Larches at Heather Pass

Friday, July 8, 2011

Well, three posts in one week. Not my worst ever performance, so I’ll take it. This is a view from just below Heather Pass in North Cascades National Park. And, those are larches. I’ve talked about them a bunch of times, but for review: they are pine trees that change color in the fall. They are awesome. I have run out of interesting things to say.

I’m not going to post anything Monday, I’m warning you ahead of time, so plan accordingly.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens. 1/400s, f/5.6, ISO 400. Focal length: 11mm.

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Yosemite Valley

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2170

Wait, it’s Tuesday already? What happened to Monday? Dang. I was kind of planning to post another Hawaii picture today, but when I started digging around looking for one (shouldn’t be THAT hard, I haven’t even gone through half of them yet, so the number I have available to choose from online is pretty small) I stumbled across this one from Yosemite. So I figured I’d save Hawaii for another day, and here we are.

I took this one with my wide-angle lens (Tokina 11-16), and it’s true that super wide-angle lenses cause some crazy distortion around the edges. But yes, that tree really was growing at like a 45 degree angle. I thought I had done a fairly good job at keeping everything as level as it can be, but now that I’m looking at those trees in the distance on the right, I’m thinking that side might be riding a tiny bit too high. Hmm. Oh well.

This was taken the first weekend in November last year. I was down in San Francisco for work, so I took a weekend to drive out to Yosemite. That was actually my first time out there, but it was really pretty at that time of year. The weather was of course pretty iffy (we only had a few hours of good weather, right after we got there (that’s when I took this and most of the other pictures that I got while there.) The full day we had planned for Sunday got rained out in a pretty dramatic way. Oh well, that kind of thing happens, especially in the shoulder seasons. Next time, next time.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens. 1/200s, f/7.1, ISO 400. Focal length: 11mm.

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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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Autumn Leaves

Thursday, April 7, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2089

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens. 1/200s, f/13.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 28mm.

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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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Autumn in Vermont

Friday, February 11, 2011.

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2384

Back to Vermont. This was taken near a maple syrup farm. (Maple farm? Syrup-works? Whatever.) It was misleading though, we were expecting some neat touristy thing, but when we got there it was literally just a house with a barn, and apparently they’d dish you out some syrup for cheap. Not… quite what we were looking for. But, on the drive there, I saw this nice little scene. So I took a picture of it. That’s how it works around here.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/250s, f/8.0,, ISO 200. Focal length: 47mm.

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Loveland Pass, Colorado

Friday, February 4, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2237

Hello everyone, and welcome to Friday! It took awhile to get here, but hey, we’re here now, right? Today’s picture has kinda-sorta been posted before. Maybe you remember, maybe you don’t, but I posted a black and white version of this exact image just a couple months ago. At the time, I was saying how I normally don’t play around with things like black and white, because it’s kind of cheesy, and I’m not very good at it. (At knowing when is an appropriate time, when it’s just plain cheese, etc.) But I went ahead and did it on that (this) image because I thought it was a good illustration of the trick of using red-filtered black and white to make the scene slightly more dramatic, by emphasizing the clouds a bit more, stuff like that. (And I mentioned again how that was one of the tricks that Ansel Adams liked to use…)

Also, I talked a bit about how, even though I thought that it made a somewhat interesting black and white image, that the REAL colors in the REAL image were actually pretty striking. So I threatened to post the original image “soon”. Well, two months later may or may not qualify as “soon” in your book, but here it is. Obviously, it was autumn at the time (well, it was at the beginning of September, but that’s right at the height of fall in the high country in Colorado), so all of the grasses and such were this nice amber color, which contrasted nicely against the blue sky.

This was taken a little ways above Loveland Pass. Loveland Pass is in Summit County, Colorado. It used to be the primary way through these parts (good ole’ Highway 6), but then they built the Eisenhower tunnel along I-70 which was a much easier way to go. These ridgelines and stuff aren’t quite up to 14,000 feet, I think most of them are between 12k and 13k. Pretty high still. High enough, really. I had parked right at the pass, and started hiking up. I only had a couple hours to kill, so I couldn’t make it too far, but I did manage to make it up to the ridgeline. (You can see the trail up ahead as it snakes its way up there.) A really nice place to hike, I wish I had more time to explore.

Okay, see you next week!

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens. 1/500s, f/7.1, ISO 100. Focal length: 12mm.

