t bad enough for you, huh? Mediocre Image Thursday is BACK! It’s so mediocre that I couldn’t even make it happen consistently. I suppose I was setting myself up for failure by starting it right before two Thursdays where I knew in advance I’d be unable to follow through. But, whatever, we’re back now, woooooo!!!
This is another old image (a couple years old) that’s the result of me slowly going through the archives. This process is particularly frustrating for me, because I’m currently right in the thick of the time that I used my crappy Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. I eventually realized how much it was affecting the quality of my images, and I rectified the situation. But since I’m only now really truly spending the time to go through the pictures, I’m really only now really paying the price. It’s true that I can take comfort in the fact that it’s a lens I no longer use, so I don’t have to fight off that gut feeling that maybe my equipment is letting me down, and that perhaps I’ll have to face up to the fact that I made a poor purchasing decision, and that I might need to drop more cash to fix the situation. Now I only have to fight off the gut feeling that all of that stuff did indeed happen, but it’s in the past now and there’s nothing more I can do. I’d say it’s an improvement.
Anyway, I’m venting. Today’s picture is from Colorado. Specifically, it’s a picture of Mt. Bierstadt, which is a “fourteener”, meaning, it’s one of 50-some peaks that are over 14,000 feet in Colorado. I took it from Guanella Pass. There’s a road that goes over the pass, one of those dirt roads that’s not really the way to go if you’re just trying to get somewhere, but is really pretty if you’ve got the time. Here’s something interesting: I’ve hiked up two fourteeners in my life, one was Quandary Peak over by Breckenridge, and the other was this one, Mt. Bierstadt. It happened way back in high school, and tragically I forgot to bring my camera these days. I was still in to photography back then (with my old-school 35mm), but I wasn’t as obsessed as I am now. I know that’s true, because if the same thing happened today, and I realized at the trailhead that I forgot my camera, I can tell you with absolute certainty that I wouldn’t be climbing that mountain. I am one lazy mothereffer, let me tell you. If there’s no chance of getting nice shots out of it, you would have a very hard time convincing me that it was worth the effort.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/60s, f/22.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 39mm.
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September 8, 2010 – Spring Blooms
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day on September 8, 2010
Spring Blooms
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
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Remember those days, back before I had a macro lens or even a set of extension tubes? Ha ha, yeah, those were the days, huh? Back when we were all (5 months) younger and (5 months) more foolish. Back then, in order to get macro shots, I either had to use a set of magnifying glasses on the front of my lens, or just focus as close as I could and call it good. Wow, how primitive! And then, and then, and then.. I got my hands on a reverse-mount adapter, which suddenly allowed me to get freakishly close! I could take pictures of flowers and bugs and little awesome tiny things! Unfortunately, since none of the lens’s electrical connections were attached to the camera, I lost the ability to do simple things like control my aperture. That meant that, in addition to the shallowness of field that comes along with macro under normal circumstances, I had to approach the problem wide-open! That meant that, instead of getting a picture of a bug, I’d get a picture of an extremely narrow sliver of a bug, surrounded by a big blurry splotch that was most likely the rest of it. Ah, nostalgia.
That’s when I took this picture. This spring. With my reverse-mount adapter. I was really excited about it at the time, but since then I’ve moved on to things like extension tubes, which are really not much more expensive (30 bucks instead of 15), but still give you the benefit of things you normally take for granted, like the aforementioned aperture. Combine those with a cheap macro ring flash, and then the magic starts happening! But, I didn’t realize any of that at the time. Oh well, it was still fun.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, 18-55mm kit lens with reverse-mount adapter. 1/1600s, ISO 200.
Popularity: 10%
September 7, 2010 – Mt. Baker Ski Area
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State, Winter/Snow on September 7, 2010
Mt. Baker Ski Area
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1736
Hey everybody, welcome back! Hope you all enjoyed your long weekend if you live in a place such that this last weekend was a long one. Alternatively, I hope you enjoyed your regular-length weekend followed by your fairly typical Monday! My traffic dropped fairly precipitously over the weekend, so I’m guessing that means that most of you were indeed not around a computer. Either that, or you had very little confidence that I’d actually be posting anything. Or, most likely, both.
