I guess you could say I’ve started a beer theme, and I think I’m going to run with it. Today’s beer is another porter, and has, amazingly enough, a not so subtle coffee flavor to it: Fuller’s London Porter. I tried a lot of color filters for the flash on this one. The final result was with a yellow filter, flash behind the bottle again. I’m not really loving these shots, but I ended up going with this one:
And the runner up:
On the one hand, beer bottles are a somewhat boring subject. On the other, it’s a great excuse to buy good beers, and it’s a chance to try and make a bottle look interesting. It is clearly possible: This guy has done an awesome job with a heineken bottle.
One good beer deserves another. I didn’t enjoy this as much as the Black Butte, but it was still damn good. The photo I like a lot more. Remote flashes just open up a whole new world of photographic fun…
I got a Camelbak fourteener backpack about a year ago, and have taken it all over since then. It is probably the best backpack I’ve owned. While climbing Mt. Baldy a month or so back, one of the plastic clips that holds the sternum strap onto the shoulders of my pack broke off. I sent an e-mail to Camelbak telling them it broke, and asking if I could get just a replacement part. I was more than happy to pay a few bucks for the part, I just really didn’t want to buy another $120 backpack. But, they did even better:
Hello,
Thank you for contacting CamelBak. The defect you have encountered should not be expected from any of our products. We stand firmly behind the quality of all the products we make, and I apologize for this inconvenience. Just let me know your U.S. address and I’ll be happy to send a replacement sternum strap for you.
I got the new strap last week, and it’s back to being good as new (just dirtier). Just wanted to share the pleasant response, and say that I can strongly recommend camelbak gear, even if the clip did break.
Azure Ray, is a 9-year old duo, recently re-formed, and just recently discovered by me, which I’m enjoying very much. Can’t remember if it was KCRW or Pandora that led me to them. All three are awesome.
A week ago, on June 24th, 2010, my little brother got hitched. Aside from being outdoors during a heat wave, the whole affair went off quite well with, I think, a happy couple and happy guests. I enjoyed having lots of subjects to photograph, and I think wedding photos make a great excuse for a flash gallery, so here it is:
Most of the time, on a bright sunny day, the world looks a lot better when you remove the polarized light glaring from reflective surfaces and the atmosphere. If you’ve ever worn polarized sunglasses, you probably know what I mean. A few months ago, I spent the $100 or so and bought a Hoya HMC PL-CIR filter for my most oft-used lens, and it pretty much does for the camera everything the polarized glasses do for your eyes. It does wonders for mid-day, bright sunlight photos, or shooting through glass or other reflective surfaces like water. Choosing between dark foreground and blown-out, highlighted sky is also a lot less of a problem. I figured I’d share some example shots showing what a polarizer can do:
I should disclose the details of the experimental setup here: I did not actually remove the filter in any of these shots. In the “polarized” shots, it is simply rotated to block the polarization of the sun glare, and in the other rotated away so that it does not (in which case, it should behave like an ND filter, just making the whole image darker). The camera is in Aperture Priority mode, so the exposure varied between the shots according to the incoming light. It is important to rotate the filter to the right place before each shot, as the required angle depends on the angle of the camera as well as the location of the sun.
Mary and I spent an awesome Fourth of July weekend camping and hiking at the Tuolumne Meadows area of Yosemite. I love this place; especially at this time of year. Green meadows, babbling brooks, snow streaked mountains, waterfalls, and the occasional remnant snow patch. Also, it was not nearly as crowded as Yosemite Valley was, I’m sure. The valley in the summer, especially on a holiday weekend, is a traffic jam. Here, people are much more manageable; and once we got a mile into the wilderness, there’s hardly anybody at all. The meadows were teaming with wildlife, especially deer and marmots. Lots of marmots.
We spent Friday night at the Tuolumne Meadows Campground. It was full when we got there, but fortunately they have a backpackers section where you can spend the night before/night after you hit the trail. Saturday morning we took off south down Rafferty Creek trail, heading for the Vogalsang lake area. We ended up camping next to Fletcher Lake at 10,160ft, in a little grove of trees next to an open meadow, next to a cliff overlooking the valley we had just climbed up. There is something very relaxing about setting up a tent by yourself in a perfect alpine meadow and cooking a mountain house for dinner.
As long as I’m in California I think a trip to Tuolumne after the snow melts and Tioga Pass opens is going to be an annual tradition.
