Something to Read

Okay,
So some people have been complaining to me lately about the fact that I haven't updated my blog in some time. Little more than 3 months to be exact I suppose. So here's a post. Stop complaining.

Since I don't really have anything to talk about, I guess I'll just write about what has happened Since February. The short if it is, not a whole lot. People outside of our nuclear family (including extended family and friends) have been living with us up until a few weeks ago. It was both stressful and fun at the same time.

I have completed all my 'PM' (Prospective Member) Training with the Alpine Rescue Team and have moved on to 'PM' status. Yes, its the same... just stands for "Probationary Member" now. Basically that means I have to go to 50% of all trainings and make 25% of all calls (they refer to them as missions) between now and October when I get officially voted in, or kicked out.

Work is Work. 'nuff said.

Yesterday we took a hike where I did my overnight Bivy for the Alpine Team. I saw a waterfall in the distance so I figured it would be a fun easy hike for the family. Enjoy the pics.

I look like who?

Hrmm... I only know one person on that list (JFK). Can't say I think I look like any of them really. I suppose I should start looking up who these people are. What do you think, good matches? Is it because my look is that unique, or the face matching technology is good or bad?

MyHeritage: Celebrity Collage - Roots - Family name history

The Element of Snow

Yesterday probably ranks in as one of the hardest hikes I've ever done... Sadly. Some friends and I decided to go make an attempt on Mt. Sherman from the fourmile creek road. Snow drifts had covered parts of the road that caused us to stop short of the trail head by vehicle. GPS readings showed that we started at about 10,500 in elevation.
As always, I was well prepared for anything. I had my medical kit, big enough to treat a small mass casualty incident. My tent fly, poles, and ground pad, for a quick shelter should it be necessary, also included lots of utility cord to tie the thing down, as I was expecting high winds in the afternoon. I also had a complete change of clothes for all 3 layers I was wearing. On top of that, 4 liters of water, and my camp stove, fuel, and a pot to melt snow for water if we needed it. I probably had enough food to last 2-3 days as well. Add the snow shoes in to the mix when on my back, and my pack weighed in at 40 pounds. Why do I always do that to myself? I need to stop. 40 pounds for a day hike is ridiculous, even if you are preparing for the worst. My 5 year old son weighs less than that!
Anyway, we found a place to park after getting the Jeep un-stuck from a snow drift in the road, I put on my Gaiters, wool sweater, balaclava, and coat. Threw the pack on my back, and we headed up the road to the trail. It wasn't long till we figured out we did the right thing by parking where we did. I was soon post holing in the snow to mid calf. The Jeep would have never of made it through (at least not without a lift kit, and some much larger tires). After about 1/2 mile of pushing through this stuff, we got the bright idea of actually using the snow shoes we brought. I was getting really hot, sweating and beginning to feel my inner layers get a little damp. so it also seemed like a good time to shed all those layers I put on back at the jeep (sweating in cold weather is very dangerous, and can eventually cause hypothermia when you stop moving). The snow shoes made the going a lot better. However, after about another 3/4 of a mile, the road/trail became windblown and not much snow lay on it. Instead of taking off the snow shoes, we hiked uphill in the ditches, where some snow remained. Eventually we took a break and took of our snow shoes, for the remainder of the hike up. There were only a few areas that were deep with snow, that didn't warrant the time and effort it would take to put the shoes on and off again. Through all of that, I learned that snow bails would have been great to have for my trekking poles, as without them, they didn't provide a whole lot of support. Fortunately, the snow wasn't super deep, and extending them beyond my normal length seemed to do okay.

After about 4 hours of hiking, we made it here, to one of the old mining shacks, situated right around 13,000 feet. You can see the peak of Mt. Sherman in the background. I was finished. Every step forward/up with my pack yielded a wonderful burning sensation in just about every muscle in my legs. My back and shoulders were tired from carrying the load. The altitude had gotten to me. It wasn't that I was out of breath, but more that my body just couldn't get the oxygen it needed to my muscles, putting them in anaerobic respiration, for every step. So we stopped at this old mining shack (above) and ate our lunch. The rest was good, the food enjoyed, and the company most excellent. Despite all the work and pain to get to this spot, it all goes away when you turn to enjoy where you are at. Having had no expectations to reach the top of the mountain, I was glad to be where I was.
We sat on a small wooden plank, with the wind at our backs (along with the building) and the sun on our faces. One of my hiking partners (John, though they were both named John) had mentioned that he thinks that this is what the light at the end of the tunnel is like. I have to agree, I don't think its far off. The sun shining on us in the cool weather certainly didn't help negate that feeling.