The weather around here was crap this weekend, which cancelled my plans to go backpacking near Glacier Peak. I still hope to make it back to that trail, but this weekend wasn’t looking like the right time. Instead, Julie and I headed over to the desert, where the forecast (which was correct) said it would be 70 and sunny. I didn’t really realize it until this weekend, but holy crap! There’s some absolutely GORGEOUS terrain over there! I definitely need to get out there and explore it more. You can probably tell that today’s picture is absolutely not from the desert, and if that’s what you were thinking, you’re correct. I’m still following my rule that I won’t go through my new pics until at least a couple days since I’ve taken them. Which means, I’ll start looking through them tonight or tomorrow.
So, since I couldn’t look through the weekend’s pictures last night, I ended up instead looking back through some old pictures that I’ve still got on my hard drive. (Eventually I archive them off to DVDs, but I’ve got a few years of pics that I haven’t done that with…) I’m still slowly trudging my way through my old pictures, digging out any that are even remotely interesting. I’ve mentioned this several times. But, last night, I went even further back than that, and revisited a bunch of pics that I had already dug through and grabbed everything that I thought was worthwhile. But, I suppose I was in a different kind of mood or something, because in 4 or 5 months worth of images, I found 23 that I had previously passed over that are at least worthy of putting in Rate Dave’s Photos (which is a pretty low bar, honestly.) This being one of them. Not all of them are any good of course, but some of them are good enough to toss up here. (Well.. okay, yeah, still a pretty low bar. Shut up.)
This was taken at Mt. Baker Ski Area, which is in the northern part of Washington State. I’ve only skiied there once (the day I took this picture), although I have also snowshoed there, and I’ve been up there a whole bunch of times in the summer (it’s inside Heather Meadows Recreation Area). This was I believe on closing weekend a few years back, so mid to late April. Checking the timestamp on the image says yes, April 27. So, almost into May. Now you can see one of the things that frustrates me: why do they have to close these mountains so early?! They clearly still had plenty of snow. I suppose you could argue that by then, most folks have already hung their skis up for the season, so it becomes more and more difficult to keep running the lifts profitably, but whatever, I’m not concerned with the bottom line, I just want to ride a line to the bottom! Sigh, oh well.
It’s worth noting as well that Mt. Baker Ski Area holds the world record for snowfall in a single season. I believe it’s not just the world record for ski areas, but for any point where snowfall is measured. That could be wrong, but I think it’s right. Anyway, the record was set in the 1998-1999 season, when they had 1,140 inches of snow fall. (That’s **95 FEET** of snow, or 29 meters!!) That was a La Nina year (you know, the opposite of El Nino). Oh, did I mention that La Nina is also scheduled to make an appearance this season? Yes. Yes it is. Excellent.
I should also note that this picture was NOT from the record breaking season. This was just from a more typical season, where they average 647 inches. Still not too shabby, kinda makes you wonder why I’ve only skiied there once, huh? Oh, right, it’s more than a three hour drive. That would do it.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/500s, f/11.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 109mm.
Popularity: 17%
September 3, 2010 – Negril Craft Market
Posted by Dave in Picture of the Day, Tropical/Beaches on September 3, 2010
Negril Craft Market, Jamaica
Friday, September 3, 2010
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Apparently I’ve adopted a 3-days-a-week routine for posting to this blog. That wasn’t really the intention, I swear. It just sort of ended up that way for the past couple weeks. As a result, I set a new record in August for the fewest posts in a month (13 – that’s not counting May, 2009, which was the month I started, because I started it in the middle of the month). A dubious achievement, for sure. Especially since it was a 31 day month. Sigh. Maybe this month I’ll do better.
Today’s picture takes us back to Jamaica, which is where I went for my big happy vacation earlier this year. This picture is actually pretty similar to one I already posted awhile ago. But it’s different enough that I have no qualms about posting it. (I’m still pretending that there’s actually some kind of rule that says I can’t post the same picture twice.) This was taken at the Negril Craft Market, which is on the 7-mile beach in Negril, at the very western point of the island. The beach and the water are stunningly gorgeous, but it’s not the place to go if you’re looking for solitude and relaxation. It’s a very developed beach, meaning there are hotels along the entire stretch, and tons of people walking around. I’m not trying to say that’s a bad thing, but if you’re looking for a place where you have the whole beach to yourself, this ain’t it. When we were there, we split our time, half of it staying right on the beach, and the other half staying up on “the cliffs”, which is a stretch of rocky shoreline further along the highway. All of the hotels there still have access to the water and such, but the shoreline is all rocky cliffs (thus, the name) that are generally 10-20 feet high. So the hotels usually have some stairs built into the rocks, or little ladders to let you in the water. Those are actually fantastic choices if you’re looking for solitude. As an added bonus, you can find really great snorkeling and diving right outside of your hotel room. If you don’t actually require a sandy entrance to the water, I think I prefer it. Good times.
