When I’m done slidin’, and I’m feelin’ cold and tired, it’s good to warm my bones beside the fire.
Giant Slip And Slide
A large chunk of the crew recently moved into a big house out in East Boulder. At the housewarming party my friends at Green Guru brought out a big stash of their vinyl supply to make a giant slip and slide! I lent my photo skills to capture some of the water sprayin’ body flingin’ action! We started things off with some races: kinda like slip-n-slidercross.
While it was possible to go down just on bare skin, random bumps and rocks in the field led to many bumps and bruises, as you can see me finding out right here.
Thermarests offered a much smoother ride.
Justin doing his crazy action redneck impression.
I had a 4 strobe setup that I was able to ride out to the farm with in a small backpack. I never was really sure how the photo was going to come out, based upon how far down the run the sliders were. Love how Billy is blacked out with water spray illuminated in his face in this shot.
Unfortunately, no ladies lost their bikini tops in the making of this photo.
Awesomeness^3
The giant tube was brought out near the end, but it didn’t offer quite the speed that we were looking for.
FACEPLANT!
Not to be outdone, I made a few attempts at surfing the Thermarest. This is the look of me being psyched that I’m actually staying up for 5 seconds.
As you can see, this was a pretty rockin’ way to spend a summer evening. I’m sure we’ll be setting this up bigger and better in the future. I think that a first slip n slide descent of the First Flatiron should be next on the list.
Ophir Abandoned Buildings
Here we are with my final Telluride post. I’m going to have to find some local fun to keep this blog going over the next month!
River and I took a little drive out of town to the micro-town of Ophir. I was quite excited to find some trashed out buildings to play in. The first building with the wildflowers growing in it is SO COOL!
Randomless lives in Telluride
Telluride is full of all sorts of marvlicious randomness. And you know how I love to take photos of randomness! About a block from the gondola in town is a house, with a fence made of skis, and a pile of random junk lying in the yard. And amongst the random junk is a mid 90s vintage Klein mountain bike, which was The Shizzle back in the day. I also found Herbert, my new frog statue with a tongue that has been chewed off. I meant to do a portrait of him along the road on the way back, but sadly, I forgot. Next time.
I didn’t really take any tourist pics in Telluride. This is it. I tilted it to make sure it wasn’t too boring. Well, maybe it’s boring to you. To me its awesomesauce the way you can see all the way down the end of the street. Maybe I’ll get bored of this effect someday. Today is not that day.
At La Cocina De Luz you can eat your Mexican food in the safety of an old bank vault. How about that door?!
The Art of the Camel Toe
I got hooked up with some luxury accommodations in Telluride at the Camel’s Garden Hotel by virtue of River’s friendship with the owner. A fine art aficionado, Michael has some cool art in and around the premises. The post started with my fixation on the hotel lamp. The below shot I call, The Flux Capacitor.
Then I happened to notice the optical anomaly of the mirrors in the elevator. I’m not exactly sure which mirror is causing the curve, but I tilted the focus to hook it all together!
What kind of Camel’s Garden would be complete without pyramids? Not this one. Stay tuned for the Camel’s Toe pictures coming soon at SteveZAfterHours.com
In My Face!
There is a really cool narrow alley in Telluride. I thought it would be cool to take someones picture in it. Here is that person. Self portraits at f/2.8 with a manual focus lens are really hard!
Bear Creek Trail
After my wedding on Wednesday I got out for a quick hike from the town of Telluride. The weather was unbelievably schizophrenic, and it would change from sun to rain about every 3 minutes. I walked with only my 45mm Tilt Shift Lens, always looking to tie together compositional elements. Steve-Z.com = perspective misalignment!
Vintage Used Car Lot
On the drive to Telluride, we passed through the town of Delta, Colorado. Just another ambiguous small town on the Western Slope, there are only three reasons for a passer-though to stop: Food, gas, or possibly some crystal meth. When I saw this lot full of rusted out vintage cars, I realized that there is an unsung fourth reason to stop. A tilt shift madness photos shoot!
Ouray
If you drive to Ouray, there is an overlook over town, where you can take the same photo that 8 million other people have already taken. 7,999,999 of them do not have the focal plane aligned with Main Street, however.
Ridgeway Colorado has Uberfantastish Sunsets
Aw. A sunset. Isn’t that special? Well, it was pretty schweet. I took these photos from the deck of a shirtless tattooed dude. He offered us snow peas that were growing on the deck along with a lot of tomatoes. He showed us the shelves where he started them in March. He says that he has a computer full of sunset photos from that deck. It didn’t make me feel all that special. Apparently the supermarket has a compressor that changes speeds and makes it really hard to sleep there. But the sunsets are mega fabulous.
Chapter 5
Driving along the barren interstate at sunset, we were struck by the beauty of the rolling crop fields in central Washington. The sun was setting, and we were reflecting on a spontaneous journey gone by. It seemed like the perfect setting to take some new Facebook profile pics!
That’s all for Chapter 5. You can check out more photos from the trip on Mel’s blog.
Tourist Shots
So, while I was at Mount Rainier, I couldn’t resist taking some tourist shots. It really is quite an impressive chunk of ice, towering 10,000 feet above most of the other mountains in the Cascade Range. We were blessed with incredible clear blue skies the entire weekend.
Sunset in Paradise
We watched the sun set from the Paradise area of Mt. Rainier National Park. Apparently Paradise is the snowiest place on Earth, of the places that regularly measure that sort of thing. That’s cool. The light on the mountain at that time of day was pretty washed out, which is less than cool. So to make up for my incredible disappointment, I used the tilt shift to track the focal plane of this rock wall, which is wicked cool.
