Snoqualmie Pass

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Wow. I’ve been pretty terrible about updating this site lately. Only one post in all of August, and we’re halfway through September and I’m just getting around to making my first post. Sigh. And the bad news is, things probably aren’t going to change anytime soon. So, I hope you like this picture, is what I’m saying. Like, *really* like it. Hmm.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, 18-55mm kit lens. 1/1600s, f/7.1, ISO 100. Focal length: 55mm.

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Monte Cristo Peaks, seen from Spada Lake

Friday, July 22, 2011

Just a quick post today to round out your Friday (or start off your Monday, if that’s when you’re seeing it.) This view was from the shore of Spada Lake, which is just a bit north of Highway 2 in the Startup/Gold Bar area. I wasn’t sure which peaks those were at the time, but I have since looked at a map. I’m fairly sure they are big peaks right next to the former-town of Monte Cristo (yes, the one along the Mountain Loop.) That is to say, Foggy Peak, Monte Cristo Peak, Kyes Peak, and Columbia Peak. I was kind of surprised to see that on the map, as I guess I just hadn’t really thought that closely about where exactly I was at the time. So, there you go. Have a great weekend!

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Unknown lens (but probably the Quantaray 70-300.) 1/1000s, f/11.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 70mm.

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Chair Peak from International Bowl, Alpental Ski Area

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

I know, I know, another winter picture. Hey, it’s what I had handy. This is a view from in-bounds at Alpental (a ski area near Seattle), looking into the backcounty. That’s chair peak, and I was standing in International Bowl when I took the shot. I know I’ve said this before, but this is, more often than not, the kind of weather we get at our ski resorts. Lots of great snow, just not a whole lot of blue sky. Sometimes you’re skiing in the fog, sometimes the fog lifts a bit, but it’s generally pretty grey.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/200s, f/13.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 50mm.

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Mt. Rainier from Crystal Mountain

Thursday, June 30, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2542

Hey again everybody. I apologize that the last two mountain-y pictures I’ve posted have both been wintertime shots. That wasn’t really the intention, it’s just kind of the way things worked out. But, I figured this one was appropriate because I just used it (earlier today!) to enter some cheeseball photo contest that Crystal Mountain (the ski resort) is having. Normally I make it a policy not to enter photo contests. Officially, my reasoning is that photos themselves (and the “quality” thereof) is entirely subjective, and thus the judging of photos to choose the “best one” is completely absurd. That there can be no such thing as a “best” photo, and so to pretend that you are judging photos as such is kind of insulting. Unofficially though, the real reason is because I know I wouldn’t win, and then I know that would make me feel bad. I generally prefer to not feel bad, so I save myself the trouble and I don’t enter, convincing myself that the *real* reason I didn’t enter was the one stated above.

So.. why did I enter this one, then? Not really sure, I guess I was just in a photo contest entering mood. And that’s a total lie. The reason I entered this one is because they were showing some of the other photos that had been entered so far, and they all basically sucked. I mean, like, photos-taken-with-cell-phones sucked. So I basically qualified my reasoning from above, by adding the clause “once the photos meet a certain, fairly low quality bar”. As in, “Once the photos meet a certain, fairly low quality bar, there can be no such thing as a ‘best’ photo”. I still don’t think I’ll win, because I figure the chances are pretty low that mine will be the only “real” (ie non cell-phone) photo entered, and it’ll probably be fairly arbitrary which one is picked as the winner (meaning, “somebody else will enter a picture that’s actually really effing cool”), but hey, we’ll see what happens. The rules were somewhat strict, in that it had to be a picture of Mt. Rainier taken from somewhere on Crystal mountain. But, since you can basically only see Rainier from the ridgeline at the top of the resort, most of the photos entered looked… basically the same. This one’s just a little bit different from the standard view (an example of which can be seen here, which was almost the one I submitted), so I’m hoping that counts for something. I had some *really* different shots, zooming way in so you could just see some of the trees you can see in this shot against the glacier in the background, but it wasn’t readily identifiable as Mt. Rainier, so I figured that might be a bit of a stretch. So, I settled on this one, and then moved on with my life. Which is also a lie, because clearly I’ve been talking about this stupid little photo contest for two paragraphs here on my entirely unrelated blog, so obviously it’s been on my mind most of the day, which is absurd. But, there it is.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Canon 55-250mm IS lens. 1/200s, f/14, ISO 100. Focal length: 65mm.

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Echo Lake

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1631

Yeah, I forgot to upload those pics again. Sigh.

So, instead, here’s a picture of Echo Lake, with Mt. Evans in the background. This is in Colorado. You can actually drive to the top of Mt. Evans, and it’s paved the whole way. That’s noteworthy, because you can *also* drive to the top of another sort-of nearby fourteener, Pikes Peak, but *that* road is *not* paved the whole way. Pikes Peak is right outside Colorado Springs, which is where I grew up. Now you know.

So, right, Mt. Evans is not Pikes Peak, so that’s the last mention Pikes Peak will get today. Mt. Evans is near Idaho Springs, which is a little ways up I-70, west of Denver. Echo Lake is on the way up, but it’s before the spot where you have to pay. Because yes, you have to pay to drive up Mt. Evans. It’s worth it though. If you’ve got an afternoon to kill, it’s a great way to get up into the high country. And you can get some really nice photos after only barely getting out of your car. My kind of place!

Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/60s, f/18.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 65mm.

