Steve-Z.com

One of the good things about mountain biking alone is that I have plenty of time to stop and smell the flowers! And the wildflowers were out in full force last weekend up in Keystone. I love my Nikon Perspective Control lens because it is also a macro, allowing me to shoot landscapes and closeups, with some unusual compositions.

Here are some more photos from my Keystone tilt-shift mountain bike adventure. The Blair Witch Trail connects the Swan River section of the Colorado Trail to Keystone Ranch. It’s a super sweet section of trail. This time of year it switches from bright, sunny and pretty Colorado wildflowers to pine beetle death and destruction.

I hired a new employee.  His name is Steve. Steves are cool. I was explaining to him how RadioPoppers PXs work, and that I can shoot off-camera flash way over the camera’s synch speed using High Speed Sync.  To show my point, I took this shot of him at 1/8000 of a second.  Because I wanted to be sure that his backlit leg hairs were as sharp as possible. I took this shot with 2 Nikon SB-800s at full power, with a Nikon D700, Nikon 24-70 f/2.8, 1/8000, f/4, 640 ISO. How cool is that for a first day of work? Steves are cool.

.: Nikon D700, Nikon 24-70 f/2.8, 1/8000, f/4, 640 ISO :.

It has been a hectic July for me workwise.  Sad to say, I haven’t done a single ride! But I’m rectifying that this weekend by doing some rides up in Keystone. Here is a shot from the Colorado Trail high above Keystone.  I lugged the tilt shift along and had a great day taking some trail and nature photos.  More posts to come in the coming days.

This is Paul. Paul Rocks! He is the owner of the Bombay Bistro in downtown Boulder. I met Paul last year on one random night on the Cruiser Ride. After that I’ve been a big fan of the modern Indian cuisine. They offer many vegan and gluten-free options which are a big hit in Boulder as well.

Every so often Paul offers a 3 hour cooking class, where you watch him work his magic in the kitchen. I took some photos, because, well, that’s what I do.

OK this photo is pretty random, but I like it!

This is Paul’s gorgeous baby daughter, cute cute cute!

Bombay Bistro (Boulder)

Tee and Cakes announced today on their twitter feed that they are giving away a free cupcake and some Glacier ice cream! So this was the perfect opportunity to try out my first bacon cupcake! Why bacon? Well, why not! Bacon is so hot right now.

Sure,  it sounds a little wierd, but it’s easy to rationalize.  Ready? Here we go. It has chocolate-maple icing. You would eat bacon mixed with pancakes and syrup, wouldn’t you? Well throw some chocolate chips in the pancakes and it’s pretty much the same thing! So this is pretty much what I’d call a breakfast cupcake. Not to be confused with the bacon wrapped filet mignon cupcake, which would be a dinner cupcake.  I haven’t seen that one yet, however.

Don’t you think that the Vasque footwear company should feature this shot on the front of their website? I do! What a cool way to drap unique attention to your products! OK, I’m biased because I took the picture, yes, it’s true.  But I still think it might be just crazy enough to work!

This shot was taken during Kristi’s Sport the Dress™ portrait session.  She really wore the boots on the shoot because, well, it isn’t so easy to get to the places that I made her climb in high heels! Plus she’s just that Colorado kind of girl who is more interested in fun, outdoor lifestyle photos than traditional, urban, glamor pics.  Just like Vasque customers . . . see what I’m talkin’ about!

This is just a humorous little outtake from Kristi and Danny’s wedding.

Sometimes I get asked if I ever shoot pet portrait photography. Officially, the answer is no, I’ve never been hired for a paid dog or cat portrait gig. But that doesn’t mean that I couldn’t! I’m just not really sure that a viable, paying market exists for high quality scenic shots. One would think that if the interest was there, that Boulder of all places would be a good market for it. But upon searching the internet, all I seem to find are those cheesy studio shots with little dogs with selective color bows on their heads! So if there is anyone out there who wants shots of their pets in the style that I do the rest of my portraits, don’t be afraid to ask!

