http://www.spin.com/gallery/outside-lands-gets-crunched-popchips?page=1#main

And a couple more bonus shots.  Fitz and the Tantrums were great, nice and relaxed, very cool to meet them.

Playing a little chip toss.

Mmmm, try this flavor!

I got to follow the Captain around and get some photos, including one in which he actually got the Captain Pose while in the air, it was great!

Then on Sunday I got to go to the Pond Skimming Competition which was amazing.  I’ve never been to one but it’s quite shocking how much skill it must take to do.  You hit a jump which launches you up in the air and then you land on the water.  Gotta have enough speed to make it the rest of the way and hopefully have some experience with water skiing.

The Captain held a competition to see who wanted to dress up as a Captain and take on the mountain.  About ten people wanted to take part and take the Captain’s place.  The Captain held a vuvuzela blowing competition, a pose off competition and then a quiz about what you think “your best night out” is.  Of course the Captain is all about drinking responsibly and dropped a few hints about it, two people picked up on the hints but Jimmy took home the prize.  Jimmy got dressed up quickly by the Captain and the Morganettes in the Captain suit and climbed the hill.  If that wasn’t enough he totally succeeded at crossing the pond having never done it before and then pulled the Captain pose when back on dry land!  Youtube video here (sorry about the shakiness, it’s my video but no tripod).

Photos of the fun event below.

Captain Pose in the Air

More from the event after the break!

The Captain Collecting Poses for his One Million Poses Campaign

The Jimmy -> Captain Transformation is Complete

Jimmy / Pseudo Captain in the Middle of the Pond

Check out the rest of the photos from the event here

Overall a great night, except what I found out was that Boulder really shuts down over Christmas break.  I met up with some friends and had great plans of delicious food and drink before the show began only to find out that half of the restaurants in Boulder are closed when the students are gone.  Oh well, Mountain Sun Brewery came through for us even when other places failed.

Beautiful music was made

Everyone was having fun

Chuck doing his MC'ing

Josh Blue coming on stage, don't know whether or not he was making a face.

That band that was not Paper Bird

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edit: So I’d like to put a little more work in here because I know a lot of people love to seek out advice on photography instead of just look at pretty photos.  If you’d like to read more about these photos click through to here.

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Flash Gallery Link for a Slideshow
(edit: I’m having a few issues with Chrome loading the page but IE and Firefox are doing just fine)

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More after the fold.

I’ve thought about it more and realized that I think in reality photos taken of people and things in a forced situation (aka work) are more challenging.  The challenge drives you to be better, to make it interesting, to find that angle or get that lighting even in the most challenging of situations.  Suddenly stumbling upon shots seems easy, so many shots that I used to really enjoy just feel cliché (they always were, I just didn’t care) and without a goal to the day when I go out it just gets so hard to make the photos feel like an accomplishment.  I don’t know if any of this makes sense, feel free to respond in the comments if you’d like, but to me it all makes sense, I just can’t quite express it, need to think on it more.

So all of this means that the last time I went out hiking and camping I knew I wanted to take some photos, I needed to force myself to take some photos.  When I finally did the juices started to flow again, it started to feel good.  I explored angles, exposures, time of day all over again.  Since then I’ve had the camera out a lot and am taking photos for me again and it feels good.  I’m doing this in conjunction with a lot of work and photos for other people but right now I have no conflict about it.

Lots of words, but its a photo blog, so on with the photos.  A few friends of mine, TJ and Kathy wanted to go get in one last camping trip for the year and invited Christina and me along.  They brought their two dogs and their little girl and we brought our two dogs, it was a bit of a madhouse, luckily the wild was large enough to handle it.  It ended up that TJ got a job offer in L.A. a few days after our little hiking trip so it will likely be their last Colorado hiking adventure for more than just the year.  We drove up west of Boulder, past Eldora to a little area of trails, one leading to Lost Lake.  We really got to test out the Outback, drove it along a fairly shallow length of river for about 1/4 mile and up some crazy dirt roads, felt like a Subaru commercial.  I have an awful photo of the river drive but I gotta share it just cause:

Driving the Outback down the river

We then hiked with our packs about 1.5 miles up to the lake.  I brought a good amount of gear with me, wish I would have brought a little less cause damn it made my pack heavy.  Although had I brought less I probably would have brought a tripod and offset any savings, stupid having no tripod.

We set up camp and started to get some food prepared.  About this time the dogs were let off leash, Ruby and Lucy had quite a good time without their leashes on.  We went down to the lake and they even decided to go hopping log to log.

Dogs on a log

The lake was beautiful and very still, practically mirror-like.  As the sun started to set I got some very nice photos it.

Lost Lake Sunset

We went to bed and had a terrible night’s sleep.  The dogs didn’t like the tent and the moon was too bright.  I don’t think any of us got much sleep all night.  In the morning we broke down camp, spent some time hanging out and then hiked our way out.  The hike on the way out had some nice early morning beauty.

