Posts Tagged Tamron 28-300
July 14, 2010 – Italian Alps
Posted by Dave in Europe, Mountains, Picture of the Day on July 14, 2010
Hiking in the Italian Alps
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
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Man, I swear I was supposed to be born in the Alps. I would LOVE to live over in Europe (preferably either in northern Italy or southern Switzerland), but unfortunately I’m not the type that has the courage to make huge life changes like that. Sigh. I guess I’ll just keep dreaming.
This is yet another picture from Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso (Gran Paradiso National Park), in the Aosta Valley, which is in the far northwestern corner of Italy. The valley is capped at the end by Mont Blanc (they call it Monte Bianco), and this is also the valley that has both St. Bernard Passes (both Grand St. Bernard Pass – where they breed the dogs – and Little St. Bernard Pass), which cross into Switzerland and France, respectively. At the time I was there, not only did I not have any kind of wide-angle lens, the widest I could get was 28mm, which is a travesty. I guess I just need to go back.
This was along the Alpe Money (moe-NAY) trail, which spits out of the village of Valnontey and follows the river up the valley. We only had just under a week to explore all of northern Italy, so the fact that we were able to spend two nights in the park and go hiking for a full day was pretty amazing in and of itself. Some day I’d love to just spend a whole bunch of time hiking and exploring. But this stupid job thing just gets in the way. Sigh.
Anyway, enjoy the rest of your Wednesday!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm lens. 1/250s, f/9.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 35mm.
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June 18, 2010 – Emu
Posted by Dave in Animals, Picture of the Day on June 18, 2010
Emu
Friday, June 18, 2010
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Hey everyone! A long time ago (back when my readership consisted of about 10 people (if you counted generously, and included my cat)), I asked what people’s thoughts would be about moving to a 3-post-per-week format, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The response at that time was overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the 5-per-week rhythm (2 out of 2 responses is 100%, right?). But, based on this week’s performance it looks like I’m subconsciously moving in that direction. I’d like to think that next week will be back to normal, but hey, the ice is broken now, right? We’ll see how it goes. 
Before I go any further, I’d like to point out that today I have made it significantly easier to subscribe to the blog to get regular updates. At the bottom of every post (including this one!) there are links to either subscribe to the RSS feed or to receive all of the posts via email. (The email option is brand new, but the RSS feed has actually been around since day 1, but until now it was fairly difficult to find…) So, if you’re currently relying on memory alone to remind you each day to check for a new bite of delicious content, now you no longer have to! Wow! Just go meandering on down to just below the Notes, and click away!
So, about this picture. This is an emu. That’s… uhh… about all I’ve got. See you next week!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm lens. 1/125s, f/6.3, ISO 400. Focal length: 218mm.
Popularity: 16%
June 14, 2010 – Cascade Pass
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on June 14, 2010
Cascade Pass, North Cascades National Park
Monday, June 14, 2010
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Coming up with the opening for a Picture of the Day post is always the hardest part. Today, I decided to not try very hard. Tomorrow, I’m going to just start in the middle of a sentence. And you’re going to love it.
This was taken near Cascade Pass in North Cascades National Park. I hiked it last summer with a couple buddies, but for various reasons I completely screwed up my camera equipment strategy, so it’s on my list to go back to this summer, and do it right damnit. We’ll see if that actually ends up happening. There’s only a few weekends here in the PNW that are actually hikable (and the snow doesn’t even melt from the higher trails until mid-July), before you know it the summer’s over and done. Plus, with a young kid, weekends just tend to.. disappear. So, the odds are not in my favor. But the intention is totally there.
Anyway, this was about 200 or 300 yards before the summit of the pass proper. The views on the trail aren’t bad, obviously. You should check it out. But not the same day I do. I don’t want you to take my parking spot.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300mm lens. 1/200s, f/14.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 21%
May 13, 2010 – The Matterhorn
Posted by Dave in Europe, Fall Color, Mountains, Picture of the Day on May 13, 2010
The Matterhorn, seen from Zermatt, Switzerland
Thursday, May 13, 2010
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Whoops, looks like I missed a day. Sorry about that. I would make up some excuse about how I was really busy, or I was really sick (both excuses I’ve used recently), or that something super important came up or happened that prevented me from posting a picture despite my best efforts to the contrary. But it’s not true. The truth is, I really like the picture I used on Tuesday, and I wanted to give it some more time to bake as the first picture you see when you hit my blog, before it got buried underneath some other mediocre picture that I would have posted yesterday. I figure the first picture that people see when they stumble on in through the door goes a long way toward determining whether or not they’ll decide it’s worth their time to stick around, so I figured I’d give that one an extra day, since it was posted sort of late in the afternoon. (That’s also why I tend to post somewhat better pictures on Friday – since I figure people will be looking at it all weekend. Nevermind the fact that almost nobody comes to my blog on weekends, let’s just go ahead and pretend that’s not true.)
