At least one of us cleans up nice!
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Saturday, February 25, 2012
Western Lass
Murphy got herself all gussied up the other day so we went and capitalized on it.
At least one of us cleans up nice!
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At least one of us cleans up nice!
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Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Print Sale!
As I've mentioned a couple times, I'm a contributing photographer at Kinetic Lens, a collaborative effort to plaster your walls with art and to benefit rescue animals at the same time.
In the interest of rewarding my loyal readership, I'm pleased to offer a healthy discount on my galleries for the next month. Select what you'd like to purchase, and in the checkout process, enter this code (without the quotation marks) in the Coupon Code box: "ed0212-20p-edo". This will get you 20% off (excluding shipping), with no minimum order, and it's good until March 20th. The best part is that, while you're saving money, we donate the same amount to Best Friends.
From the Desert gallery
From the Ice gallery
As a further reminder, these prints are of exceptional quality: 8" x 12" archive pigment print hand-produced on museum quality paper, centered on an 11" x 14" sheet for easy mounting and framing. They really do look stunning, and I'm not just saying that! Our crack print-making team gets punished heavily for any mistakes, meaning that motivation to turn out quality product is at an all-time high.
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In the interest of rewarding my loyal readership, I'm pleased to offer a healthy discount on my galleries for the next month. Select what you'd like to purchase, and in the checkout process, enter this code (without the quotation marks) in the Coupon Code box: "ed0212-20p-edo". This will get you 20% off (excluding shipping), with no minimum order, and it's good until March 20th. The best part is that, while you're saving money, we donate the same amount to Best Friends.
From the Desert gallery
From the Ice gallery
As a further reminder, these prints are of exceptional quality: 8" x 12" archive pigment print hand-produced on museum quality paper, centered on an 11" x 14" sheet for easy mounting and framing. They really do look stunning, and I'm not just saying that! Our crack print-making team gets punished heavily for any mistakes, meaning that motivation to turn out quality product is at an all-time high.
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Thursday, February 16, 2012
Tenaya Ice
As promised, here's a continuation of the trip to Yosemite from early January. The story is that Matt and I were wandering around on a very frozen Tenaya Lake, and by virtue of needing to not slip and break our necks and untold thousands of dollars worth of camera gear, we spent a good amount of time staring straight down at our feet.
The exceptional clarity of the High Sierra lake, paired with innumerable bubbles that had risen to the surface near the shore in a wide variety of patterns and sizes, made for a veritable photo-geek playground. Unleashing the trusty macro lens and figuring out a deceptively simple way to illuminate them, I quite literally freaked out on it for a couple hours after dialing in the technique.
Splattered
Obscured
Tapioca
Glistening
Hyperspace
Cellular
Quicksilver
Bullets
One thing I love about macro photography is that it exposes lesser-known aspects of the world surrounding us. It was only by virtue of truly remarkable weather conditions that allowed us to be in that place at that time and to photograph something as inane-sounding as ice, and a good example of the benefit of being willing to pounce on unforeseen opportunities.
These photos (and others) are available for purchase as open editions at Kinetic Lens. Remember that 50% of all profits are donated to Best Friends Animal Society, a sanctuary that improves life for animals in need, whatever their shape or size.
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The exceptional clarity of the High Sierra lake, paired with innumerable bubbles that had risen to the surface near the shore in a wide variety of patterns and sizes, made for a veritable photo-geek playground. Unleashing the trusty macro lens and figuring out a deceptively simple way to illuminate them, I quite literally freaked out on it for a couple hours after dialing in the technique.
Splattered
Obscured
Tapioca
Glistening
Hyperspace
Cellular
Quicksilver
Bullets
One thing I love about macro photography is that it exposes lesser-known aspects of the world surrounding us. It was only by virtue of truly remarkable weather conditions that allowed us to be in that place at that time and to photograph something as inane-sounding as ice, and a good example of the benefit of being willing to pounce on unforeseen opportunities.
These photos (and others) are available for purchase as open editions at Kinetic Lens. Remember that 50% of all profits are donated to Best Friends Animal Society, a sanctuary that improves life for animals in need, whatever their shape or size.
-
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Before/After
This one began with oh-so-noble intentions. People who make Antarctic expeditions usually leave fat and happy and come back gaunt and withered. Grant, in case you're one of the twelve people on the planet that doesn't know him, just got back from being the first adaptive athlete in history to ski to the South Pole. He wanted to do before/after photos, and here's what we got.
The Before was a cinch. It was the night before they left, the house was littered with the debris of a Class 1 Gear Explosion, and he was filled with the anticipation of adventures at the extents of the globe.
Pre-Antarctic, 12/28/11
The After photo was...not so easy... Only back in town for a day, he'd already been off the ice for a week and had been returning to more complete meals. Besides, he'd been pretty darn ready fitness-wise, not exactly desiring to be the first adaptive athlete to perish halfway there. The pressure was off, the to-do list had a few things scratched off it, and it was simply too hard to show any drastic difference from before he left (see above note about being ready).
So we just had fun with it. It's hard for a guy like him to be serious all the time, anyway.