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Glacier National Park

Monday, June 20, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1407

Dang, dang, dang, dang. Dang. I’ve been meaning for more than a week now to toss up a picture or two from my northern-lights-chasing-adventure, but I keep forgetting to upload anything from my desktop machine at home. And now, it’s even worse, as I took some pictures of ladybugs this weekend that I was hoping to post, and I forgot to upload those too. Dang. Try again tonight, I guess.

In the meantime, here’s another shot from Whitefish Mountain Resort in Montana. This is a view over into Glacier National Park from the top of the ski hill, that’s why I labelled the post the way I did. Whitefish Mountain Resort (formerly known as Big Mountain), is, not surprisingly, just outside of Whitefish, Montana. It’s one of my favorite three ski hills in the world. Although, saying “in the world” is slightly misleading, as I certainly have not skied everywhere there is to ski. I *have* skied outside the US, so my opinion is at least an international one, but that was only just across the Canadian border in BC, so that’s hardly fair, even to the rest of Canada. But whatever, I still stand by my statement. This is one of my favorite three places to ski *IN THE ENTIRE WORLD*. Deal with it. Or, better idea, just go ski there. Perhaps it won’t become one of your three favorite places to ski, but you’re almost guaranteed to at least have a good time, and you’ll also get to try someplace new, which is also awesome. Unless you’ve been there before, in which case that particular incentive won’t apply.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/500s, f/10.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 50mm.

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Diablo Lake, North Cascades National Park

Thursday, June 16, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=2111

This is Diablo Lake (I’ve also heard it called Emerald Lake) in North Cascades National Park. It’s not a natural lake strictly speaking, as it is the size it is because it’s dammed (which you can just barely see on the far right edge of the frame), to generate power for the city of Seattle. Whether or not it was a (much smaller/shallower) lake before it was dammed is not something I know. Actually, it’s dammed on both ends, as the next lake up the chain, Ross Lake, which is a long, narrow lake that extends just over the Canadian border, is also created via dam, and spills into Diablo.

And yes, it really is that color. The water is primarily glacial meltwater, and as such it’s filled with all sorts of silt and mineralage, which is what makes it look all milky like that. We get a fair bit of that here in the PNW (like the White River which comes out of Mt. Rainier National Park – it’s only a little tiny river, but the water looks like diluted milk, kinda weird.)

So, have a great rest of the day and all that.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens. 1/200s, f/8.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 11mm.

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Mayflower Gulch

Monday, June 13, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1046

Amazingly enough, I actually made it out to take a few pictures late last week and over the weekend. And no, this isn’t one of them. But I figured it’d be worth mentioning, so you can know what to expect once I finally get around to tossing them online. This weekend the weather appeared to finally be nice enough to allow the bugs to start coming out to play. So, I spent some time trying to take pictures of bees flying as they were either preparing to land on flowers, or just taking off from flowers. Turns out, it’s really hard. More on that later.

Also, late last week I went on an epic 14-hour adventure, chasing the northern lights. There was an aurora forecast that suggested that they should be visible from my latitude, so I went driving, hoping to find a location that was a) away from city lights, b) had a view of the northern sky, and c) wasn’t cloudy. I basically succeeded in those three after a lot of effort (I ended up at a location that, were you to drive straight there, would be just under 5 hours from where I live), but there were no northern lights to be found. BUT, I got some decent pics along the way, so you’ll see some of those eventually.

In the meantime, here’s a shot from Mayflower Gulch in Summit County, Colorado that I grabbed today just so that I’d have something to show you.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/250s, f/6.3, ISO 100. Focal length: 39mm.

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Cascade Pass, North Cascades National Park

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1290

Man, when I fail, I fail hard. Remember back in the day when I was all talkin’ up a big game about how I was going to put up a post every (week) day of the week? And remember how I was all high on myself when I made it all the way up to Wednesday and was shooting 3 for 3? Yeah, well, not only did I miss Thursday and Friday, I failed to put up any posts **for the entire next week**. Eesh, that’s the last time I try to hold myself to any kind of goal.

So, anyway, we’re back, at least for today. To celebrate, here’s a shot taken near Cascade Pass in North Cascades National Park. No, this wasn’t taken this weekend. Life got in the way this weekend, and I didn’t make it out anywhere to take any pictures, which is the same story for the rest of this year. At some point in the past, I posted another shot that looks really similar to this one, but no, it’s not the same picture, and in fact it wasn’t even taken the same day. I took one of them on the way up and over the pass, and I took the other the next day, as we went up and over the pass again on the way home. And no, I don’t remember offhand which one this was. Not really important, I don’t think. I wasn’t trying to take the same picture twice either, it just so happened that both times I was standing there, I noticed that it was a nice setup for a shot. And, it just so happened that the light was pretty similar on both days, so the resulting images came out pretty similar. Kind of an interesting experiment, really. Shows that, at least within a 24 hour period, my photographic instincts are pretty consistent, that given the same inputs, I’ll probably produce the same results. I’d be curious to see if the same held true over a longer period, like a month, 6 months, a year, whatever. But, we’ll never know. So don’t hold your breath. Probably a safe bet to not hold your breath about when the next post will appear here either, we’ll see.

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300mm lens. 1/250s, f/14.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 35mm.

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Maroon Bells and Maroon Lake

Monday, May 9, 2011

http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=650

Hey everyone! This is the last post that you’ll see for a couple days, just so you know. So you’d better enjoy it. This is, of course, the Maroon Bells (and Maroon Lake), near Aspen, Colorado. You’ve all seen this before, so no reason to talk about it too much, right?

Okay then, have a great day!

Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, 18-55mm kit lens. 1/320s, f/5.6, ISO 100. Focal length: 55mm.

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