After lunch, we turned, and looked at the peak ahead of us (above), looked at trail options, and considered the time. We all agreed that heading down back to the Jeep was in our best interest. I repacked my pack, slung it around to my back, and we started to head down.

The view was great, and it was quite a relief to be going down. There were a few spots we contemplated doing some glissades, but decided not to. Oh well. Carried the ace axe all the way up and down for nothing, except maybe the feeling of safety that I had the tool should I actually need it (much like the rest of the stuff in my pack). We eventually made it back to the snowy section of the trail and stubbornly pushed through it for a ways without snow shoes again. Becoming quickly exhausted, we put the snow shoes back on and continued out to the Jeep. I don't remember this section seeming so long on the way in. It seemed to just keep going and going. The extra weight of the shoes on our legs made every moment harder, but it was still easier than post holing. With much relief and about 6 miles of total hiking round trip, we made it back to the car and headed home.
This trip was the first time I've ever had a pair of snow shoes on my feet. I have to say, its pretty neat to be able to walk on the snow like that. I had rented a pair from a local outdoor shop. I have to say I was impressed with how easy they were to put on, especially compared to the brand my hiking friends had. Mine were made by Atlas and I would have to say if I were going to buy some, I'd probably get a set of these, after this experience. They seem to be on the pricey side, but I really liked how they worked. They fit well with my boots, were a snap to put on and take off, and seemed to support my weight, including my 40 pound pack, above the snow. Now all I need to do is keep up the exercise so that I can do this kind of thing again, and not feel so bad afterward. I suppose getting up in altitude to keep my body adjusted to it would help too.
On a side note, I have an interview with the alpine search and rescue this coming sunday, if I make it past that step, I'm sure they'll give me the opportunity to spend more time in the mountains :)

Home and Adjusting

Made it home from Christchurch last friday, the absolutely longest day I've ever had in my life. I did after all, land in Denver about 3 hours after I took off from Christchurch. It's nice to be home again, and even better to be on vacation from work until January 5th. I'm still trying to readjust to Mountain Time schedules, but I'm improving, should be better by Christmas :) I spent most of this day messing with all the pictures I took, and selecting some of my favorites for all of you to view. So please enjoy them, and have a very merry Christmas!

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If you are interested in prints or anything, let me know. Feedback is always welcome as well!

South Pole Pics

Well, here are a few pics of the South Pole that should give you some idea of what its like down there... I'm not sleeping well, and have been pretty exhausted this whole trip, and it feels like its really starting to catch up to me. Probably doesn't help that I hiked about 8 miles yesterday either. Oh well... Enjoy.

2 photos

The pictures, as previously mentioned:
This is the main church in the center square of Christchurch. I wasn't happy about the vendor cart, so hopefully it will be gone at some point with an equally nice sky on my way back.

Here's a picture of the 2 main types of planes that fly to the ice. In the foreground is an LC-130. These are the main mode of transportation between McMurdo station and South Pole. In the background is a C-17, and is what I hope to be on tomorrow morning, on my way to McMurdo.

Noisy Varmit

Speaking of wildlife... We had another visitor last night. It would seem that the racoon's are feeling territorial over our yard (more than likely, our compost bin). We were woken by an amazingly noisy ruckus. You would have thought there was some part dog, part rabbit creature being subjected to some sort of medieval torture device in our backyard or something. Jess and I scurried out of bed to see what was up and spotted this one in our tree. Now what would be cool is if we could attract some mountain lions to eat these guys, that would actually be worth getting up over :) Question then is what would eat the mountain lion? I dunno why she swallowed the fly, perhaps she'll die.