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Autumn in Vermont

Friday, January 28, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2373

Barely snuck this one in before the close of business on Friday. Whew. I spent some time over the past couple days going through some of the shots I got on a couple of the quick trips I got to go on last fall, one to New England (for a wedding) and one to Yosemite (was in SF for work). So, here’s one from New England. I think I’ve told the story before: we were only there for about a day and a half, and the weather started out marginal and became horrendous by the time we left. (Turns out a huge Nor’Easter blew through, dropping a bunch of snow and such. Lovely.) Saw enough stuff to convince me that I definitely need to go back some day, but didn’t really get too many great shots while I was there. Oh well, that’s how it goes sometimes.

I’m really not sure where I took this. We basically just drove around the whole time we were there. We stayed in Castleton, which is sort of in the central-west part of the state, and we ended up driving up to Burlington. So this was somewhere in that vicinity. We were there during the first or second weekend in October I think, so definitely past the peak of fall color for that area, but there was still plenty of color to be had. (Would have been great if the weather held out, grrr.) Although, at that time, the color was MUCH more intense further sound, specifically in southern and central New York, so the drive up there was FANTASTIC.

Have a great weekend!

Notes: Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/250s, f/6.3, ISO 400. Focal length: 32mm.

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Larches above Colchuck Lake

Monday, January 24, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1927

Hello, welcome back from the weekend! I was hoping that I’d be able to make it out this weekend to take some new pics, because it’s been awhile now since I’ve been able to get anything worthy of tossing up in this blog. But, no, the weather didn’t really work out, yet again. Sigh. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve still got plenty queued up in the backlog to last awhile. But still, it would be nice to get some new ones. I mean, the whole point of a hobby is that it it’s an activity that you enjoy. So I miss it, and that’s sad. Oh well, hopefully someday soon.

In the meantime, here’s a shot from last fall. This was taken very late in the afternoon from the shores of Lake Colchuck, which is outside Leavenworth, Washington. Those larches looked nice, with the last few rays of sunshine illuminating them on that rugged ridge way up there. It’s kind of a recurring theme about last fall, but I wasn’t expecting to see the larches changing color yet, I thought it was still 2 or 3 weeks early for that. On this hike in particular, I didn’t get to get up close and personal with any of them (although on the hike I did the next weekend, I did), so I had to settle for seeing them up on the surrounding mountains. But still, it was a nice sight.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 55-250mm IS lens. 1/500s, f/9.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 179mm.

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Maroon Bells and Maroon Lake

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=649

We’re reaching way back into the archives today. Although, oddly enough, this is the second picture in a row from Colorado. I just noticed that. Huh, oh well. This shot was, obviously, shot in the fall. The day that I took this was the only day I had in Aspen. We had stayed in town the night before, but shortly after this was taken, we started driving back to my parents’ house in Colorado Springs. (Notice a common theme here? Right, yes, the theme is: my parents live in Colorado Springs. Thus, I sometimes find myself in Colorado. On those occasions, I, um, take pictures.)

This was my second time at this viewpoint. Well, technically, it was my third, but for now, we’ll call it the second. The FIRST time I was there was a year or two earlier, right at the beginning of the summer. Or maybe it was even the beginning of May. Not that important. What WAS important was that I slept in my car in the parking lot (I was laid off, so I didn’t want to spend the money on a hotel), but right at sunrise, there was a super nice reflection from the lake, with the sun shining right up the valley, illuminating the peaks. It was great. So this time around, even though it was three months later in the year, I decided to try the same thing. So, I got up before sunrise and drove out there. Then, the sun came up. Then, I realized that the whole “sun shining right down the valley” thing had a lot to do with the fact that it was May. That in September, the sun rose at a different spot on the horizon, and thus, I’d have to wait a few hours for it to finally rise over the valley wall. Whoops. So I ended up hanging out for awhile waiting for it. Fortunately, I had a book.

But, that’s not when I took this picture. I took a lot of pictures then, yes, and I’ve even posted a few of them here already. But then I headed back to town, where my wife was asleep in the hotel room. Well, I mean, she was asleep when I left, but she was actually starting to get a bit worried, since I told her I’d be back in half an hour or so, and it was now approaching 5 hours since I had left. Whoops. I could have called, except that, right, I was in the mountains, and had no coverage.

So, that was fun. Eventually, we got some breakfast and such, and then we headed back out here. (Thus, my third time here.) By then, they had instituted the no-cars-allowed policy (for most of the day, the only option is to take a shuttle in), but that was fine. My wife and I rode on in, and I got another set of pictures from the viewpoint. The afternoon breezes had kicked up though, so there was no more nice still reflection like early in the morning. That’s okay though, it was a nice view in its own right.

Okay, that’s it for today. Also, that’s also probably it for this week, since I’m really busy at work the next couple days. I mean, sure, there’s a chance I’ll put something else up here, but I’m not planning on it. But hey, optimism is awesome, right?

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, 18-55mm kit lens. 1/200s, f/7.1, ISO 100. Focal length: 31mm.

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