Post-Antarctic, 1/25/2012
In other news, they've launched the new Korg 3.0 website. Check it out! There'll be more of those awesome Heart Fire necklaces for sale shortly; the first run sold out rapidly and the second run is in production now.
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The Before was a cinch. It was the night before they left, the house was littered with the debris of a Class 1 Gear Explosion, and he was filled with the anticipation of adventures at the extents of the globe.
Pre-Antarctic, 12/28/11
The After photo was...not so easy... Only back in town for a day, he'd already been off the ice for a week and had been returning to more complete meals. Besides, he'd been pretty darn ready fitness-wise, not exactly desiring to be the first adaptive athlete to perish halfway there. The pressure was off, the to-do list had a few things scratched off it, and it was simply too hard to show any drastic difference from before he left (see above note about being ready).
So we just had fun with it. It's hard for a guy like him to be serious all the time, anyway.
Post-Antarctic, 1/25/2012
In other news, they've launched the new Korg 3.0 website. Check it out! There'll be more of those awesome Heart Fire necklaces for sale shortly; the first run sold out rapidly and the second run is in production now.
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Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Pee-Dee-Ex
We made a quick escape to Portland a couple weekends ago, terrorizing the city's population of ironic hipsters with our relative lack of irony and our relative abundance of skin pigment. Not really concerned with seeing the sights, we gallivanted from coffee to food to drinks to shops, in no particular order, and with frequent rinse and repeat cycles.
We also made a temporary base camp at Perch, Jon and Willi's most progressive furniture store, although we probably scared some customers away as it likely appeared that we were homeless and squatting.
Quench thy thirst, knave
In our non-food/drink/caffeine-consuming moments, we explored the surroundings via a couple of runs. Chase (his Excellency) took me on a fantastic journey in the aptly named Forest Park (it's a park in a forest), and we finished muddy and exhilarated after winding through huge lushly draped trees at a largely unsafe pace. There are no fairweather athletes in Portland; embracing the rain is ingrained in the culture of the cyclists and runners, it seems. Cheerfully soggy is de rigueur there and unheard of in Reno!
I'm totally over Powell's Books; it's so big that it's disorienting. Walking out of there without spending a dime is easy for me. Powell's Building 2, however, is an entirely different story. It's a repository of technical and scientific tomes, and it's much smaller, and it's fraught with danger at every turn, and it requires an utmost of restraint to leave there without blowing a paycheck. It probably speaks to some deep-seated problem in my psyche that I'm excited by dusty quantum mechanics textbooks. Whatever.
Old and new
It's a fun city, full of intriguing culture and architecture and friends, and well-worth a visit, no matter how short!
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We also made a temporary base camp at Perch, Jon and Willi's most progressive furniture store, although we probably scared some customers away as it likely appeared that we were homeless and squatting.
Quench thy thirst, knave
In our non-food/drink/caffeine-consuming moments, we explored the surroundings via a couple of runs. Chase (his Excellency) took me on a fantastic journey in the aptly named Forest Park (it's a park in a forest), and we finished muddy and exhilarated after winding through huge lushly draped trees at a largely unsafe pace. There are no fairweather athletes in Portland; embracing the rain is ingrained in the culture of the cyclists and runners, it seems. Cheerfully soggy is de rigueur there and unheard of in Reno!
I'm totally over Powell's Books; it's so big that it's disorienting. Walking out of there without spending a dime is easy for me. Powell's Building 2, however, is an entirely different story. It's a repository of technical and scientific tomes, and it's much smaller, and it's fraught with danger at every turn, and it requires an utmost of restraint to leave there without blowing a paycheck. It probably speaks to some deep-seated problem in my psyche that I'm excited by dusty quantum mechanics textbooks. Whatever.
Old and new
It's a fun city, full of intriguing culture and architecture and friends, and well-worth a visit, no matter how short!
-
Friday, January 13, 2012
Frozen Tuolumne
This story begins on the drive back from the Bay Area on New Years Day after a fun weekend there. As day darkened to dusk along I-80, Matt texted to ask if I'd be keen for a last-minute trip to Yosemite the next day. This premise was made possible by Tioga Pass being uncharacteristically open; it's not maintained after the first big snow, but that hasn't happened (!), so it's clear and dry. If Tioga's open, it's under 3 hours from Reno to Yosemite, but an easy 5-6 if Tioga's closed. Unfortunately, Ethel had to work the next day, but I was off, and the promise of an unfettered photo mission was too much to pass up.
Unpacking from the previous trip entirely out of the question, I departed Reno at an ungodly hour for Matt's house after flinging all available camera gear into the car, and we were in Yosemite by daybreak. We spent a couple hours exploring some of Matt's favorite little spots near the top of Tioga, and then we continued down into Tuolumne Meadows.
Boiling hole
Tenaya Lake (and all the others) were frozen solid, the result of many cold and clear weeks prior. Still cold from the night when we arrived, we were intrigued but not totally surprised to find some people ice skating. What we weren't prepared for, however, were the short-sleeved throngs that would emerge as the day warmed. At any given time after the sun emerged, there were a couple hundred people recreating on the lake.
