School's Out For Summer!

As part of our trip to the 30th Annual Steamboat Balloon Festival last weekend, Gregg Lowrimore and I stopped by Mt. Evans on the way home, hoping for some pictures of this years “baby” mountain goats. We weren’t disappointed… More pictures below the break

Other articles from this trip (both mine and Gregg’s) are located at:

• The 30th Annual Steamboat Balloon Rodeo
• Steamboat Wildflowers
• Gregg’s “Steamboat Barn in Alpenglow“
• Gregg’s “Nice Start to the Weekend“

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Tags: Baby Goats,Colorado,Mountain Goats,Mt. Evans,Snow
Categories: Photo Albums, Travel
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Steamboat Columbine

Last weekend, Gregg Lowrimore and I went up to Steamboat Springs to take pictures at the 30th Annual Steamboat Balloon Rodeo (see this link for that story). But… the balloon festival ends really early (like 9am) so we decided to go try to find fields of Colorado’s state flower, the Columbine.

We drove up to the Slovenia Trailhead in Routt National Forest, and walked in about a quarter mile for the shot on the left.

Steamboat Barn at twilight

The afternoon storms kicked in pretty hard, and we got caught in one pretty serious rain storm, but after that it cleared up for the evening, and we got some FANTASTIC light for a different shot of the famous Steamboat Barn

I’d love to get there about 10 minutes earlier next time to be able to compose a little better. We literally caught this shot and 2-3 minutes later the barn was “dark”.

More pictures are below the break.

Other articles from this trip (both mine and Gregg’s) are located at:

• The 30th Annual Steamboat Balloon Rodeo
• Baby Mountain Goats on a snowy day in July
• Gregg’s “Steamboat Barn in Alpenglow“
• Gregg’s “Nice Start to the Weekend“

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Tags: Colorado,Columbine,Steamboat Springs,Wildflowers
Categories: Photo Albums, Steamboat
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I haven’t been on a photo shoot for a long time, and talked to Gregg about heading up to Steamboat Springs to shoot the 30th Annual Balloon Rodeo this year. I had heard about this last year, and wanted to come up, but I couldn’t find a room anywhere. So, last July, 50 weeks to the day before this year’s show, I reserved two rooms, and have just let them sit and “wait” for me to come up.

Turns out the hotel is right across the street from where they launch, so we got into town about dinner time, and scouted the lake and launch area for positions.

The first day (Saturday) had an unusual northward wind and all the balloons eventually ended up in or near town. The second day went much better with very light winds creating a box that the pilots could use to return to the landing zone (a few made it back).

Beautiful reflection

They got points for going over the lake and touching the water with the basket (called dip-n-dash), but a few got a little carried away, and ended up in more of a “dunk-n-dash” 

Dunk and Dash

All in all a stellar weekend for balloons, and the high-country Colorado sky with a polarizer on the camera made the pictures look as beautiful as ever.

There are three albums associated with this trip. The remaining two will be uploaded as I have get to cleaning them up.

Other articles from this trip (both mine and Gregg’s) are located at:

• Steamboat Wildflowers
• Baby Mountain Goats on a snowy day in July
• Gregg’s “Steamboat Barn in Alpenglow“
• Gregg’s “Nice Start to the Weekend“

The rest of the Steamboat Balloon Rodeo pictures are below the break.

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Tags: Balloons,Colorado,Steamboat,Steamboat Balloon Festival
Categories: Photo Albums, Travel
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Jewel of Kahana - Great Room

I was lucky enough to get invited to come to Maui and stay with Jeff and Patty Aubery at a property the built called the Jewel of Kahana. It’s a huge house on a half acre oceanfront lot, outfitted with the latest technology, and absolutely stunning. Two floors with lower walls that retract completely, leaving the entire house open.

And location? Right on the bay of Napili, just north of Lahina.

Quad Falls on the way up to Waimoku Falls

I got to spend a week there with great friends, and met a bunch of people that I believe I was destined to meet at some point in my life. There were way too many coincidences in our stories.