So, now that I’ve given away all my dark and dirty secrets… Here’s a picture of the Matterhorn! As you can tell by the little bit of orange grassy stuff in the lower left corner, we were there in the fall, mid September to be more precise. It was a fantastic time to be in the Alps (although to be fair we got EXTREMELY lucky with the weather on our whole trip), as there were a lot of gorgeous yellows and oranges everywhere that would normally just be ordinary greens. Since I’m a sucker for fall colors, I was loving it.
This picture was taken near one of the stops of the Gornergrat Bahn, which is the train that takes you from the village at Zermatt (ski resort in Switzerland) way up into the mountains. It drops you off way above tree-line (above grass-line too, as it turns out), at a really cool viewpoint where you’re overlooking both the Matterhorn as well as a bunch of huge glaciers that drape the upper reaches of Monte Rosa. (Although it’s worth pointing out that, while Monte Rosa is awesome to look at, from that close it really wasn’t very photogenic, there’s just too much going on, and not enough of a focal point to really draw in your eye. It’s just a jumbled mass of mountain-stuff. Impressive, yes. But I couldn’t figure out how to make it work in the camera lens.) This wasn’t actually taken from the end of the line, rather it was taken I think two stops down the hill. We were still above tree-line there, but there was at least a lot of grass around, which had a really nice warm glow in the autumn sunshine. Lovely day, lovely day.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm lens. 1/200s, f/7.1, ISO 100. Focal length: 71mm.
Popularity: 28%
April 30, 2010 – Larches at Ingalls Pass
Posted by Dave in Fall Color, Picture of the Day, Washington State, Winter/Snow on April 30, 2010
Larches at Ingalls Pass
Friday, April 30, 2010
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According to the old saying, it should be raining today. And tomorrow? Flowers. Sweet, looking forward to that, for sure. Although glancing at the forecast leads to the question of what exactly the May showers bring. And I’ll tell you: the one year anniversary of me starting this blog, that’s what. Whooooo yeah.
Today’s picture was taken on the Ingalls Pass trail, which is accessible via a 20 or 30 mile long dead-end road outside of Cle Elum, Washington. Those trees are larches. They’re actually coniferous (pine) trees, but they’re fairly unique in that they actually change colors and drop their needles in the fall. They’re really pretty, but (at least in western Washington) pretty hard to get to. I guess there are fairly large swaths of them in some of the eastern Washington forests, and western Montana, and the Idaho panhandle, although my understanding is that those are a somewhat different species than these here that you’re looking at. (But that doesn’t change the fact that they, also, change colors and drop their needles.) Out here, they are only found at higher elevations at particular locations, which means you’ve gotta hike to find them. We got pretty lucky the year I took this: we had gotten a little bit of snow a couple days before, then a beautiful sunny day that fell right on a weekend right when the larches were peaking. Perfect timing really. I told Julie at the time that we needed to make a larch hike an annual tradition, but that didn’t end up happening yet. (Well, to be fair, the next year she was on the verge of giving birth to our kid, and the year after that we … didn’t really have a good excuse.) Maybe this year, check back in the fall, I’ll let you know.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm lens. 1/200s, f/9.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 39mm.
Popularity: 24%
April 29, 2010 – Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso
Posted by Dave in Europe, Fall Color, Mountains, Picture of the Day on April 29, 2010
Alpe Money Trail, Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso
Thursday, April 29, 2010
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Hi! It’s me! I just realized earlier today that my RSS feed has been sitting there broken for a couple months now. That means the HORDES of subscribers that eagerly anticipate seeing my content via Google FeedReader each day have been under the impression that either I’m super lazy or that the Picture of the Day was totally abandoned. At least one of those is not actually true!! So, to all of my RSS subscribers, welcome back!!