Barren lakescape
Usually, with a huge snowpack and Tioga Pass closed, the only way into the glorious Tuolumne high country is a 15+ mile ski, an effort that's undertaken by some, but certainly not easy access. Seeing this terrain in January without the snowpack and with trivial access is literally unheard of.
Domes large and small
Our early start had given us the luxury of time, so we spent the day meandering back and forth through the area. We left Tenaya for a while and headed back just over Tioga Pass to check out the wildly frozen outlet of Ellery Lake. While a spectacular sight, this icefall was guarded by a stiff wind that kept us from venturing too near any of the really good vantage points. The landing would not have been a fun one.
Frozen outlet
Mini-cavern
Happy to have avoided certain death at the icefall, we headed back through Tuolumne to hang out at Tenaya for sunset. Along the way, we saw our only wildlife of the day. The 'yote wasn't too interested in letting me get close to him, adeptly sauntering away at the same pace I approached. Perhaps chasing him with a 500mm lens wasn't the best way to ensure my stealth...
Local color
Back to Tenaya well in advance of sunset, I spent a good long while totally freaking out on making photos of bubbles in the ice. Sounds mundane, but just you wait...
Matt was set up on the lake with his digital camera, his 4x5, and his 8x10. Somehow, I felt like he'd be covering most of the angles down there, so I headed for higher ground and scurried up a nearby peak. Some heavy clouds had moved in, and we both thought we were gonna get skunked on light. I was so convinced that I started hiking back down when a faint beam of red light hit me in the chest, and I got treated to about 5 minutes of exquisite colors that really only appear in high country like this. The gap between the clouds and the horizon was so narrow that it was a very rapidly evolving show, over far too soon. Worth the hike!
The view east
The view west
After a solid 10 hours of uninterrupted photo mission, we slunk back to Reno after acquisition of some tasty Monoritos in Lee Vining. All in all, it was a super long and interesting weekend on many counts, and absolutely worth the lack of rest. Who'da thunk we'd be able to cruise Tuolumne via Tioga Pass in January!
-
Unpacking from the previous trip entirely out of the question, I departed Reno at an ungodly hour for Matt's house after flinging all available camera gear into the car, and we were in Yosemite by daybreak. We spent a couple hours exploring some of Matt's favorite little spots near the top of Tioga, and then we continued down into Tuolumne Meadows.
Boiling hole
Tenaya Lake (and all the others) were frozen solid, the result of many cold and clear weeks prior. Still cold from the night when we arrived, we were intrigued but not totally surprised to find some people ice skating. What we weren't prepared for, however, were the short-sleeved throngs that would emerge as the day warmed. At any given time after the sun emerged, there were a couple hundred people recreating on the lake.
Barren lakescape
Usually, with a huge snowpack and Tioga Pass closed, the only way into the glorious Tuolumne high country is a 15+ mile ski, an effort that's undertaken by some, but certainly not easy access. Seeing this terrain in January without the snowpack and with trivial access is literally unheard of.
Domes large and small
Our early start had given us the luxury of time, so we spent the day meandering back and forth through the area. We left Tenaya for a while and headed back just over Tioga Pass to check out the wildly frozen outlet of Ellery Lake. While a spectacular sight, this icefall was guarded by a stiff wind that kept us from venturing too near any of the really good vantage points. The landing would not have been a fun one.
Frozen outlet
Mini-cavern
Happy to have avoided certain death at the icefall, we headed back through Tuolumne to hang out at Tenaya for sunset. Along the way, we saw our only wildlife of the day. The 'yote wasn't too interested in letting me get close to him, adeptly sauntering away at the same pace I approached. Perhaps chasing him with a 500mm lens wasn't the best way to ensure my stealth...
Local color
Back to Tenaya well in advance of sunset, I spent a good long while totally freaking out on making photos of bubbles in the ice. Sounds mundane, but just you wait...
Matt was set up on the lake with his digital camera, his 4x5, and his 8x10. Somehow, I felt like he'd be covering most of the angles down there, so I headed for higher ground and scurried up a nearby peak. Some heavy clouds had moved in, and we both thought we were gonna get skunked on light. I was so convinced that I started hiking back down when a faint beam of red light hit me in the chest, and I got treated to about 5 minutes of exquisite colors that really only appear in high country like this. The gap between the clouds and the horizon was so narrow that it was a very rapidly evolving show, over far too soon. Worth the hike!
The view east
The view west
After a solid 10 hours of uninterrupted photo mission, we slunk back to Reno after acquisition of some tasty Monoritos in Lee Vining. All in all, it was a super long and interesting weekend on many counts, and absolutely worth the lack of rest. Who'da thunk we'd be able to cruise Tuolumne via Tioga Pass in January!
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Past Detritus
About Me
- Eliot
- I'm a guy who's traveled a bit, worked a bit, and raced a bit...and would like to do all of those things more. This blog was created to update family and friends when I moved to New Zealand in 2007. Left there to come back to the US in 2008 and kept the blog going.