I’m rambling. Sorry. Back to this picture. As I mentioned, this was taken at the craft market. The craft market consists of a lot of little huts like these. At the time we were there, about a third of them were open for business, with people selling all the artsy and craftsy stuff that you’d expect (little figurines, cheap t-shirts, wooden carvings of Bob Marley, sunset paintings, etc). The backside of the market butts up against the beach, although it was a stretch of beach that nobody seemed to be using for anything (it was separated a bit from the stretch of hotels). The water was still awfully nice though. As with most of the pictures I got while down there, I used a polarizing filter for this shot, which is an absolute REQUIREMENT for taking pictures of the beach and the water. If you’re going somewhere beachy with pretty water like this, don’t hesitate, just go buy one, and thank me later.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/250s, f/7.1, ISO 100. Focal length: 26mm.
Popularity: 35%
September 1, 2010 – Decker Loop Trail
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Mountains, Picture of the Day on September 1, 2010
Decker Loop Trail, Blackcomb Mountain
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
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Hey, it’s Wednesday, I should toss a picture up here, huh? First off, I’d like to welcome everyone from Glenda Lott’s HS101 class at Spain Park High School in Hoover, Alabama. I’m not sure why exactly she chose my blog as suggested reading for her class, but hey, it’s awesome that she did! I hope you all.. umm.. found what you were looking for?
As promised, here’s the first of what I’m sure will be many shots from this last weekend in Whistler. This is definitely not my favorite of the set, but it’s good enough to post here. (Since it’s the first day of the month, this post will be the very last one shown from here until eternity for anyone looking for the archives of September 2010. Meaning, 3 or 4 posts from now, it’ll never be seen again. Awww, how sad.)
For a long time, they’ve had the gondola on Whistler Mountain open during the summer so you could go up there and hike around. A few years ago they started running the Peak Chair too, which takes you all the way up to the summit. That’s pretty cool. Independently, they’ve been doing summer skiing (usually through late July I think) on Blackcomb, but it was always a pain in the butt to get over there. By that I mean, you had to ride two chairlifts up, then take a bus over to a third chairlift, and ride that one up too. It’s not clear if people on foot were allowed or not originally, or if it was just people that paid for the skiing ticket on the glacier). In the last couple years they actually officially started offering hiking on that mountain, but it wasn’t really marketed much, which is understandable, because it was a pain in the ass. And, to make it worse, they didn’t even have any designated trails over there, so you basically just scrambled around on the rocks for a little while.) BUT, since they went through all the trouble of building the Peak 2 Peak Gondola (you know, the one that takes you between both mountains) Blackcomb has now been a regular stop for the “sightseers”. Thus, now from the top of the second chairlift (the Solar Coaster), you can either take the Peak 2 Peak over to Whistler, or you can head off on the newly designated actual-trails-for-hiking on Blackcomb.
So, that’s what I decided to check out (since I’ve been on the trails on Whistler a few times now). And, it’s TOTALLY worth doing. I’d say it’s even better than the hiking on Whistler, although that’s a bold statement, because the High Note trail on Whistler is also pretty spectacular (as is the Half Note trail). For those of you that know anything about the layout of the mountain: the trail heads out from the top of the Solar Coaster, and heads around the mountain to the 7th Heaven area. It passes under the chairlift there, and keeps going, out to (and past) the boundary for Garibaldi Provincial Park (which is actually the ski area boundary). There are some nice views to be had out that way, not only of Blackcomb itself, but also out over some of the big peaks in Garibaldi Park (including Black Tusk, and the Cheakamus and Overlord glaciers). Well worth the time and energy. Do it. Now. This weekend. I’m serious.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/200s, f/13.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 30mm.
Popularity: 11%