Steve-Z.com

Hi. Steve here. I have a ton of new photos and posts to publish from my latest adventures. But first things first. I gotta change the name of this website! This is a blog of personal photos and adventures, and as a result it is a steadily morphing entity. As I evolve as a human and as a photographer, the look and feel of the site needs to change with me.

“The Dark Side” was a name that I impulsively came up with a couple years ago one late night when I was changing both of my blogs to my new ProPhoto WordPress blog template (great template, there is a discount coupon at the bottom of the page!).  My professional websites took over an all-white theme, and I thought it would be fun to have my personal site reflect the opposite of that. So I just started calling the two, the Light Side, and the Dark Side. It was never really a well thought out plan, I will admit. One was white, one was black. One was professional work, one was personal work. It was really supposed to be temporary, but, I’m pretty busy with all the tons of things to do with this photo biz, so I just never got around to changing it, mostly because I never really thought of anything else to call it.

What is the purpose of this site anyway? Do I really need it? Does it really matter?

To me, it does. I love photography. I’m passionate about it, and addicted to it. I love taking photos when I’m on my adventures. Sometimes the photos are just travel snaps. But once in a while I get a really cool shot, the kind that I’d like to hang on the wall of my house. So I feel the need to put them out there and share them with the world, rather than have them live a cold and lonely life on a computer hard drive. I want them to see the light of day. I’d like to set up a cart where they could be purchased . . . but that’s a whole nutha project.

I need a new title that is more representative to the photography work that I publish here. In all reality, there isn’t much that is Dark about my photography. I’m more interested in beauty than sadness. I do have a quirky sense of humor, no doubt. I love what I do and I do have some pretty cool adventures where I have a lot of fun. The Dark Side had some people thinking that they were going to see horror movie stuff or something! So I need a title that is smart and clever, and possibly hints that this is a photo blog featuring photos from my travel, biking and snowboarding, and other random photos I take in my free time. There is also occasionally some technical and educational info for photographers, although I don’t seem to manage to find the time to publish a quarter of the articles that I think of in my mind. How do I sum all of that up in a title? How do I sum up 39 years of me in a couple words?

Until I come up with a cool new title . . . I’m just going to have a clean white sheet of paper.  The Great Title-less Blog! I just couldn’t stand the old look any more and had to change it immediately! I made a Facebook comment about changing the name; in a dream world someone will come up with a clever name for me! I’m not counting on that though. My best ideas usually come from an unexpected moment of clarity, and will just pop into my head when the time is right. As for now, I’m going to throw out the idea that I’m ready for the new name to come to me.

As for the photo . . . It’s just a funny self portrait that I took on my recent trip to Washington State. My chin is all distorted and enormous due to the distortion of my Nikon 14-24mm lens. I love to take beautiful pictures. But I also like taking funny and somewhat distorted pictures as well!

If you actually read all of this, thanks. I hope you keep coming back for years to come, as this blog will still be around, although the format may completely different. Evolution is like that.  Cheers, Steve Z.

June 5th was National Trails Day, and I lent some photographing skills to help promote the creation and maintenance of our local trail network. Boulder Mountain Bike Alliance hosted a big trail building day at Betasso Preserve. In case you didn’t know, Betasso is getting a brand new loop, called the Benjamin Trail, that will double the amount of trail in the area, and provide an alternate entrance from Four Mile Canyon.

This was the third trail building day out of the year out at Betasso. There are many more days required before the trail will be open for riding. So do your part and gather your friends and come out for the next work days. As a bonus, there will be food and beverages and beers to be had at the end of the day. Check out BMA’s website for the latest schedule and calendar of events.

I did my first two rides in the high country this weekend! The trails are running sweet in Ned, with the exception of the higher stuff which is still clogged with snow.  I got turned around on School Bus by snow drifts.  But I did ride the new Re-Root section of Root Canal.  It’s pretty sweet and even has a couple rock features.

I was riding solo so I don’t have any action pics.  Just a couple tilt shift still life portraits of the Bianchi SS.

I’m setting a goal to be less of a crazy photographer workahaulic this year and get out more on the bike. I rode both Saturday and Sunday this weekend to try and clear my head. I brought my pocket camera along to challenge myself to come up with a creative photo while riding around the same old trails that I’ve ridden a hundred times. The mountain biking / trail running crowd of Boulder should be able to figure out where this is . . .