Rob came to town for a week of riding and hanging out.  The week he chose to come to Boulder coincided with my busiest time of the year.  I didn’t take many photos.  Here are two.

On my final day in Steamboat, I headed southeast out of town past Stagecoach Reservoir to Kristi and Danny’s house. We shot an epic Sport The Dress™ session in the mountains near their home. After the shoot I headed back to Boulder the back way, over Gore Pass. On the way, I was hoping to find a trail suitable for mountain biking, without any real knowledge of the area or a map.

After a while of rallying down the desolate but well graded gravel road in the WRX, I came across a trailhead for an ATV trail. It was well packed down and looked like it would make for a solid mountain bike surface. So I headed up the trail and embarked on a solid 2 hour granny gear climb. It was pretty challenging with muddy areas, stream crossings, and roots, but I was able to ride almost the whole thing.

Once at the top, there was a great view at the top of this erosion slide gully thing. I have no idea what it’s called, but it was really deep! You can see the area where I started, at the far left, behind the pine tree, in the base of the valley.  It probably took me only 15 minutes to get down, but it was a ripping descent!

On my second day in Steamboat I headed a little farther out of town. Steamboat has had the same wet spring weather that we’ve had in the Front Range, so most of the high elevation trails were reported to be pretty swampy. I rode up the Hot Springs Trail to Lower Bear Trail and back down again.

I really enjoyed both trails.  They were not really all that difficult technically. Lower Bear is a granny gear climb, but nothing too severe.  During the entire ride up I was dreaming of video-ing the descent, inspired by my previous days adventure.  I rigged up a Manfrotto Superclamp to my stem and mounted my Canon G10 camera on top, with a plan to record the gorgeous descent.  I wasn’t really sure if the camera was going to survive or not.

Climbing up through the Aspens, the camera mount system seemed to be withstanding the vibrations. . .

I stopped at this overlook, turned on the camera, hit record, and descnded the trail at about 85% speed, trying to be as smooth as possible. About 1/3 of the way down I realized that the camera was rattling. The tripod mount was coming loose from the camera body! Bummer.  The video was really shaky with a nasty rattling sound. Too bad. It looks pretty cool, but also really amateurish at the same time. So I went back to the condo and promptly ordered a new helmet cam! Stay tuned for real videos coming in the future!

On my first day in Steamboat I did a local ride straight out of town.  The thunderstorms were threatening, and I needed to get a quick little ride in before the skies opened up.  So I headed to the base of Howelsen Hill, and started climbing the rod up to Emerald Mountain.  There is a pretty large network of trails up there.  I pretty much just wandered around, poking in and out of various tasty bits of singletrack.  I did find a map HERE, that gives one possibility of linking the trails together.   This is the view from The Quarry.

The singletrack in this area is super tasty, mostly buff and fast. The twisty parts in the aspen groves reminded me a lot of Park City riding. The timing was right for wildflowers too!

The trails were fast and flowy.  These pictures don’t do any justice to the experience.  It was here that I decided that I need to get a helmet cam to really capture the experience, I didn’t feel like I could show what the trail looks like with still photos . . . so look for videos to be showing up sooner or later.

I was riding solo this trip, which makes it a little tough to get the action shots. :>) So here are a couple landscapes that I took along the way.

Here is part 2 of the Steve Z portrait in the hotel series.  Can you believe that I made you wait that long for it?  Yeah, I know, what can I say?  I’ve been busy with the big wedding month of June.  But the big crunch is over and I’m back on track to blog your face off.  On tap I’ve got lots of pics from my trip to Steamboat.  And over the rest of the summer I’ve got lots of mountain weddings, which should provide for some nice Dark Side excursions.  So have a happen 4th of July holiday, while I’ll be here blogging and working on the grand opening of the new studio space!  Yes, we are finally moving across the hall and collectively will be renting 4000 square feet of prime downtown Boulder real estate!  So keep your RSS feed up to date for the grand opening party announcement :>)