Needless to say, my picture shooting skills aren't that great in the early hours of the morning. I didn't even think to grab the tripod that was 5 feet away from me. Oh well. He wasn't sitting all that still anyway. Not bad for a .6 second handheld exposure though f/1.8 ISO 1600

Suburban Elk

Well, I have to say, the fall sure does bring about some wonderful weather here in Colorado. Nice cool nights, perfect for sleeping, with crisp mornings that don't offer much incentive for getting out of bed in the morning. By afternoon though the temperature is near perfect, coupled with the wonderful sun shiny weather that the state is known for. Fall has always been my favorite time of year. It's cooling down in the mountains, and the peaks are starting to become snow covered, which I have a wonderful view of from my office window at work. In fact, 2 local ski resorts have already opened, but only one slope on each so far. Talking to others that have lived here longer than I, soon we'll see some of the other crazy weather Colorado is known for. Unbelievably radical swings in temperature... It's in the mid 70's here today, and they're calling for mid 40's the middle of the week, then a swing back up to the 70's again. Variety is the spice of life I guess.

On another note, and also the reason for the title of this post. The fall weather has brought on a flurry of wild life activity in our area. When I first moved here last year, I had mentioned observing quite a variety of wildlife as well. Well, nature does not disappoint. We were over at a friends house last night, who happens to live across the street from our local park. This lead to the opportunity to witness an elk in an area I would have never suspected one to come. Seems this guy likes to chew his cud in the local ball park.

After running home (literally), and grabbing the camera, I managed to get these shots of him. Turns out he wasn't to afraid of me either. I was probably standing about 15 feet away from him at one point (with a fence between me and him). That was close enough for me. I suspect he wasn't lucky enough to win himself a harem this season. Someone else said he was walking around with a bum leg too. Still, pretty wild that I live close enough to the mountains that these things are around. Several of my co-workers who live further in the mountains have some nice photos to show off of the wildlife they get to see. Let's just hope the cars around here drive with enough caution to not make a mess of things.

AspenGlow

So we took a trip up to Rocky Mountain National Park again this weekend. The leaves are beginning to turn down here in the front range, so I figured that a lot of leaves up at higher elevation must be getting close to peak. I had this planned for at least a week and was quite excited to get back up in the mountains. I've been limited to 7000 foot maximum elevation due to the clinical study I am in. Last Friday was my last session until next year, so I could get to higher elevations now. Of course since I had this planned, the weather forecast wasn't all the great. It was supposed to rain late in the day, with accumulating snow at night in the high country. I decided I wanted to go anyway. I'd just have to pay attention to the cloud activity.

We arrived at the park around 10:30 AM. I had chosen a trial to hike on the western side, since I've been in Colorado now for almost a year and was yet to make it over the continental divide. (Crazy huh?) Well, trail ridge road, and old fall river road were both open. I was in luck. These roads usually close down sometime in October because the road conditions become so bad. I don't blame them The road up is pretty steep and twisty turney. I can see why the close it down. Old Fall River road is dirt, and unidirectional (up only). My wife made the comment that she never intends of driving up that road. I thought it was great. There were several areas that were quite narrow with a significant exposure (drop off) down the side of the mountain, without any kind of barrier preventing you from going over. Anyhow, below is one of the views from Old Fall River road, of the valley. It was pretty much at the base of road, not very high up.
Also, before we started to ascend the road up over the divide, we made a quick "nature break" While my son was doing his thing in the privy, a couple of other photogs (with mighty big lenses and tripods, I must add) spotted this little squirrel gnawing away on a bunch of pine cones. I guess it was fattening itself up for the winter. I pulled out my camera with my measly lens (yes, I had lens envy) and managed to snap this shot. Not to bad for being extended out to 300mm and hand held with no image stabilization, if I do say so myself.

We finally got to the trail head around noon, ate lunch in the car, then headed off up the trail. It was 4.4 miles to the ultimate destination (a lake). I knew this late in the day, we would never make it, but it would be nice just to get out anyway. Below is a picture of a small stand of Aspen that has turned for the season. This picture doesn't really do these trees any justice. They seem to range from an orangy red color all the way to an amazingly vibrant yellow. Almost as if they were luminescent, generating their own light. Several times, walking through the forest, you would spot some aspen through the trees, and they were so vibrant, it was almost as if a ray of sunshine was shining right down on them, even though the sky was overcast.

A little further down the trail, we came across a nice stream. Of course, Geoffrey had to play in the rocks and in the water, etc. He seems to like getting his picture taken, as long as its on his terms.

One of the good things about overcast days in the forest, is you can stop down your lens and get a decently long exposure without having to add filters. I always enjoy taking pictures of water and trying to get that nice flowy, fluid look. I was pretty happy with this shot.

