A short video showing the hike Chris and I did into Sheets Gulch, in Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park. It’s an unmaintained route, but at least in good conditions (such as we had) it’s not difficult. In fact, among the small number of parties we met there was one with fairly young children. Of course it might be tougher if there had been recent rain leaving pools of water to contend with in the canyon! Continuing my flirtation with mirrorless the footage was shot with a rented Panasonic GH5 and a 24-70mm (equivalent) lens. It was a lot of fun. I didn’t quite nail all the shots as I would have liked, but my feeling is that the footage overall is still better than from my Canon 5D3.
Mdina, Malta
A couple of images from a weekend trip to Malta. These were taken with the Sony RX100 II that remains my go-to choice for non-photographic vacations and work trips.
Stumbling across a Maltese wedding in Mdina
The Old City of Mdina, Malta
Snake on slickrock
You don’t always get what you expect. For a weekend hiking in Capitol Reef national park I went with an almost entirely video-oriented setup – a rented Panasonic GH5 and the m4/3 equivalent of a 24-70mm lens. I haven’t had time to look at the footage, but there is one image that I think worked
Hiking in the Lofoten Islands
Considering a return to Norway this summer, but these were from three years ago in Norway’s Lofoten Islands.
Hiking in the Lofoten Islands
Hiking above Kvalvika beach, Lofoten Islands
Snowy Flatirons
A highlight of my winter drive into work is the sight of the Flatirons plastered in fresh snow after a storm has passed through. It’s not a sight that usually lasts very long; the Flatirons are steep and a day of sun is normally enough to slough the snow off. Seeing that the skies were meant to clear overnight after fresh snow yesterday, I headed out in the pre-dawn hours to see if there was an image to be made, either from the office or from Chautauqua. A crescent moon provided some illumination.
Boulder Flatirons after fresh snow
The snow was still quite fresh, and it wasn’t really all that cold, so I set up with two cameras and ultrawide lenses just past the Chautauqua parking lot. The final image is a stitch of the two composites, each of which is a stack of about 80 30s exposures (ISO 800, f/5.6).
Eclipse no show
For the lunar eclipses in 2014 and 2015 I staked out locations in the Indian Peaks and at the overlook south of Boulder en route to Golden. On both occasions I shot wide angle through the eclipse, ending up with both time lapse footage and a composite image. Those efforts worked out pretty well. For the January 2018 edition I decided to try something different. The moon was going to set over the mountains while still in total eclipse, minutes before dawn. A long telephoto shot from the Lost Gulch Overlook on Flagstaff Mountain looked like it had potential.
My plan, it turned out, was not entirely original. Leaving home at 6am, a line of vehicles snaked up the hairpin bends to the overlook, where cars were parked for a hundred yards along the road! Maybe 50 people were out in the pre-dawn gloom, a fair number of whom sported hefty tripods and serious glass. Of the guest of honor, alas, there was no sign. A bank of low cloud in Boulder Canyon was potentially a scenic addition, but higher clouds completely blocked any view of the moon toward the western horizon. Sunrise didn’t happen either.
In lieu of the eclipse I shot a handful of frames of the peaks peeking through breaks in the clouds, along with some images of the view east to the plains with some low angle light below the clouds.
Peaks from the Lost Gulch Overlook
US 36 heading into Boulder
Night sky at Arches National Park, Utah
Stitch of 6 frames taken with the Canon 24mm tilt-shift lens at f/3.5 (ISO 6400).
Arches National Park, night
Boulder
Drove up to Chautauqua this afternoon to see if there was an image of the supermoon rising over the plains. Nothing doing, but I stayed around till twilight and grabbed a frame looking along US36 heading north out of town.
Road to the mountains
Oahu Thanksgiving 2017
Back from a week’s vacation in Hawaii with my wife. We spent some time on the North Shore, where the waves and the surfers (setting up for a World Cup event at the weekend) were both fun to watch. Snorkeling at Hanauma Bay and the botanical gardens at Waimea Valley were other highlights. Not really a photo trip, but I shot some images I’m quite pleased with using the Sony RX100 II.
Sunset Beach on the North Shore
Waimea Valley, Oahu
USS Bowfin, Pearl Harbor, Honolulu
Yukon’s Tombstone Provincial Park
The far north of Canada was in the news today, with the opening of a road (unpaved, there are limits to even the Canadian government’s largesse) between Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk. The closest I’ve gotten to these outposts is Tombstone Provincial Park, which is near the start of the (also unpaved) Dempster highway that leads across the arctic circle up to Inuvik. It’s truly spectacular country!
Hiking toward Grizzly Lake, Tombstone Provincial Park
(For a glimpse of the Dempster, check out my brother’s timelapse viseo. No gimbals or fancy mounting equipment here, this is reversed footage from a hacked Canon compact strapped to the rear spoiler of our rental car!)