Bee and Flower

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Umm. Wow. Been awhile, huh? Well, here’s one to hold you over until I decide to start blogging again.

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Point Reyes National Seashore

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Today’s picture is the 400th post to the Picture of the Day!! Congratulate me, dangit!

Right, good, now that I’ve got that out there… Here’s another shot from Point Reyes National Seashore, just north of San Francisco. I mentioned I had several photos from my recent visit that turned out pretty well, so here’s one of them. The area that’s called the “National Seashore” is kind of a spit of land that’s mostly separated from the main coastline and juts out a bit into the ocean. It mostly consists of small rolling hills covered with grass, and some low marshy/swampy tidelands. I had a lot of fun taking a bunch of shots of the late afternoon sun playing around on the grass, especially when the odd cloud would pass by, which did some cool stuff with textures of lighting. Using a polarizer was a must, as it cut through a lot of the haze and made for some nice cobalt-blue skies. The only downside was that it was right about when I took this picture that I remembered that I’ve got a fairly strong allergy to grass, and that’s why I had been sneezing and blowing my nose and generally feeling pretty miserable the whole day. But, it’s all worth it when you get a decent shot or two.

Okay, see you tomorrow for post number 401!

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/250s, f/10.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 21mm.

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Yellow Rose

Monday, July 18, 2011

Man, I really thought I had already posted this picture before, but my rudimentary method for keeping track of this stuff suggests that I haven’t. So, maybe it’s a re-post, maybe not. Doesn’t really matter, I’m sure even if it is, you don’t remember it from last time. In fact, I could probably replay the first 250 pictures that I posted and nobody would say a thing. Perhaps I’ll do that someday. But not today. No sir, this is not that day.

This is a rose. It’s yellow. Thus, the title of the post. I took it on a cloudy day last year, in the rose garden at Woodland Park. I’ve found that cloudy days work a lot better for rose pictures than sunny days, because you get a truer representation of the color than when you’ve got bright sunshine everywhere. It can be a bit challenging because of the lack of light, but it can make for some nice shots.

This one was taken with my Minolta-mount Kiron 105 macro that I found on eBay. If you’re the kind of person that likes to scour eBay for old lenses, I *highly* recommend trying to track one of these guys down. I’m always amazed at how nice the shots come out of this guy. It’s been awhile since I’ve busted it out, probably since around the time I took this picture. Man, I gotta get on that.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Kiron 105mm macro (Minolta mount). 1/160s, ISO 200. Aperture unknown.

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Point Reyes National Seashore

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Hey everyone! Last week I mentioned that I wouldn’t be posting anything on Monday. Apparently I used that as an excuse to also not post anything on Tuesday. But, now that it’s Wednesday, let’s get back to it.

I had to fly down to San Francisco for work on Monday, so I took the opportunity to fly out early Sunday morning and rent a car for the day. I didn’t really have a specific plan of where to go, but I figured I’d shoot for the coast north of the city. Thus, I ended up spending most of my day farting around Point Reyes National Seashore. That’s a reasonably interesting place, if you’re in the area and have some time to kill. There are some nice beaches (nice as in pretty, not nice as in let’s-lay-out-a-towel-and-get-some-sun), some interesting geography, and some wicked nasty wind. But, that makes for some big waves, which are also pretty cool.

I realize that it’s somewhat ironic that a picture captioned “Point Reyes National Seashore” would not contain a beach, or a shoreline, or anything even water related. But that’s where we are. Point Reyes is a triangular wedge of land that juts out from the mainland, and it contains, among other things, a bunch of historic ranches that are still operational. This one was along the main road in the park, after I had pulled away from the water a bit.