Also among the things I realized earlier today is this: I haven’t posted a picture from Europe in quite awhile. (Months, really..) So, I quickly woke up, found one, and Wham!, here we go-go. (Too much of a stretch there?) This goes back to Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso (Gran Paradiso National Park), in the northwest corner of Italy. We fortunately had the time available to spend a whole day hiking there, and it was totally amazing in every way. Loved it, I need to go back.
I’ll stop here, since all of you RSS readers have a lot of content to catch up on today. Man, I bet you’re excited, huh?
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm lens. 1/160s, f/8.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 27%
April 20, 2010 – Cocktails?
Posted by Dave in Picture of the Day, Washington State on April 20, 2010
Cocktails, Pike Place Market
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
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Anyone?? Yeah, it’s been that kind of day.
This was taken inside Pike Place Market, in lovely Seattle. For a little while, we had a “club” here at work that would take a little field trip every couple weeks, to go take pictures. We’d usually just pick a direction and walk around the office, taking shots of whatever looked interesting. This was a result of one of those trips. Now, I’ve got to admit, I struggled quite a bit with it. I’m not used to taking pictures of “city stuff”, so it took awhile to find things that inspired me. And I never really got many shots that I really considered keepers (certainly nothing as cool as the other folks got). This is the first one I’ve ever posted from those little adventures, and it may be awhile before you see another one. (And this one I’m just posting because it’s, umm, topical.)
All that being said though, it’s a cool thing to make yourself do. Go out into a situation where you normally wouldn’t expect to find anything interesting to take pictures of, and force yourself to look at it in a way that you wouldn’t normally. You never know, it could push your boundaries a little bit, maybe spur some creativity next time you’re out in what you consider your usual element. And, hey, maybe you’ll even get something cool out of it! Or, maybe it’ll just be an excuse to go get some fresh air or check out a spot you’ve never seen before. All good things. So, cocktails?
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/160s, f/3.5, ISO 200. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 21%
March 16, 2010 – Stehekin Valley
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on March 16, 2010
Stehekin Valley, North Cascades National Park
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
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This is pretty similar to another picture I posted awhile back, but trust me, it’s not quite the same picture. It’s taken with different exposure settings, and it’s framed a little differently. This is how I roll. I can usually do a pretty good job of tossing out all the really crappy shots, but when it gets down to a few shots that are all technically decent enough, I have a really hard time picking the one that’s my favorite and sticking with it. It always comes down to liking one part of the first picture that’s not in the second, and one part of the second one that’s not in the first. And then it becomes like trying to pick which of your children is your favorite (and which one should be tossed out). Not an easy call. So I generally avoid the decision by just tossing them all online and moving on with my life. That’s what happened here.
This is the Stehekin Valley in North Cascades National Park. This was several miles past Cascade Pass on the (duh) Cascade Pass trail. We hiked in over the pass, then stayed for the night at a campground that was … well, just about where I was standing when I took this. This was the view at sunrise the next morning. If you go down that valley far enough, you’ll eventually reach Stehekin, which is a really small settlement at the far end of Lake Chelan. (Which is a super long (like 60 miles!) and narrow lake that cuts from the eastern slope of the Cascades into the heart of the range.) It’s only accessible by boat (or hiking), and I have never been there. It would have been a few more days walking from here to get there, and sadly my understanding is that the most interesting part of the hike was already behind me. We were just out for a quick out and back though, so this is as close to Stehekin as we got. Cascade Pass is a great hike though, even for just a day hike, up to the pass and back. Getting to the trailhead takes forever though, so leave early. (Or leave the night before and do some car camping.) Good times, good times.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/500s, f/7.1, ISO 400. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 29%
March 10, 2010 – Shi Shi Beach
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Picture of the Day, Tropical/Beaches, Washington State on March 10, 2010
Shi Shi Beach, Olympic National Park
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
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It’s been quite awhile since I put up a shot from Shi Shi Beach, so we’re all about due, right? Yeah, I think so. So here we go. Shi Shi Beach, Olympic National Park. You’ve all heard the story before. If not, go searching through the archives, there’s about a hundred pictures from here that I’ve posted already, and they’re all just incredibly awesome.
You may have noticed over there on the right that I added a “most popular posts” widget. It’s not based totally on post views, it uses other metrics too, like number of comments and incoming links and stuff. You can change all the values for how strongly it weights each thing, and I think I need to tweak it some. But, definitely check it out, and then go through and click on your favorite posts a bunch of times so they end up at the top of the list. Remember, hold down shift and hit refresh. Woooo!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/125s, f/8.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 46mm.
