Posted in PhotoBlog
Sawtooth Lake (click image to see larger)
Been processing a few more photos from the Sawtooth Lake hike. This photo was actually from my second hike to the lake that week, when my Dad and I went up. I would really like to spend the night up there next year and do some predawn work around the lake; consider it added to the list.
Posted in PhotoBlog
Sawtooth Lake – Black and White (click for larger)
Sawtooth lake is one of the prettiest places on earth, it’s the largest alpine lake in the Sawtooth Mountains and a pleasant 5 mile hike UP to it. I spent a couple of days there this summer, so this won’t be the last Sawtooth Lake area photo you’ll see.
Posted in PhotoBlog
A large rock sits in an alpine lake (please click image to see higher quality)
Photoblog note: Since I’ve drastically redone the site, I’ll be making more than one post per week until the photoblog archive grows up a bit. We’ll return you to a weekly post in a few weeks.
I walked by this photo twice before finally going back to shoot it. I loved it both times I saw it, but just knew my camera and I couldn’t do it justice, and, even so, doubted many people who would see it are texture geeks like me. It was taken about halfway through a 14 mile day hike–one of several long day hikes I took during our recent vacation up in the Sawtooth. Most were with Joy and Jasper (border collie pup), but this one was just me and Dad. We got to where we were going and decided we hadn’t had enough. Actually, he decided that. I, having already been on a couple hikes that week including this same hike with my wife two days earlier and having just climbed five miles and a few thousand feet up the mountain all while carrying a backpack with 46 metric tons of camera gear, had indeed had enough. For the record, in addition to the survival gear I don’t leave home without, a few items for cold weather (it tends to snow there in the summer), a fishing rod, lunch and roughly three liters of water, I also had three or four lenses, totaling 17mm – 400mm, the DSLR, a 35mm film body, filters, tripod, remote, small 5-in-1 reflector, extra batteries and everything else you’d find in a camera bag. All stuffed in my favorite camera backpack ever! The DAKINE Sequence Photo Pack
Dad was carrying a day pack. But all that was in it was his peanut butter & jelly sandwiches and water. So yes. I was content with what we had originally planned. But we were sitting in a mountain pass above the lakes we had hiked to and we were able to see down another drainage and see another set of lakes. Dad said. “Ah, don’t we have to walk down there and check out those lakes?” To which I replied. “No, we don’t have to.” But. Once it was mentioned, we both knew we were going to. We were both thinking about it, and had we both kept our mouths shut, we would have saved it for another day. I wasn’t against walking a mile or two down the trail to the other lakes. I was against having to walk back up it 
. The “trail” down there was just a place where rocks the size of footballs and basketballs were arranged between rocks the size of cars and houses.
This photo was the first lake on our little extension. We walked by it on the way down and then on the way back up. Both times the wind was blowing 347 miles per hour; actually I clocked gusts at 30mph which is calm by Idaho mountain standards. Both times I walked by and thought, wow, I love that texture, but there is no way it’ll make it onto film. After walking by it on the way back up, I stopped and walked back to it. To give you an idea of scale, the rock you see was a little larger than a VW bug.
Posted in Personal, Photography
Self Portrait of me standing under Goat Falls
I’m not sure a photographer ever gets a real vacation. If we do… this “vacation” was the closest I’ve come to a “real vacation” in a long time. Being half photographer half computer guy, I didn’t do any computer work while I was gone, so at least that half of me had a real vacation. Don’t get me wrong, it was a vacation, there were days where I could have fit the photos I took on one roll of 35mm. Other days were centered around photography and filled my largest memory card. My camera was never more than a few feet from me, ending up with over 1500 photos. Joy and I met my parents in the Stanley, Idaho basin for a week camping trip. Well, it was supposed to be a week, but we got there a few days early and left a day later clocking in at 10 nights in camp. The morning we left we were pulling out of camp and we both decided that it had been a good trip, but we were ready to go home; that is, for me, what made it a great vacation. I was actually ready to go home. We had an amazing trip though, I hiked thirty two miles of trails in the Sawtooth Wilderness plus a bit of bushwhacking here and there for large rocks and waterfalls. Hiking destinations in the Sawtooth wilderness included the breathtaking Sawtooth Lake and Goat Falls a spectacular (cold) 300 foot waterfall. (pictured).
In addition to hiking in the sawtooth wilderness, I also spent time in my old stomping grounds of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness; Dad and I caught a bunch of fish on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. I also took everyone up to the headwaters of the Salmon River where puppy could jump across the river.
I got most of my photo todo list done. There was one shot that I really wanted to get but the stars weren’t in alignment. Or rather the moon wasn’t. Many of you have seen some of my star trail photography. I scouted the place for my next major star trail photo, but the moon wasn’t cooperating within the time frame I had. I’ll be running the night sky simulator to find a couple days and times when I can travel back up to Stanley to take this three hour photo. The window is very tight and the weather will have to be perfect, and I have two months to take the picture or wait another year. hmmm.
The above photo was a self portrait of me at goat falls. I love waterfalls! nothing I’d rather photograph…. The perspective doesn’t do it justice as this was setup for the self port; Goat Falls is an amazing place, this torrent of water makes a 300′ fall from the top of the photo to my feet then continues on an amazing cascade down to the valley below.
This was the last of my hiking destinations in the sawtooth wilderness. One leg of the tripod was on a rock, the other two in a pool of water. Joy would have taken the photo except she was on a rock a couple hundred feet down the hill reading a book to the dog. Shortly before we got married her and I were climbing on a waterfall in Lemhi County near the Salmon River. She fell 90% of the way down it (30-40 feet). I thought she was seriously injured. We were ten minutes from radio coverage. An hour drive to the nearest paved road; another half hour to the clinic. Or lifeflight an hour to a real hospital. She wasn’t as badly injured as I thought, so we ended up not taking the helicopter ride that day, instead we bandaged her up, gave her some pain medication and made it back to town in record time to have my mom (a nurse) check her out. Nothing broken, major bruising, serious pain for a few days and some scars left, but we laugh at it now. Oh, but she’s banned from waterfalls.
Anyways, we got an daylight early start for this hike but it was still amazingly hot. So I was happy to pull the waterproof cover over the camera backpack and spend some time getting soaked.
It’s back to the real world now. I have 1500 more photos in my queue to go through and post process. I have a todo list a mile long from the next trip and I’m further behind everything I was behind on before we left. It was an amazing trip; I’m glad to be home.
Posted in PhotoBlog, Photography
Stanley Lake Twilight Star Trails
I recently posted this shot on a couple sites and was promptly asked the questions; how’d ya do it? So I wrote up a how-to and posted it in a couple of the forums where it was posted. I’ve added it to my flickr photo page and now cross posting it here for archival purposes.
I took this star trail shot from Stanley lake. A high layer of clouds that was moving in so the stars (planets) near the horizon had a halo effect and turned out quite large. but it added some color. this is a stack of around 80, 30 second photos at 200 iso and around f4.
Setting the scene: I was sitting on ice covered rocks on the side of a half frozen lake with wind blowing across it at me, it being 5 degrees, watching my camera blink off and back on every thirty seconds for two hours……. Read the rest of this entry »