It’s interesting to note that I made *very* minimal adjustments to the image. Meaning, I tweaked the brightness slightly, and added a touch of sharpening, but other than that, this is what came off the camera. As in, I didn’t tweak the colors at all. Often these days you see pics from Instragram and other apps like it where people make it look all yellow-y and old-time looking, but none of that funny business happened here. It actually did look like this, it was pretty incredible. All of the wind meant that the air was thick with haze and mist from crashing waves, so the entire sky to the west was glowing. Cool stuff. Oh, I just remembered that my statement before about how I adjusted the image wasn’t quite true – there was a spot of lens flare that I removed with Picasa. So, I’m basically saying that I totally cheated. But I’m okay with that.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 55-250mm IS lens. 1/160s, f/13.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 74mm.

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Bee and Flower

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1961

Let’s go with this one today. It’s (yet another) bee with (yet another) flower. But it’s Wednesday, and this makes me 3 for 3. I think these are lavender flowers or something? Hmm, whatever, not important. They’re nice enough to look at.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro lens. 1/200s, f/5.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 90mm.

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Surfing the North Shore at Sunset

Friday, May 13, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2481

In honor of it being the end of the work week, I’m going to take you all back to Hawaii. I’m not a surfer, but this picture (and a couple others that I got that I may post soon) makes me seriously consider taking it up. I mean, holy crap, what a moment. This was taken on the north shore of Oahu, just like the last couple Hawaii shots I’ve posted, so nothing groundbreaking there. Not a bad place though, not a bad place…

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 55-250mm IS lens. 1/200s, f/8.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 250mm.

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Harriman State Park, NY

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2388

Back to the east coast for today. It seems like forever ago, but I think it really was just last fall that I was out in New England. The memories from that trip are a little bit bittersweet though, since the weather didn’t quite work out where I was intending to go (Vermont), so most of the decent pics I got I got on the way there. Like this one, from Harriman State Park, in New York. (It also didn’t help/hurt that Vermont was past its peak by the time we were there, but this part of New York was right in the thick of it.)

One of these years I hope to head back out there and maybe do a bit of backpacking in the fall. Not sure when I’ll ever actually be able to make it happen, but it’s definitely on the to-do list. Someday, right?

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/200s, f/5.6, ISO 200. Focal length: 20mm.

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Makapu'u Beach, Hawaii

Friday, April 1, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2423

Hey look, I’m back! And this is where I went! That’s right, I was in Hawaii, and it was awesome. Specifically, I was on the island of O’ahu for a week. I spent a few nights in Waikiki, then a few nights on the north shore. This picture though is from neither of those. You’re looking at Makapu’u Beach and the Kalanianaole Highway, at the southeastern tip of the island. Most of the beaches around there are just absurdly beautiful, which in some ways I found pretty surprising after spending the first couple days in Honolulu. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Honolulu’s not bad, it’s a fine place to spend some beach time, but it doesn’t have this gorgeous white sand and turquoise water that a lot of other spots on the island do. (Not to mention the cliffs and mountains and all that.) Great stuff.

So anyway, I’m back now, and it’s April, a brand new month. So hopefully I’ll start posting again with at least some sort of regularity. Time will tell if that actually happens though.

In other news, if you were hoping to get your hands on a print or two, this is your chance! I’ll sell you a print of any picture you see on the blog, and 100% of the proceeds will go to a good cause: to help offset the medical expenses incurred by the sister of a friend of mine who was recently diagnosed with stage IV stomach cancer. I haven’t thought too much about what price to charge, but let’s say somewhere around $20 for a 12 x 18 inch print, or $35 for 20 x 30 inches. (That’s approximately 30 x 46 cm, and 51 x 76 cm, for you metric types.) I’ll even ship it for free! (Well, I’ll ship to the US for free. If you’re international, I’ll have to check what it’ll cost me before I commit to that. ) If you’re interested, leave a comment here or shoot me an email! ( dave (at) davefry.net ) (Alternatively, I could send your proceeds to the Red Cross for Earthquake relief – your choice.)

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens. 1/320s, f/7.1, ISO 200. Focal length: 11mm.

UPDATE: In response to the first comment below, here is the original, unedited image straight off the camera (well, shrunk down to web-size, but you know what I mean):

As you can see, I did some tweaking to the brightness/contrast, and I added a bit of sharpening too. I used the editing functionality from Picasa to make those changes (which is what I use for 99% of my photo editing – the other 1% is when I use Picnik to straighten something, because Picasa’s straighten feature results in a lower-quality image.) If you wanted to know more specifics about what I did (or how), please ask!

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Heather Pass, North Cascades National Park

Thursday, March 17, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2058

Today’s post takes us back to last fall, and to North Cascades National Park in Washington state. The North Cascades contain some of the most rugged terrain I personally have ever seen, and consequently it’s pretty ridiculously beautiful. It’s not one of the most visited national parks, and as such access to it is somewhat limited. Meaning, you can’t get to the huge majority of the park without hiking for several days. There are definitely some cool places you can get to via a simple day-hike though (like this spot), so it’s well worth a trip even if you’re just visiting the area for a weekend.

The day this picture was taken worked out really well, it was one of those perfect, crisp, sunny fall days. I mean, I make it sound like I just got really lucky, but that’s not quite right. I mean, it turns out there’s this thing called the internet that has all sorts of information on it, like weather forecasts and movie times and pictures of naked people. The internet told me that it was going to be nice, so that’s why I spent the 3-ish hours driving to the trailhead that day. But the area in which I WAS lucky was that sky. I mean, holy crap, look at that sky. That’s the kind of sky people like me DREAM about. Toss a polarizer on your lens and your jaw will just drop. I love it.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/200s, f/5.6, ISO 200. Focal length: 20mm.

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Mt. Baker Ski Area

Friday, March 4, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2396

Hey, guess what!! I posted a picture today! I know, I know, I’m awesome.

This is another view from Mt. Baker Ski Area, in northwestern Washington state. I specifically chose the words “view from Mt. Baker” as opposed to “this is Mt. Baker Ski Area”, becasue the area you’re looking at here is strictly out of bounds. The ridge in the foreground is in a designated wilderness area, and I think the peak in the background (it’s actually just a little pointy part on the ridge that leads up to the actual summit of Mt. Shuksan) is inside the bounds of North Cascades National Park. So while technically possible to ski it, it would take quite a hike to get there, through some really gnarly (and extremely avalanche-prone) terrain. Maybe that’s your cup of tea, but it sure ain’t mine. But, I was totally standing inside the bounds of the ski area when I took it, so it totally counts.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll stand by it (and then I’ll caveat the crap out of it): Mt. Baker has the most jaw-droppingly incredible scenery of any ski resort anywhere, hands-down. Okay, now, hands back up, because here come the caveats. A lot of the time (most of the time?) you can’t even see the scenery, because, duh, the ski area that holds the world record for snowfall tends to have crappy weather. Bluebird days are almost non-existent, and often you can count the total number from an entire season on one hand. Sometimes on one finger. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s a haul from Seattle (3.5 hours), so the only reason we even went up there on the day I took this picture is because we knew it would be sunny with some reasonably fresh snow. Next, I can only really fairly compare the scenery here to other places I’ve actually been. Which limits it pretty severely. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been to some places that are decent competitors (Vail, Whistler, Whitefish, heck, even Snoqualmie), but I still think Baker wins out. I have *not* been to anywhere outside North America, at least not in the winter. And, I’ve only actually been to one European ski resort at all (Zermatt), so the odds are good that those may actually be better. And, finally, the last caveat to that statemen…

Wait, who the eff cares which one is truly “best” in the scenery department? That doesn’t even make sense. Views, just like photos, aren’t something that can be compared, judged, and stack-ranked. It just doesn’t make sense. Beauty, and the related quality of views or pictures can’t be quantified, and thus can’t be labelled “winner” and “loser”. It’s like asking “Which is greater? The number 532, or a chair?”

So, sit down, stop asking questions, and look at the pretty picture! And, optionally, go to Mt. Baker Ski Area, because, seriously, the views are incredible.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 55-250mm IS lens. 1/160s, f/16.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 250mm.

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