We got there a little early for the sunset. So we had to spend some time hangin’ around.
And then. Twilight.
Mt. Rainier
After leaving Seattle and the coast, we headed up to Mt. Rainier National Park. George needed to get out of the car and stretch his legs at a rest stop, and agreed to pose for a quick photo.
Fire on the Mountain
When camping, I’m captivated by the primal power of fire. I can spend hours collecting, building, tending, arranging, contemplating, and generally zoning out in peaceful zen.
And then we crashed a wedding
I have a thing for free camping. I hate paying to camp. I hate camping around other people even more. Mel and I have a track record of never paying for camping, even when visiting national parks. Our quest at this point in the journey was to find a place to camp on the beach. We found a spot. Ironically enough, it was at a beach where there was a wedding going on. Late in the night, when the night was almost over, we wandered over to the reception and crashed the dance party! We just had to do it, being wedding photographers and all. Despite the fact that we weren’t really wearing wedding clothes, we jumped around for a couple songs and snapped some photo evidence. I tried really hard to keep my camera concealed from the real wedding photographer, and we snuck out undetected.
Or so we thought. As we were walking up the path back to the car to get some sleeping bags, a young man came walking up beside us. He asked us a couple questions, and then we found out that he was the groom! He totally busted us for crashing the wedding. He didn’t seem to really care, but I guess he felt the need to call us on it. He said, “Yeah, I pretty much knew everybody there. I thought to myself, “it looks like those guys jumped over a fence to get in here.” But, it seemed like you guys were having a pretty good time so I thought, whatever.” Too funny!
Puget Sound
We continued our journey north out of Seattle. I was sneaking my way around the coast, looking for a spot to enjoy the water. I noticed this cool old fishery on Puget Sound, and knew that this was the spot.
This area was populated with some really sweet homes. They looked great on this sunny day. I’m not so sure how they would look socked in by months of fog! This would have been a great location for shooting some high school senior or maybe a fashion shoot.
On the beach, Mel found a souvenir. I named him George, and he became our mascot for the rest of the trip since Glendale couldn’t be with us this time around.
The Ultimate Tourist Birthday
We arrived in Seattle on Melissa’s birthday. After a series of misadventures, we were seriously ready for some celebrations. We didn’t really have a clue of what we should do in town. I noticed the Ride The Ducks amphibious vehicles passing by every 15 minutes, and just said, “I think we should do THAT!”
Now, neither of us are normally the type of person to visit tourist traps or partake in guided tours. But I figured that it was one way to see parts of the city and the waterfront to take some photos. And the tour guides did appear to be gloriously obnoxious. So I figured that this plan might even be crazy enough to be fun! And don’t fool yourself, that tall frosty Big Gulp that Mel is sucking on is not your average Slurpie!
Here we have our Tour Guide Du Jour. Captain Fun Tastic! 1/3 Coast Guard Captain, 1/3 Marine Drill Sergeant, and 1/3 Deranged Lunatic, this man has some mad entertaining skills. He had our ex-military watercraft rocking, bouncing, clapping, and stomping. It really was gloriously ludicrous!
The Many Faces of Captain Fun Tastic!
After being instructed to yell out “Cha-CHING” every time we passed one of the 424 Starbucks in Seattle, we headed out across the open water of Lake Union. Here is another tour heading back the other way. In the background you can see some pretty expensive Seattle real estate in the form of houseboats.
While out on the water, I took it upon myself to take some tourist photos of the Seattle skyline and the Space Needle. It was a great evening with great light!
At one point in the tour, Captain Funtastic says, “do we have any birthdays?” Well, as a matter of fact we did! So he put on his birthday hat and we rocked out to the Beatles “Birthday”! It was almost but not quite as embarrassing as making all of the servers come out and clap while in a restaurant on your birthday!
Back in the Fremont area of town, we passed by this piece, called ‘Waiting for the Interurban’. These statues depicting citizens waiting for a now defunct trolley are always dressed up by citizens in various outfits. I’d really like to dress them up as a bridal party.
The final part of the story, is that if you ever try and recreate our adventure, I have a word of caution for you. We had one short-sighted part of our plan. If you drink a giant drink on an hour and a half tour, make sure that you have a very large bladder! Mel was certain that she was going to start off her birthday in a similar fashion to her first birthday, and the problem was that her mom wasn’t around to change her diaper! Fortunately, she didn’t have to jump out the window into the lake, The Captain didn’t have to put her in the brig, and everyone on the Ride The Ducks tour was able to YMCA their way to dry ground.
The Matheson House Bed and Breakfast
Somewhere along the way through Washington State, Mel and I found ourselves at the little town of Northport. We stayed at a little Grandma and Grandpa bed and breakfast, which I believe was called the Matheson House, although I can’t seem to find any trace of it on the internet. We received the warmest hospitality, and they really took care of us like we were family. Mel even got to try out some stylish pajamas while she did laundry, although if I posted the picture then it would probably be my last. That evening we kicked back with a few summertime beverages in our ship-themed room.
The great thing about summertime beverages is that they can motivate you to celebrate the local flavor. The house was filled with a lifetimes worth of knick-knacks!
What year do you think this Royal pie filling is from?
There was not a shortage of creepy doll babies!
There was also a selection of trophy animals that were bagged by a relative. Nice kitty kitty.
This mountain lion had been behaving badly, and was hunted down. All 140 pounds of him.
And the scariest photo of all, is we had a competition as to who could most closely mimic this doll’s pose. I won. Want to see the comparison? You can’t, due to the aforementioned PJ’s!
All joking aside, we had a really great stay!
by Steve Z
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