Archive for category British Columbia
June 2, 2011 – Shannon Creek
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Picture of the Day on June 2, 2011
Shannon Creek
Thursday, June 2, 2011
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1254
It’s been awhile since I’ve tossed any shots of Shannon Creek at you, so you’re totally due. Note that I didn’t use a very long shutter speed here, so you can actually see some splashes and stuff. Putting it that way suggests that I intentionally did it that way because that was the effect I was going for. That’s a little bit misleading. I used a fairly fast shutter speed because I was shooting hand-held. So, this was what came out. Not the other way around.
Ok, see you tomorrow, maybe.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/30s, f/9.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 35mm.
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May 16, 2011 – Blackcomb Lake
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Picture of the Day on May 16, 2011
Blackcomb Lake
Monday, May 16, 2011
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1708
I hope everyone had a nice weekend. Mine was nice, although I again failed to get out to take any pictures. Other than my trip to Hawaii earlier this year, I really haven’t taken much of anything in quite awhile. I’m just sitting here going through the archives, but those will run out eventually. After that? Who knows!
Anyway, this is Blackcomb Lake. It’s located on Blackcomb Mountain. (Shocker!) The weather was crappy, which was a common theme in the Pacific Northwest last summer. This summer is off to just as great of a start. (We’ve only had TWO DAYS THIS YEAR over 62 degrees! That’s 16.67 degrees for you celcius types.) I think I’m in a grumpy mood. Oh well, it happens.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens. 1/200s, f/11.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 16mm.
Popularity: 14%
April 22, 2011 – Whistler Mountain
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Mountains, Picture of the Day, Winter/Snow on April 22, 2011
View from Whistler Mountain
Friday, April 22, 2011
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1752
One last post here to round out the week. And, in honor of the fact that both me and mother nature seem to be having a tough time letting go of this winter, I’m going to post another skiing shot. (Sadly, I won’t be making it up skiing this weekend – but my season is far from over!!)
This was taken from the summit of Whistler Mountain, at Whistler-Blackcomb Ski Resort in British Columbia. The normal picture that you’d take from up here would include Black Tusk, but I like this view too. The weather during this particular trip up there was a bit weird though. I took it in January of 2008, but the snow was a lot more like what you’d usually find in April. There was a warm spell that rolled through (that does happen from time to time up here in the PNW), so the snow, while pretty to look at, was kind of grabby and nasty. As in, it wasn’t quite warm enough to be soft and slushy like the *good* stuff you get in the spring (at least, not this high on the mountain, down low it was a lot nicer), but it wasn’t quite cold enough to be fully frozen either. (Yes, I prefer ice and hard-pack to grabby, but both of them are way at the bottom of the list.) Anyway, enough about the skiing. I like the view, and that’s what we’re here for.
Notes: Canon PowerShot SD850 IS (Point and shoot). 1/1000s, ISO 80.
Popularity: 13%
March 1, 2011 – Shannon Creek
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Picture of the Day on March 1, 2011
Shannon Creek, Squamish, BC
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1271
Another Monday, gone by without a post. It’s becoming a routine. A totally awesome yet solidly disappointing routine. And to make up for it all I’ve got for you is yet another shot of Shannon Creek, outside Squamish, British Columbia? It’s a wonder why any of you keep coming back. But you do! Which is awesome! So, thanks for that!
I’ve been in a photographic rut lately. I haven’t been taking any pictures. I mean, sure, a decent part of that is that it’s winter, and I’ve been busy. So I haven’t been making it outside much, and even if I were able to make it outside, it can be difficult around here to get places where the conditions make for the kinds of pictures I want to take. Mostly, I’m just trying to make excuses for the fact that I’m lazy. But there’s at least a little bit of truth to it. Regardless, my camera’s been sitting in the corner gathering dust for awhile now, and it’s disappointing. And, when the camera’s not being used, it can affect my whole mood around my pictures, which as you can see, leads to a reduced level of excitement for putting pictures up here. While it’s true that most of these pictures that I’m posting are brand new to all of you, I’ve seen most of them hundreds if not thousands of times before, so the novelty and newness of them has long since worn off, so it can be hard to drum up some excitement about them when I post them here. But again, totally my own problem, and just another symptom of me being lazy. I get that, I really do. 
Anyway, now that the self-pity is dispensed with, look at this picture of Shannon Creek! It’s so….. green!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/40s, f/9.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 46mm.
Popularity: 12%
December 17, 2010 – Shannon Creek
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Picture of the Day on December 17, 2010
Shannon Creek
Friday, December 17, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1269
According to Google Analytics, everybody who normally comes around these parts is taking the month of December off. That means that you, dear reader, don’t actually exist. And THAT means that I may as well work through the backlog of pictures of Shannon Creek. Because I’ve still got a ton of ‘em. Then, when and if everyone comes back, I’ll go back to making a feeble effort toward variety. So, until then…
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/40s, f/9.0, ISO 400. Focla length: 46mm.
