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!

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!

.: Nikon D700, Nikon 35mm f/2.0D @ 1/500, f/4.0, 500ISO :.

So after this point in the trip, I didn’t take any more pictures of the trails. Yeah, whatever, photographers need vacations too! For our last ride we rode the Horse Gulch area of trails that is right at the edge of town near the Ft. Lewis College side to the east. What an awesome trail network to have right in town! The trails are buff, twisty, desert type trails that were clearly made for bicycles. The kind of trails that make you realize how much riding we don’t have here in Boulder. Oh well, we have way more cute girls here, take that Durango!

.: Nikon D700, Nikon 35mm f/2.0D @ 1/400, f/13.0, 320ISO :.

We set out for our first Durango ride of the weekend to the Junction Creek Trailhead. The first thing we noticed was multiple truckloads of kids shuttling from the parking area. There must have been some sort of DH trail right in the area that isn’t on the riding maps. We set out to do it the old skool way of earning our turns. Junction Creek is at one end of the Colorado Trail which goes from Denver to Durango. The trail starts off flat and hardpack, eventually turning upward with multiple switchbacks to climb a 1000 feet or so to Gudy’s Rest. Here is Ryan doing his best impression of how Gudy rested. Durango is in the valley straight ahead.
After that we did a short loop of really cool singletrack. Quite moderate, buff, and non-technical, excellent single speed terrain, not that we were riding them.

.: Nikon D700, Nikon 35mm f/2.0D @ 1/400, f/13.0, 320ISO :.

After that loop we rode up the Colorado Trail some more, but it started to climb without much flow, so we turned around to save our legs for future rides with greater fun factor. Ryan missed the turn for the Colorado Trail. I took a picture of a tree while I waited for him. I scratched my legs up walking around in the thickets. Good times, good times.

.: Nikon D700, Nikon 35mm f/2.0D @ 1/400, f/13.0, 320ISO :.

.: 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 :.

On my trip back East, there were two distinct parts.  The first was family time in PA.  The second half was NJ and NY.  My grandmother lives a train ride away from the city, so I stayed there and took a trip to NY.  I went to Manhattan for a day.  I didn’t want to bring all of my gear, so I decided to pick one lens, and shoot the whole day with only it.  That’s a tough decision for a gear head like myself!

So I decided to bring the most difficult lens I have, the 45mm tilt shift (Perspective Control PC-E in Nikon speak).  The difficulty provides an interesting challenge that I enjoy a lot!  This lens allows you to change the focal plane so that it is not perpendicular to the camera sensor.  So what this means is that you can make areas of the photo in focus (or not), that are not necessarily the same distance from you.

This lens is experiencing a fad-like popularity right now.  It’s somewhat easy to take a subject, like a person, and blur everything around them.  It’s only somewhat easy because you still have to manual focus the lens!  But you can get the effect and still be ignorant of how to use the lens to it’s full capability.  In this series of images I angled the focal plane to create visual ties between parts of the images.  So as you look at the images, pay attention to what parts of the photos are in focus, and what parts are not.  Trippy huh?  :>)

And if you aren’t interested in the technical mumbo jumbo . . . just enjoy the scenery from the most infamous parts of NJ! Haha!

I’m always following the weather during the winter, tracking the big storms that yield glorious dumps of fluffy powder. I wasn’t able to get away too much this year, just too much business stuff combined with a pretty dry winter.  Well the storms finally showed up in late March and early April, and I was determined to get my money’s worth out of the pass.  So through the glory of Facebook, I found a co-pilot, 2 places to stay near Vail, and we set out for 3 days of bottomless powder hunting.

Things started out normally enough the first day at Vail. Until about 2 hours in the day I randomly shared a chairlift ride with a couple, and the girl had a piece of bridal veil material in her helmet. Turns out they were in town from Houston to get married at the swanky new Arabelle Resort in Lionshead. So we were chatting about weddings, and I mentioned that I have a shoot planned soon where I’m going to do portraits of the bride and groom in the dress and tux on skis. Tricia looks at me and says, “Can we do that on Sunday!?” Fortunately I had my camera gear with me, and I booked the shoot, thereby lengthening my trip another day. Well now I know that I need to get up skiing more often next year! And does this mean that I can write off my pass next year as a business expense?! Look for pics from that shoot soon on The Light Side.

Two runs later I went into the lodge to meet up with Io. She was talking with a man, who had a cute little girl pulling on his leg. Turns out he does energy-body work in Boulder. I asked him if he was interested in trading some family photos for body work . . . Yes! Two shoots hooked up in an hour! The next two days went pretty much as planned. I did a crazy amount of tree skiing. The next shot shows the aspen trees that lead down to the High Noon lift in the far Western back bowls. I’ve never skied them before because the slope is southwest-ish facing and is usually pretty bare. But after feet and feet of snow in two weeks, I was able to hit the chute just to the right of the lift, fresh tracks all the way. Very deep and steeper than it looks!

The second day at Beaver Creek was my best day there ever. We woke up that morning, and it dumped a foot of snow in 6 hours. It snowed crazy hard and I would have taken more pics but I was way too busy shredding. It was snowing too hard anyway. I hit tons of glades: Bachelor Gulch, Coyote Glade, Thresher Glade, Heads Up, 4 Get About It, Corkscrew, Stickline . . . my only regret is not hitting some of the steep upper glades earlier, by the time I got there they were closed. Next time I’ll know where to go first.

My last photo from this set is of a random guy who I shared a lift ride with. His beard was so awesomely coated with icicles that I had to take a portrait. Can you say, face shots?

So, I booked photo shoots, while skiing deep powder. I think it’s apparent that I need to manifest a place to live in Eagle County!