This post is an oldie, but a goodie, so I’m going to recycle it!  I haven’t been posting any mountain bike pictures because I don’t have time to ride any more, so let’s just reminisce about the good old days of unemployment!

Back when I bought my first camera (a Canon 20d), I pulled it out of the box and went straight to Moab for the annual Ellsworth Owners Retreat.  I really didn’t know what I was doing at the time, but I got a pretty cool sequence anyway.  Yeah, I should have used a faster shutter speed!  Any way, this drop is really nuts!  It is way bigger looking when you are there, because the rider has to bomb down another 30+ vertical feet of steep runout past what you can see here.

Action self portrait cruising down the street on my 1952 Monark Cycle King on a gorgeous summer day.

I haven’t posted in a bit.  I cracked under the weight of too much work and not enough fun.  So Bobby and I attempted to rectify the situation with a little Nederland riding.  Just to show how mentally cooked I was, I left my riding shoes at home for the first time in . . . well, maybe ever.  Luckily we weren’t too far from Happy Trails Bike Shop where I borrowed some rental pedals with toe clips.  And extra lucky that I was wearing sneakers and not flip flops.  So I was able to ride, old school style.  How incredibly horrible toe clips are!  It’s been a LONG time since I’ve mountain biked with them, I came oh-s0-close to going down when my wheels drifted out from under me on a loose corner and I couldn’t get my foot out . . . but I was really happy to hang on.

After the ride we Ned-itated in the woods and drank some post-ride refreshments and played with my new 85mm PC Tilt Shift lens.  Don’t even think about stealing Bobby’s beer.  He’ll give you the stink eye.

I’ve waited a while to post these pictures to make it seem as if I’m out riding my mountain bike. Those folks who just glance at the pictures will think, “Wow Steve Z has such an amazing rock star life, shooting photos and all kinds of great rides in the mountains!” But all you 3 people who actually read the posts will know that this is just the 2nd day that I rode 2 weekends ago in Keystone! Ah well, someday I’ll get back in the regular schedule, I hope. In the meantime, this was the final section of the Colorado Trail from Keystone to Breckenridge that I haven’t ridden yet.

This last little piece was a random little spur of barely there trail on the way back to Keystone Ranch. Tilt-shift epic-ness!

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.

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.

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.

OK, I’m long overdue updating this site. I’ve got some new employees that have been keeping me busy doing ‘real’ work. But I’m here in Steamboat taking more mountain biking photos, so I really have to get these old pics off the camera. 2 Sunday’s ago, Ryan and I rode the Ceran St. Vrain trail up to Miller’s rock. On the singletrack on the way out, there is an angled rock that is perfect for launching. Getting the timing right for action shots with the Canon G10 is tough, but sometimes you wind up with an interesting composition. In this case, it’s me with my head cut off.

I brought the camera along for last week’s Boulder Cruiser Ride.  Our faction began from the Green Guru Headquarters in Northeast Boulder.  Ryan Van Duzer was in prime form for some cruising action!

One of the side benefits of that start location is the proximity to the 303 Vodka distillery.  It is directly next door. I sampled a sample straight out of the beaker.  Local, gluten free, and so smooth!

This was the debut of Ryan’s new Phase One music machine. I’ll take a picture of that after the finishing trim is put on it. We headed south to a brand new acoustically superior location to test it out. It was a gorgeous evening despite reports of inclement weather. We wore wigs to keep our heads warm.

I was sporting a pair of Sergio Valente jeans. Yes, they are originals. Sergio Valente is my porn name.

Did I say it was a beautiful night? Yes, I think I did. I have pictures for proof.

We cruised through campus, circling all three Buffaloes.

As night fell, we descended upon the downtown area via the famous Ho Chi Minh Trail, picking up more cruisers along the way. Zack Giffen was in town and rocking out the swing bike.

I didn’t have a flash, and the pictures became increasingly abstract. Join us next week, we’ll be meeting once again at Green Guru, although that won’t be our permanent starting location. To keep up with our latest start location, visit the “Happy Thursday” group on Facebook!

It’s become a birthday tradition of mine to ride Betasso and bring a beer to drink on the bench at Betasso. This year we tried to go to Ned, but for the first time ever, we couldn’t get on the bus because there wasn’t enough room left for our bikes. So, on to Betasso we went. I have a photo to prove it.