Glass Lake

Continued…

Aspen Changing, too bad the sky was so bright

Changing Aspen

More Changing Aspen

Pretty awesome drive thru, might have trouble getting good service though.

Trying to get to the other posts quickly but busy and slacking is a hard combination.

One photo that I grabbed, right before I broke my remote shutter release cord, is below.  We happened to be down there on a very clear night during the new moon.  The stars were absolutely amazing, Alamosa, CO is right near the dunes but they don’t have much light pollution, this means some wonderful long exposure, night photos can be taken.

About the cord, it was dark, I set my tripod with my camera down for a second with the cord wrapped over my shoulder.  Well, the tripod was not level, I even did a double check!  About 5 seconds after I put it down the whole thing toppled!  Luckily, there was some twine between posts directing people where to go for grounds recover.  The tripod fell right into one of them, it scraped against the ground (the lens hood did) but it did not hit the ground thankfully.  The cord however stayed around my neck and snapped the connector off in the camera.  A pair of tweezers and $30 later I have a new functional cord but man oh man, scary times.

Back to the photo, it seemed appropriate to post the photo because I saw some serious discussion on reddit.com this week about stars photography and I think a lot of people make it much harder than it is.

Milky Way above the mountains in southern Colorado

I took this photo without any fancy star photography equipment in one shot.  No need for star tracking equipment, no need for $100 filters.  What you need is: little or no moon, little or no city lights, a lens that can get very open (this was shot with an f/2.8 although an f/1.8 would have allowed a lower ISO), and a tripod.  I’d also recommend a remote shutter release or use the camera’s timer.

I found that finding your focus before the sun has completely set is the way to go, finding it based on dim stars can be a real challenge, if you focus before the sun goes down on a very distant object and then leave it alone until it is dark it will be beneficial.

Setup:

• Like I said, focus before it is dark
• Set the camera to manual, you will want to keep the shutter long but not too long, I’d say 15-20 seconds to reduce the amount of star trails.  This I’m sure has to do with your positioning on the Earth, I’ve shot 30 seconds in Mexico with  very little trails and in Colorado where 20 seconds creates trails, small ones but they exist.
• Open the aperture all the way up, we can play with this later.
• ISO, set to 1600, I know this may be noisy but we gotta see how many starts we’re going to get.
• Take that photo!
• Depending on your camera and the results you could play with the settings here.  Too dim, try increasing the shutter, push that shutter all the way till you get trails.  Put the ISO higher.  Too light, I’d take the ISO down before I’d shorten the shutter time.
• Even with this photo, 20 seconds, f/2.8 (which is why I say f/1.8 might be your best bet), and ISO 2000 (thank you Canon 5DmII for those wonderful ISOs), I was too dim.  I post processed and bumped the exposure up 1 stop.

I may keep playing with it as this was my first go but beyond an SLR and a tripod and a really dark sky you don’t really need much.  My photo had one small light from a building about 200 feet away, it was enough to really illuminate that tree, I wish I could have walked further out and try again but again, I broke the cord.  Go out and play next new moon, its not going to hurt, just bring a flashlight.

More night photography fun with the Lunar Eclipse here.

Back to the blog here.  I’ll come back to the event I spoke about previously for the time being I’m taking this route.

My brother in law has been working with this Denver band for a while.  Born in the Flood.  Born in the Flood became the Wheel, the Wheel became Nathaniel Rateliff and the Wheel, and then the Wheel part got dropped.  These guys have been great with me.  I’ve carried my camera to many of their concerts, I got to go to the Sand Dunes for a photoshoot with Brantley Gutierrez (his website gave me a weird error on Chrome but it looks all good to me), back stage photos, lots of stuff.

Well now has come the time, Nathaniel and the Wheel (the Wheel remains, just not in name) have released an album (Amazon, also on iTunes but I don’t have the direct link).  It’s soft music, not normally up my alley but I really enjoy it although I won’t lie, I miss some of the Born in the Flood stuff from yesteryear.  Well, they had a little in-store at Twist and Shout.  I decided to go, unsure what to expect when I got there.  The place was packed, the stage was really cool, in front of some great posters, album art, etc.  The acoustics could have been better but really what can you expect from an in-store?  I didn’t move around a lot to get photos, it was only about 5 songs, I missed part of one of them and like I said the place was packed.

Please check out some of the live recordings I took and check out the samples on iTunes or Amazon.  If you like it please buy it, support these guys, they’re a great Denver band.

Nathaniel Rateliff Live 1 | Live 2 | Live 3 | Live 4

The place was packed

More after the fold.

Yup, its a harmonica

Sadly it is hard to read the sign, "All that remains of the Rainbow Music Hall"

Much like the last one

You can imagine that singing can't you.