About halfway up the trail, I spoted some mountains in the distance that I was able to see earlier. I always like to track terrain in the distance to use as a reference for my location. The cloud deck dropping down on them. Not a good sign when you want to stay dry. So we turned around and headed back down the trail towards our car. Along the way we spotted this Elk cow grazing on some vegetation. She wasn't to really willing to move, but after slowly approaching here and making some noise she moved for us.

Turns out where she moved to, was with the rest of her harem, protected by this here bull. It was kind of cool the way he followed up through the trees as we were hiking to make sure we weren't going to go after any of his property. That's one guy I would not want to tangle with.


As we were walking about it started to rain lightly, so we called it a day and drove home. It was nice to say that I've now seen water that flows to the pacific instead the Atlantic. In fact, that stream I took a picture of above, is part of the head waters that becomes the mighty Colorado River. Hope you enjoy the pictures. Don't forget you can always click on them to see bigger versions.

Time for a bigger Lens!

So just when I was beginning to come to grips with my camera equipment, what it can do, what it can't, and what I can['t] afford, this guy comes and plops down on my neighbors roof and start munching on what I believe to be a fuzzy rabbit.

Taken with my Canon EF 100-300mm f/4.0-5.6 fully extended to 300mm, which is a Canon XTi equivelant of 480mm. 1/3 sec exposure at ISO 200. The tripod and remote trigger where an absolute must. After much tweaking in Adobe Lightroom, this is about the best I can come up with. The chomatic aboritions were absolutely aweful. I suppose the overcast dusk sky didn't help though. I wanted to expose enough to bring out the color in the bird, which resulted in a crazy bright sky, which in turn make the aboritions worse. Oh well. I'm just really glad that I live in an area where photo opportunities like these present themselves, and of course wanted to share with all of you. I probably took about 70+ photos of him sitting there, more than half were junk due to him moving around and my slow shutter speed. I didn't want to boost the ISO any more since I know I'd be blowing up the photo, and was trying to keep noise to a minimum. Perhaps I'll process a few more pics a little later and put them up on picasa for you to view.

Catch Up

It sure seems like a long time since I've posted anything here, not quite a month. Mostly I've just been doing the same routine, work, eat, sleep, etc. Life is good. Parenting is difficult. Work is work. Nothing new really. I did however manage to go on a backpacking trip with a friend from Pennsylvania, and his friend. We spent 4 days and 3 nights hiking around Rocky Mountain National Park, the highlight of which was climbing Long's Peak, my first time above 14,000 feet in altitude.

The above Picture is Long's peak from Boulderfield campsite, the morning of our summit. You can see the weather was perfect. It's quite an amazing experience being up that high, and yes, I certainly could tell there is less oxygen up there... In fact mild symptoms of altitude sickness set in for me on the second day. I had a nagging headache that was there enough to make itself known, and by the time we came down off the peak, I had no desire to eat lunch. It was time to hike down to the next camp anyway, lower altitudes fixed all that.

Before the backpacking trip, the family and I drove up to Cheyenne, WY to check out the Sierra trading post brick and mortar store. Its pretty nice, prices are good, as always, but the selection lacked compared to the online offerings. On the drive up we saw our first wild Antelope playing in the fields, but alas, no roaming buffalo's Bison. The trip also reminded me that I'm not cut out to live anywhere between Denver and the Mississippi River. The plains just do nothing for me. I think I would go crazy without mountains, and at least some vegetation.

Cheyenne, itself wasn't all that exciting either... we drove around a little bit. I didn't see anything to exciting, and the place seemed kind of vacant. Some areas more well kept than others. Given my impression of Wyoming so far, its hard to believe that Yellowstone is in this state... but then again, you'd have the same impression, seeing eastern Colorado too.

So that's what's going on around here... Was feeling bad about not posting in a long while, and wanted to share the pics from my recent backpacking trip. Enjoy.

From RMNP Backpacking

"The Trough" It's steeper than it looks.

New Lens

So I ran out and got what are considered to be some of my friends most favorite lenses.... The Canon 50mm f/1.8. Its my first prime lens, and will take a little getting used to me thinks. I found myself wanting to twist something to zoom in or out on the subject. Also had fun playing with it stopped wide open at f/1.8 and the very narrow Depth of Field it gives you ( as seen in the 1st picture below, notice my boys ear's and neck are out of focus) Overall I think it will be a good addition to my lens collection. Hopefully I'll be able to get some good pics out of it at some point to share.