It was a great, relaxing trip, except for the last day when I decided to take the camera and drive around the whole island. I did skip the northern loop because I wanted to see the Iao Needle by the airport, but then I headed to Hana, the Sacred Pools, and came around the south-west side of the island. It was about a 14 hour photography day.

After the break below, I’ve included about 50 pictures from the many hundreds I shot. I may add some others later, but in the interest of getting something up on the web, I ‘m posting some samples.

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Tags: hana,jewel of kahana,kahana,maui,sacred pools,waterfalls
Categories: Photo Albums, Travel
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SB Sunset #22

I happened to be working in Santa Barbara during the last week, and caught a couple nights of stunning sunsets. I didn’t go out the first night with the camera, we just sat on Patty and Jeff’s deck and watched it. But tonight, I couldn’t “not go”. I drove down to Shoreline Park (on the Mesa) along with a few thousand other appreciative souls, and took the pictures below.

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Categories: Photo Albums, Travel
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Steamboat Barn, painted with light

Gregg and I tried an experiment “painting” the Steamboat Barn with light tonight. It was 15 degrees out there, about a half hour after sundown. Gregg brought a halogen spotlight and “painted” the barn while we shot exposures about 30 seconds in length. Gregg’s shots on his D90 turned out WAY better than mine, for reasons we haven’t determined yet.

I did get a couple that are acceptable (the third one showing stars and constellations is pretty nice), but not quite what I wanted…. See below.

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Categories: Photo Albums, Steamboat
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The Wedding Party

I was asked to help out a friend and shoot pictures for her wedding (a few pics appear after the break). Little did I know it would be 102 in San Jose that weekend, but I did it anyway. Luckily it was not a suit-type wedding, or we would have had to turn on the sprinklers to prevent heat stroke.

Congratulations to Shawn and Michele Mouser!!!

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Categories: Travel
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Title: The Year that Chip Wasn’t
When: February 6-9, 2009
Who: Chip, Jamie, Steve, Mark M, and Drew
Where: Summit County, Colorado (Copper Mountain and Breckenridge).

PreFlight:

This year was quite unplanned compared to our usual trips. With both Chip and I wondering what the job market would bring us, we didn’t really want to go too far.

So… Summit county it was. We rented a nice condo in the “Bill’s Ranch” area of Frisco, that would allow us get to many different ski areas, and bring Drew (Chip’s son) with us this year.

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Tags: Breckenridge,Colorado,Copper Mountain,Frisco,Skiapalooza,Skiing
Categories: Skiapalooza
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Way back in April or May, Chip and Joanne sent out a note saying to reserve the weekend of July 12th and 13th for a camping trip to Winfield Colorado. As a group, we’ve stayed in this location a number of times before. There’s a number of large places to set up group camping, an outhouse for the people who prefer not to use the great outdoors. My only complaint: I’m going to have to buy a camper. I’m getting too old (and/or lazy?) to have to crawl in and out of a tent!!!  I’ll use the excuse of “I hate setting up a tent in the rain”… Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.

The best thing about this place is that it has everything any kid needs for camping. There’s a river/water, rocks to throw, and plenty of campfire rings with large sticks to play in the fire with!

The whole group headed up to Lake Ann for what we thought would be a 2 hour trip, but it turned out to be a whole lot longer than that. You’d think that with all the climbers and general “outdoor types” that were in our group that we’d have planned/researched a little better. When we were about 3 1/2 hours into the walk and were just getting close to the lake, we knew we didn’t plan well. While we had brought water, we really didn’t bring much for food. Everybody was starving when we got back to the parking lot. So hungry, in fact,  that Luke actually made a mustard sandwich, as I didn’t bring the cooler with the lunchmeats, etc. That lack of planning won’t happen again.

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Tags: Camping,Furlong,Lake Ann,Schumann,Winfield
Categories: Photo Albums, Travel
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