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, Photography
Hawk on a dirt road at sunset
Some of the crazy places I’ve been, crazy things I’ve done… for photography.
I’m not a big fan of “Zoo Shots” but hate people calling it wildlife photography. Spending time at the Zoo is a great way to spend a day and take some pictures in a no pressure environment. I’ve been meaning to go to the Zoo here in Boise for some time. But what I hate is seeing a photo by a wildlife photog and thinking, wow, how in the world… Then learning that it was on a ranch where the photog had paid several hundred dollars for a few hours of guaranteed time shooting this animal. And what I hate more is I didn’t come up with the idea to pin in a bunch of animals, call it a game ranch and let photogs come in by the van load to pay me to see them. I don’t have a problem with the shots themselves, I’ve seen some good photos from zoos and game ranches, but it’s not WILDlife. My problem is when a wildlife photographer fails to mention that he paid money to photograph the animal in a controlled environment.
I used to live next to the Smokeys, now live near Yellowstone & The Tetons and enjoy going up to Glacier. I love shooting wildlife in the National Parks but still don’t get the same excitement photographing an animal in a park as I do out in the sticks. It still takes skill and persistence to get good photos and see the best wildlife in a national park (unless we’re talking Mountain Goats at Glacier). I don’t know, maybe it’s all the other people, more likely just the large majority of people who go to a big box retail store buy an expensive camera, go to Yellowstone take a few pictures and call themselves a photographer. Read the rest of this entry »
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 Photography
One of the most popular photo vantage points in Idaho. Sawtooth Mountains from Stanley, Idaho.
Stanley, Idaho is one of my favorite places on earth. If there were a college there that my wife could teach at, I’d live there. Course, it’d ruin the whole point of Stanley. It’s a little town in the middle of no where, close to a few major tourist destinations. It does get it’s fair share of tourist but the town winters about 50 people along with one hotel, a few cabins, one pizzeria, one restaurant, one gas station, one stop sign. I much prefer Stanley during the winter because you don’t have to put up with tourists and I love cold weather. We spend several days there every November for our anniversary we see maybe ten or twenty people a day that don’t live there. Last year we didn’t see any on two of the days. I spend a lot of time in the mountains surrounding Stanley, not as much as I wish I did, but quite a bit.
Luckily, Stanley is half way between where I live and my favorite place on earth. Which also happens to be half way between here and where my parents live. For the last several years we’ve spent a week camping together in the summer. We did Glacier a couple summers, last year we did Bear Valley (no, not the bear valley everyone in Boise knows about). This year, we will each drive two hours, meeting half way and spend the week camped near Stanley. This is supposed to be a vacation and I guess it will be more of a vacation than the week in June I spent on the edge of the wilderness at bear camp with my Dad, Grandpa and a few other guys. But this will be a vacation but with quite a photo checklist. Much of the checklist depends on the weather. Last year my wife and I were there for Labor day and it snowed on us in the valley. There aren’t any fires, so visibility should be good so long as it doesn’t rain all week. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but this summer has been very, very wet in central Idaho.
This photo is one of the two most popular photo spots in central Idaho. Normally, I hate taking pictures from popular spots or angles. Can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been headed up to my parents hours drove right by this and thought. Wow, if so many people didn’t take photos from right there, that would be a cool shot. That’s part of the reason I hate photography in National Parks. You get more than one photographer shooting a subject and I’ll keep walking. It could be a bald eagle standing on a moose’s antler while it was swimming in an alpine lake with northern lights in the sky. Three photogs have lenses on it, I’ll keep walking. Well, coming back from bear camp it was such a pretty day and I happened to still have my wide angle on my camera with a CP and a ND Grad filter on it. So I stopped. I hated every second of standing on the side of the road taking the picture. But I stopped. Some pictures I post have stories of cold, hot, rain, dust, snow, miles of hiking, hurricane force winds, hours of boredom waiting, blood, sweat, broken stuff… This one, involves just as much pain. Standing on the side of the road.