These (above and below) photos are for everyone that's been bugging me for more shots of my family. The one below was from a recent trip to RMNP, though, its low res. on purpose. My camera managed to auto focus on the background instead of us, so the shot didn't really turn out that well. So making it low res was my way of hiding it... :)

Review: Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers

I've recently been following many different blogs of various photography gurus in hopes to become better at taking wonderful photos of all the various places I'm lucky enough to visit. Several of the blogs I read often from published professional photographers. One such blog is the photoblog 2.0, by Herold Davis. I've recently got a copy of his most recent book, and found it very useful... Here's my review of it, also posted on amazon.com

Being fairly new to the arena of digital photography, beyond point and shoot cameras, I often found myself underwhelmed with a lot of the pictures I have been taking. I understood what all of the settings on my camera did, and what their effects on the resulting image where, but things just weren't coming together for me. This book has helped me understand that digital photography, really is a process. From choosing the scene, and exposing for the portions that are important, all the way to loading the RAW image into processing software to put on the “finishing touches.” While it doesn't teach you how to go out and shoot an award winning photo, it does give you the knowledge you need to correctly use your camera and computer as a tool to create that photo.

Each Chapter of Mr. Davis' book reads very well, and provides interesting dialog that doesn't seem to speak over my head. It's written in a clear concise manner that goes into just enough detail to help you understand why each step is important. I'm sure that each chapter in this book could probably be a book on its own. There are times that I found myself wishing to know more about a particular topic in the book, but adding such content to it would probably take away from the flow as a whole. The many sidebars in the book give you that extra bit of information you may be looking for, or just urge you to do more research on your own.

In my opinion, the best part of this book is all the wonderful examples that Mr. Davis provides in his discussion. For every concept, idea, and method that is discussed in the book there is at least one, if not multiple images detailing the application of each. Each image has an explanation of why the particular setting in discussion was chosen, along with all of the other settings used to compose each image. Simply browsing through the images and their narrative alone is inspirational and fun.

I often found myself reading this book with my camera on one side of me, playing with each setting as I read about them, and a book about my particular camera on the other side. I would often take breaks between each chapter to explore the ramifications of changing each setting on my camera and learning how it affects different outcomes.

All in all, I would say this book is aimed at people exactly like myself. New to photography as something more than just a point and shoot for the family scrap book, and eager to learn more. It contains just enough detail to help you understand what's going on inside the little box without boring you, and provides real life examples the illustrate them. It provides a window into the mind of a professional photographer willing to share important informational details into what makes a picture good.

5 years ago

It's hard to believe that its been 5 years now since my son was born, in some ways. In other ways it seems like it should have been 10 years ago. Being a dad is probably the most difficult job I've ever had, and ever will have, but the fun times I have with my family seems to offset even the most difficult things. Happy 5th Birthday son.


The day after I returned home to Denver from Antarctica, and Chile, we decided to goto the local zoo. I turned out to be a great day, and I had some fun material to use as subjects during the last day of rental of the Canon L series lens I took down south with me. One of the exhibits was a Lorikeet aviary, where you could hand feed them some fruity, sugary syrup. It smelt good enough that I wanted to eat it, though I didn't. Overall, we had a great day, and I took lots of pictures, some of them good. Some of them not so good. I've decided that taking pictures of animals at zoos isn't my favorite thing. There's something inherently wrong with a picture of an animal with a brick wall in the background. I guess that's where photographic creativity has to come into play.


Spring time in Colorado has so far been fun. The wildlife is coming out, namely the birds. We've had a pair of Kestrels (above) hanging around our yard, as well as a bunch of Jays. Its cool that these guys sit around in our trees long enough for me to get a shot of them. The shot above was taken with my 100-300mm lens, fully extended to 300mm. Had to crank the ISO up to get shutter speed fast enough to eliminate camera shake, though I was satisified with how it came out. The birds also been leaving dead rodent carcases around our yard too, which I find quite amusing.

It's nice to see such a brown dry place turn green. I don't know how long it will stay green, but it has me looking forward to summer hiking and biking. Hopefully I can get myself back into enough shape to handle a 50 mile round trip bike commute to work. Here's to hoping. I feel like I've slipped so much since I've moved. I can't believe I was racing my back last year plus a month, this time.