Popularity: 13%
December 14, 2010 – Blackcomb Mountain
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Mountains, Picture of the Day on December 14, 2010
Blackcomb Mountain
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1676
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 55-250mm IS lens. 1/400s, f/11.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 55mm.
Popularity: 13%
October 28, 2010 – Shannon Creek
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Picture of the Day on October 28, 2010
Shannon Creek
Thursday, October 28, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1245
Another day, another picture of Shannon Creek. Seriously, haven’t we already seen all of these? No, believe it or not. But, I think I’ve already said all you could possibly say about it. So, ummm…
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/40s, f/9.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 10%
October 21, 2010 – Blackcomb Mountain
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Mountains, Picture of the Day on October 21, 2010
Hiking on Blackcomb Mountain
Thursday, October 21, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1431
Hey look, it’s the return of Mediocre Image Thursday! With even less fanfare this time!! (Meaning, I didn’t call it out in the post title. That’s what passes for fanfare around here.) This picture was taken while hiking around on Blackcomb Mountain (part of Whistler-Blackcomb Ski Resort, of course), a couple years ago. This was taken before they had any officially designated trails on Blackcomb (they did have several on Whistler though), a couple of years before they opened the new Peak-2-Peak gondola. To get up to the top, you just followed the routine for those who were skiing on the glacier, which is to say, you rode 2 chairs up from the village, then took a bus over to the bottom of the 7th Heaven chair, and rode it up to the top. (And then the glacier is on the other side of the ridge, and is lift served by two t-bars.) So, if you’re a hiker, you just get dropped off on the ridgeline, and you can scramble around on the rocks and stuff. This is overlooking the 7th Heaven area, looking into Garibaldi Provincial Park (and I believe that’s Overlord Peak and the Overlord Glacier in the distance.)
This, like many other pictures I’ve posted recently, was taken with my crappy lens (my old Tamron 28-300 VC), and thus had to be post-processed somewhat severely to even bring it into the realm of respectability. Even so, it seems like I screwed up the colors a bit and maybe oversharpened it, but that’s standard operating procedure for me. For some reason, this is one of the most highly rated images on Rate Dave’s Photos, although that’s not entirely fair to say, because it’s only gotten 3 votes. (2 10′s and a 9.) Needless to say, I don’t feel that it deserves those ratings, but hey, whatever floats your boat.
Come back tomorrow, and I’ll post something better! I don’t know what it’ll be yet, but it’ll be the best thing ever. Maybe.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/60s, f/22.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 15%
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: 9%
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
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=162
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: 14%
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
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1682
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: 15%
August 23, 2010 – Manning Provincial Park
Posted by Dave in British Columbia, Mountains, Picture of the Day on August 23, 2010
Manning Provincial Park
Monday, August 23, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1657
My original plan for this weekend was to FINALLY get out backpacking, since I haven’t yet been able to make it work this summer. But, once again, the weather intervened. Not that it was supposed to be particularly BAD up in the mountains, just that it wasn’t going to be good enough to make it work out. All of the forecasts I checked made it sound like it would be pretty nice Saturday, but then on Sunday it would just be cloudy and a bit chilly, with perhaps some rain mixed in. The chilly part didn’t bother me, but there’s a very particular kind of overcast that we get out here in the PNW that makes landscape type pictures pretty bland. Featureless grey, with nice flat light. So, since we had a bunch of stuff to take care of around the house this weekend, we decided, again, to bag it. Sigh.
Fortunately, that still left open the possibility of doing other stuff. So, as a result, we were able to check another item off my list: we drove up into Canada and checked out Manning Provincial Park. Manning Park is just across the border from North Cascades National Park, similar to how Waterton Park is Canada’s answer to Glacier National Park in Montana. There’s a highway that traverses the park east-to-west, which is about 3 and a half hours from Seattle. There’s a couple viewpoints where you can see some nice big craggy peaks to the south, almost all of which are actually across the border in the USA. (Although since vehicular access is basically nonexistent in NCNP, you can see American peaks from Manning Park that you would never see in the states without hiking for several days.)
So, here’s a Manning Park view. This was looking southwest-ish, so I believe those peaks you’re looking at are around the north end of Ross Lake, which is a narrow north-south lake (it’s a dammed river) that stretches all the way from Highway 20 (the road through North Cascades National Park) up to just past the Canadian border (about 23 miles to the north). There’s a small ski area in the park, which is now on my list of places to check out. So, while I checked one item off the list, it simply got replaced. Oh well, that’s how these things go.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 55-250mm IS lens. 1/640s, f/10.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 208mm.
Popularity: 14%