Mary and I took the 3-day memorial weekend and drove up to Sequoia and Kings Canyon (SEKI) National Park for the first time. Most of the trails are at fairly high elevation, and snow coverage is still high. We arrived thinking we would hike to Bearpaw Meadow, but by the time we got to the ranger station, it was already getting late, they said it was a pretty treacherous stream crossing to get there, and it is a pretty long way to camp. Only one person had gotten a permit that day to do it. So we decided to change plans and instead head for Twin Lakes, stopping at Cahoon Meadow which was only ~3 miles in, and continuing on to spend Sunday night at Twin Lakes.
After the first mile or so, we hit the snow. It was a surprisingly sudden switch. The bottom of the trail is 95% clear, just the occasional patch of snow under a tree or something. Then all of a sudden, there is a line of snow, and from then on 95% of the ground is covered. Sometimes DEEP. I was very glad to have a GPS with a map of the trail, because following the trail was nearly impossible without it. Sometimes there were foot steps to follow, but they often split apart and disappeared, and I think most of them had about as good an idea of where they were going as we did. For every mile of trail we covered, I think we must have walked at least 1.5 miles hunting around for the right direction. Several times we found ourselves climbing up steep hills covered in snow drifts, when I’m fairly sure the trail would have taken a less difficult route.
We made it to camp well before sunset, and even found a dry spot to set up our tent. The “meadow” had not quite become a meadow yet. Large parts of it were still snow covered, and the parts that weren’t were flooded with water. There were new grass shoots beginning to pop up out of the water though, so it will no doubt be a meadow again before long.
The next day we set off for Twin Lake. Three hours later, we made it to Cahoon Gap, barely over a mile a way. We still had over two miles and another big climb to get up to the lakes. I’m pretty sure we would have made it by dark; but just barely, and we would have had a long day back out on Monday, hopefully in time to return the bear canister we rented from the ranger station. Plus, We still wanted to see some of the main parts of the park as well. There are some big trees around there! So, it wasn’t all that difficult of a decision to turn around when we reached the gap and spend another night at the meadow. We were content to just wander around a snowy forest which we had almost entirely to ourselves. There was one other couple from LA at Cahoon Meadow the first night, and the second night a solo hiker who we never made contact with setup camp across the way.
On Monday we got out around noon, grabbed some lunch at Lodgepole, and then headed over to see General Sherman, the biggest tree in the world. However, the trail to general sherman was closed due to ice (though we had already spent the last two days slip’n and sliding around the mountains, I think we could have survived), and there were about 3 million people waiting to get onto shuttles to take you from the parking lot to the closer trailhead. So we bailed on that, and instead went to the giant forest area and went for a stroll, which turned out to be an amazingly fortunate decision.
We had actually stopped, were sitting on a bench eating a summer sausage and enjoying the sights, when a little boy walking by with his family came up to us very shyly and said, “Excuse me…there’s a black bear.” pointing off across the meadow. Sure enough, there was a bear! We took off down the trail to go to the other side of the meadow to watch and photograph! While we were watching the bear forage around, Mary says she “thinks there’s something big in the tree”. Amazingly, I look up, and sure enough, there are not one, but TWO bear cubs peering down at us from the tree right above us! It was pretty sweet! We finished off the day by heading out of the park to the north, stopping off at Grant Grove to walk through a whole new set of giant trees. They are pretty incredible.
As planned after the first trip a couple weeks prior, I went back down to Leo Carrillo beach on the night of the last full moon. I was able to convince Mary to come as well, so we took off after work and got there just before sunset. The sun went down, the moon came up, and we climbed out onto a rocky outcropping. It was clear from the start that we should be concerned about the incoming waves. Mary certainly told me as much. But…the rock was dry. At first, I was all worried, and would be ready to run or cover the camera every time a wave came in. But they kept coming, and nothing ever made it up onto the rock for at least 20 minutes. I got comfortable; unconcerned. Then the big one came, doused both of us, doused the camera on the tripod, and practically filled the camera bag containing lenses and other assorted gear with salt water. We dried the gear off as best we could right there on the rock, in the dark. Then we went back to the car to continue with paper towels. Then we finally got home and I cleaned everything as best I could with Kim wipes, cotton swaps, and IPA. It’s been over a week now, and so far no signs of problems. It’s not as much of an adventure if you come home dry, I suppose.
It was not a complete failure, though most shots did not come out as great as I’d hoped.
Moonrise:
Mary, shortly before the ocean sent us scurrying away:
