Sunset over the lake at Lost Antler Ranch.

The morning view from the Meadow House at Lost Antler Ranch.

I was invited by my friends from Something Underground to hang out backstage and shoot some photos for Peace and Love on the Rocks. There were a bajilliion musicians there rotating in and out, covering favorite songs from the famous music festival of old. It like rocked and stuff.  You can see more photos from the event at the Facebook Gallery HERE.

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!

Last week I did a fun shoot that is a little out of the ordinary for me. I took my friend Jeff up on an offer to shoot an unusual plane from the air. Jeff’s friend Michael Malocsay hand built himself a Rutan VariEze experimental aircraft and comes into Boulder every so often to fly it. It’s a pretty cool and unusual plane! I wish I had a zoom lens with VR image stabilization so that I could have slowed the shutter down enough to have a full spinning propeller, but I was getting quite a bit of vibration from our own small plane! It was a fun morning buzzing around 1500 feet above Boulder. Enjoy the photos!

Last Friday I went for another plane ride with Barnow. This was an intentional joyride this time. We had special plans to take aerial photos of a special plane. More on that in an upcoming post! On our ascent we passed by a hot air balloon floating over the Boulder Reservoir. I hadn’t really given it too much previous thought, but a sunrise hot air balloon ride sure looks like a good time! I’m definitely going to put that on the to-do list. Can you imagine how many photos I’d take on that little adventure?

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 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!

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.

.: Nikon D700, Nikon 35mm f/2.0D @ 1/8000, f/5.0, 400ISO :.

Last weekend Ryan and I headed out on a mountain biking road trip. It had been WAY too long since my last one, I think it was the 2006 Colorado Springs trip. We decided to check out Durango, since neither of us really knows anyone who has ridden in the area. Durango was at one time the epicenter of the new sport of mountain biking, and we were sure to find some great riding there. The other attraction is that the lower climate should allow us some riding in the early season when there is still snow in the hills of the high country.

I could have taken tons of pictures. But I didn’t. I needed some decompression time ahead of the busy summer season ahead. So I took some picutres, but not too many. For the most part we ate, slept, and rode. We did 5 rides in 4 days with 2 full days of driving.

Our first ride was actually in the Denver area on the way out of town. We rode Lair of the Bear which is between Morrison and Evergreen. It was a really buff singletrack, somewhat similar to Betasso. Its only about a 10 mile out and back ride if you ride it by itself like we did. Apparently it’s easy to link up with Mt. Falcon, which we rode on the way back from the CO Springs Trip. Funny how that works. The best part of the Bear was the top section which was FAST FAST FAST with some good waterbar jumps.

.: Nikon D700, Nikon 35mm f/2.0D @ 1/320, f/14, 500ISO :.

So after a quick ride we were off to Durango via the scenic route down 285. We almost made it to Durango before dark, when we came across a nice empty campground about 40 miles east of Durango in the hills. So we set up camp and parked it for the night. Check back tomorrow for Ride 1 in Durango!

.: Nikon D700, Nikon 45mm f/2.8 PC-E @ 1/4000, f/5.0, 500ISO :.

After a full day of beautiful weather and VeloSwapping on Saturday, I figured I had to get back up to Ned for a mountain bike ride before it’s too late.  Well it wasn’t nearly as warm as I had hoped; the high was 50 and the wind was brisk.  All the leaves are long gone, and there is a run of man made snow up at Eldora.

We had hoped that we were going to get one last ride in up high, but there is snow in the woods around the base elevation of Eldora. There were a few snowy turns at the top of Marysville, but nothing like my two early season post-holing expeditions.

Ryan was pretty psyched about his $10 tire purchase at Veloswap. That was until we spent 20 minutes on the shelf road fixing flats and then when the loose bead allowed the tire to peal off the rim during a corner. Bad Specialized tires. Bad.

While most of you were enjoying a three day weekend, I was working my butt off and shooting two weddings!  Lucky for me I like shooting weddings . . . ;>) . . .  and even luckier still the second one was up in Keystone.  So I splurged on a resort hotel room for myself and my lovely girlfriend and made a weekend out of it!  Part of the deal was that on Monday I would get to do an epic mountain bike ride in the mountains . . . my only high altitude ride of the year so far!

I rode the Swan River section of the Colorado Trail section between Breckenridge and Georgia Pass.  Last year we rode up to Georgia Pass from the Kenosha Pass side.  That was part of a whole mountain bike weekend and I made a photo slideshow and blogged about it HERE.

But this time I was on a solo mission so I took way less photos.  Portrait of my mountain bike by itself?  Check.  Self-portrait on the trail?  Check.  Accidental mis-timed action shot?  Check.

But this time I was on a solo mission so I took way less photos.  Portrait of my mountain bike by itself?  Check.  Self-portrait on the trail?  Check.  Accidental mis-timed action shot?  Check.

What an amazingly sweet ride.  Super smooth and fast.  There was one pretty tough section that had me pushing at times, but I was conserving my energy because I wanted to do a pretty big ride.  I thought I was saving my energy, but man, I was so ill-prepared for 3 and a half hours of riding between 10 and 12,000 feet.  On the Swan River section of trail I blew up like I haven’t blown up in a really really long time.  I could barely even pedal in my smallest ring.  But, it was worth it.  No downhill lasts as long as one when you are bonked and wishing you were done!  And when it’s some of the sweetest trail on the planet, that’s actually a good thing.  On the last stretch of climb I had to get off and collapse because I thought I was going to puke.  This is what it looked like.

I brought an SB-26 and some Pocket Wizards on this Sunday’s mountain bike ride. My little Canon G9 has a hot shoe so that you can use big boy flashes on it. I strapped it to a tree to try and get some action shots in the deep dark woods. Unfortunately most of the crew came down before I had a chance to get the exposure and flash power dialed in. Billiam is running a little hot in the above shot. Oh well, I was able to get it dialed in by the time the ladies came by.

I told myself at the beginning of the mountain bike season that I was going to ride one during the week and once on the weekend. Well, that hasn’t worked out so well. I haven’t even been able to squeeze in a weekend ride the last couple weeks.

But not today damnit! Scott sent me the 10:10 bus text and I was in. The heat coupled with my broken AC in the studio have been leaving me a bit tired, so we rallied it slow and went to Happy Trails in Ned for some coffee to rev it up.

There were some pretty sweet clouds! I was wishing for the fisheye, but all I had was the G9 pocket camera.

We headed north and rode the first Swiss Miss of the year. The flowers are really, really awesome this year after all that spring moisture. I started off taking some normalish shots of a rider in the wildflowers . . .

. . . but I quickly moved on to incorporating a butterfly who was hanging around. I accidentally blasted him with the flash, but as it turned out I like the effect! I managed to catch him flying off as Scott rolled past. Overall it was a great ride, and not too hot in the high country. I’m feeling rejuvenated after a week of too many hours in the office. Oh, and an added super-treat was that someone brought out a chainsaw and cleared all the down trees on the Todd Gulch singletrack; that big tree in the beginning has been there for years!