Some Choice Photos

So I spent most of my day going through photos from my trip and playing around with Adobe Lightroom, and comparing it to Apple's Aperture. IMHO, there is now comparison, LightRoom kicked the pants off of Aperture. The reasons why are probably for another post, I will most likely never get to. I don't feel knowledgeable enough to talk about all the features or their differences. I just know I like LightRoom a lot better.

So anyway... Here are some of the pics that I felt represent my trip the best. Most of them certainly aren't post card material, but I'm happy with them. Please feel free to leave comments on them, etc.

Wrapping up

Since the station staff get Sunday's off, we tried to get most of our work all wrapped up today, which, for the most part was accomplished. The weather was really nice this morning, so we managed to get out on a boat ride.


Here's a little pictorial of my adventure. Note that comments listed are for the picture beneath the text, and you can always click on the picture for a larger view. I didn't do much processing out of my camera here, mostly just converted RAW to jpeg.

A view of the LMG and palmer station as we zoom away in our zodiac

An Elephant Seal track on one of the local islands. Is up to you to figure out what the dark spots are going up the middle of its path. ;)

A female (so says station staff) elephant seal peaking up to see who's looking at her.

A pair of Adelie Penguins (yay, I saw a real penguin in nature, and not in the zoo) Aren't they cute? :)

This used to be an ice bridge, but has just recently collapsed.

Here's a view of the LMG as we come back to station. You can see that we got to "drive" though a decent sized section of brash ice. Brash ice is like a slushy mixture of ice and water. All of the ice you see here comes from all the glacier calvings in the harbor

Tomorrow I hope to get out for a nice hike, maybe up to the top of the glacier, or out for a walk around "Old Palmer," which is where Palmer station used to be located, but has since been completely torn down. You can only get there by boat, but from what I understand has some great views.

HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography

So my friend Doug and I where chatting the other day, and he mentioned that he was wanting to try out some HDR photography... Typical of myself, being clueless to most things related to photography, (at least I still feel that way) I asked Doug what the heck he was talking about. He explained it well for me, and gave me a good idea of what it is, and how cool it can be. I've run across an example or two (okay, lots) as well as a good explination and tutorial. So I've given it a try. I can't say I felt all that inspired by anything around me today, so the shots aren't all that interesting. I did one indoors, and one outdoors. I suspect the outdoor shot would have been more interesting had it been closer to dusk. And all in all, it gives me further urgency to get a tripod (which has now moved to the top of my photo gear want list).



As you can see from the images, I used a application called Photomatix to do the processing. It seems to work pretty well, and gives you the ability to tweak things quite a bit before the final process is complete. It guides you through the workflow well, IMHO. Small fee required to get rid of the watermarks of course. For playing around and seeing what this stuff is all about though, I'll live through the watermarks. If you are curious what the images looked like before hand, I've sampled some of the image collection it takes to make these, and put them together below. The left being the most under exposed, middle being the average, and actually what my camera's "P mode" decided to use, and the right being the most over exposed. Essentially, I focused the camera and let the P mode decide stuff. Then I translated those settings to manual mode and took 4-5 pictures on each side, either increasing or decreasing shutter speed. (Click on the pictures to get more detail)


I haven't quite figured out what the green aberration is on the lower right portion of the couch is yet. I suspect it might be a reflection on the lens, or possibly the UV filter that's on the front. can't say I'm too pleased about it. Its the first I've ever seen of it though... odd, I got out the lens cleaner and polished stuff up. I have to try and recreate a few shots to see if I can get it to come back. Sigh.

It'll be interesting to see how useful this process because for antarctic photography. I suspect it might yield some nice stuff. I might be taking advantage of the free trial of photoshop CS3 for that though. I found tutorials of doing HDR processing in CS2, so I imagine CS3 has to do it too. Yet another thing to save my pennies for.

GeoTagging

So I've been playing with my Camera a little, trying to get used to it, before I deploy to the ice. I've come across what seems to be a relatively new thing to do with all the pictures you take. It's called geoTagging. There are lots of other discussions out there on what to use, how to do it, etc. Just google it up. I found one GPS tracker that actually will sit in the hot shoe of your camera and record your coordinates when you take each photograph, I thought that was neat, but it was yet another device to buy. I already have a few GPS units. One is old and antiquated, and the other is my Garmin edge 305... soon to be antiquated, I fear, with Garmin's release of the new spiffy edge 705. Darn technology, always getting better, LOL.