Popularity: 52%
March 3, 2010 – Pollination
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day, Washington State on March 3, 2010
Insect and Flower
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
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Whoa, not sure what happened there, I completely missed yesterday. I guess I was just.. kind of busy, so I sort of.. completely forgot to post a picture. Sorry about that! I’d say “I won’t let it happen again”, but obviously I will.
I realized today that it’s been almost a month and a half since I posted a picture of a bug. How could I let this happen?? Clearly, I had to remedy that situation immediately. I don’t really know what kind of bug this is (my first guess is always “bee”, but that’s based only on the fact that it’s standing on a flower, so clearly I’m not the authority), but it was willing to hang around for pictures, so it hardly matters.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, taking pictures of bugs like this is purely an exercise in patience. Obviously, they move. A LOT. Also, you’re dealing with microscopic depths of field, so if you tend to sway back and forth when you take pictures like I do, you might think you got the perfect shot only to find out later that you accidentally got the hindquarters of the bug in focus instead of it’s head. Depending on what macro method you’re using – as in, super-expensive-macro-lens, ordinary macro lens, macro kit (like this one), reverse-mounted lens, etc – you may get a larger or smaller depth of field, but it’ll always be super small. So, to counter both of those issues, you end up just needing to take a TON of shots, and hopefully a handful of them will turn out okay. (When I got this picture, for example, I took about 40 frames, and got 5 or 6 that were decent enough to hold on to.) So don’t get discouraged, just keep shooting, and be ready to dig through piles and piles of crappy ones to get what you want.
Notes: Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens with Hoya Macro Kit. 1/200s, f/5.6, ISO 200. Focal length: 109mm.
Popularity: 48%
February 17, 2010 – Strange Vine revisited
Posted by Dave in Macro, Picture of the Day on February 17, 2010
Strange vine revisited
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
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Hey again everyone, sorry for the late post today. It’s been a tough day trying to catch up on everything that I missed from yesterday (the hockey game was AWESOME! Maybe I’ll make a special post sometime with some of the results from me playing sports photographer for the day), so I’m only getting a chance to post something now. I promise, tomorrow we’ll be back on our regular schedule.
This is another take on the crazy curly vine thing that you last saw back in December. To sort of paraphrase what I said about it back then: I don’t know what it is, but I thought it was kind of cool looking. So, I took a picture. Actually, I took a lot of pictures. But this may be the last picture of it you see. Maybe not, we’ll see how I feel in April.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens with Hoya Macro Kit. 1/250s, f/4.0, ISO 800. Focal length: 35mm.
Popularity: 15%
February 1, 2010 – Salal Bush
Posted by Dave in Fall Color, Macro, Picture of the Day, Washington State on February 1, 2010
Salal Bush
Monday, February 1, 2010
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Hey everyone, welcome back! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend. Mine was not too bad. I spent a surprisingly large amount of time out in the snow (skiing one day, snowshoeing the next), hoping to get a decent number of potd-worthy shots. Sadly, I wasn’t as successful as I was hoping. I got a couple that have potential, we’ll see how they turn out when I look at them on the big screen.
In the meantime, here’s a picture of a salal bush from this fall. I actually had no idea what a salal bush was, but it had these little berries that were EVERYWHERE, so I asked somebody what they were, and that’s what they said. This shot (obviously) doesn’t have any berries in it, but it’s from the same bush. Mostly it’s only here because I was playing around with my macro kit (that little set of magnifying glass type things that you put on your lens like a filter), and it was handy. But as you can see, they really do work as advertised, and they can be a lot of fun to play around with. I’d post a link here to Amazon like usual, but I’ve done that a lot of times before and nobody’s every bought one. I’m feeling a bit lazy today, so I’m going to leave out that little detail.
I’ve decided that Tuesday and Thursday this week I’m going to toss up some crappy pictures just to get them out of the way, so don’t get your hopes up too much for those. I’ll try to put up something reasonably interesting on Wednesday, and I’ve got a nice one picked out for Friday. I don’t really know why I feel like Friday is the day to post nice ones, but I’ve kind of settled on that. So whatever. See you tomorrow!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens with Hoya macro kit. 1/400s, f/5.6, ISO 200. Focal length: 30mm.
Popularity: 23%