Anyhow, from what I've read the work flow for geoTagging seems to go like this... Take a hike, turn on a GPS device to track and record your positions. Take some photos. When you get home, download the photos, collect the data from the GPS device. Then use the software package of your choice to sync up the photos with your GPS data. What it does is look at the time stamp on the photo, and then finds the position where you where at, at that time. Then it adds the latitude and longitude to the EXIF data on the photo. There you have it... geoTagged photos. I have been using an app called PhotoMapper by COPIKS. It can only import jpeg images (I'd love something to tag RAW images), but it can use various formats of GPS data, including .gpx, .hst, and .tcx, as well as a few others. The .tcx is useful to me since I can export that right out of Garmin's Training center, the software that comes with the edge. Just a word of caution though, I've found out so far, if you save a RAW file from Picasa2 to jpeg, and then try to open the jpg up in PhotoMapper, it crashes... not sure why, so for now, I've been using the Canon Utilities to convert from RAW to jpeg. Anyone want to buy me photoshop CS3? :) pretty please?

As far as the results? Well, you can view them in google earth, and other various photo collection sites out on the web. I'm curious to see how well all this web app stuff handles data sourced from the antarctic. We'll find out soon enough I guess. I've uploaded some of the tagged pics to my picasa account if you want to see how it works. I think my favorite pic is of a wind blown tree:
I'm still not all that happy with most of my pictures mostly due to shadows and stuff. I think that its mostly because of the time of day and year though. The sun is low in the sky, and its mid-late afternoon, so the shadows are getting long. Oh well. Only way to get better at composition is to take more photos....

New Camera

So the new camera has finally arrived. I bought a used Canon Digital Rebel XTi off ebay. It came with a battery grip, extra battery, and 2 lenses, 18-55mm and a 100-300mm. Its gonna be a while before I get good at using it I think. Here's the first few shots so far.

I think Everest was getting annoyed at me shoving the camera in his face. I'm really sure he didn't enjoy having the flash go off in his face the night before either.... The next few pictures where taken from Green Mountain Park. The first is of the city of Denver, zoomed in. I was using a 100-300mm zoom lens here, it was probably around 175mm here. I was impressed how close the city seemed zoomed in to 300mm. I don't have a tripod yet, so I can't take any night photos. They'll come soon, I promise.

The next picture was just me trying to mess around with depth of field and stuff. Personally, I think the background is a little too out of focus. The subject here is a seed pod on yucca plant.

And the sign below I just think is amusing, given that it's less than 1/10 of a mile from our house. Its a fairly new addition to the park (the sign). I'd love to get a shot of one of those cats... From a distance of course. Not sure if you can make out the sign, but it basically goes on to say if you get attacked, fight back and don't give up.... walk loudly and carry a big stick.

As always, I'd love to hear your comments and criticism on the photos, or anything else you might have to say.

Heavy Air?

So I figured that I would take some pictures from the open space park that is very close to where I live. The clouds where cooperating, as they often do around here. Interestingly enough though, the air wasn't.


If you look close at the picture above (you might have to click on it to see it in detail), the city of Denver is actually in that picture. That big gray line going across the screen isn't the horizon you are seeing, well I guess it is. I'm pretty sure the lack of clarity is caused by smog. On warmer days it looks better. I've noticed this view on other cold days like today too. Its like the mountains trap that stuff down there, and it has no where to go. Makes me glad I live about 1000' higher, thats fur sure. Though I may be in it too, just don't notice whats in my immediate area. Doing almost a 180 degree turn from where I'm standing yields the following image:


We can see here, another "foggy air mass" coming around the mountain I'm standing on and getting trapped by the mountain range to the west. This cloud seems much cleaner to me though, and I imagine its just moisture in the air from all the sublimating and melting snow ;) That's what I'll tell myself anyway.

So if you are wondering where exactly I live... here's a picture of my house...


Trust me it's in there. If you look bottom center of the image, you'll see a small street sign for a right hand curve... the house that my family and I occupy, is just after the sign.
And because I was bored and trying to make an attempt at being creative again, below is a picture of a snowy plant that I thought seemed kinda cool waving in the breeze. Sorry about the amateur hour photo composition... aka stupid shadow.