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?

Back in October when we had a string of 65 degree days I kept saying, “well this is going to be the last one . . . ” Well it is nearly Thanksgiving and the warm days keep coming and the snow does not. Tomorrow’s forecast is for 67 degrees, sunny, and light winds. Ryan and I are going to do Heil-Hall, who’s coming?

I went and checked out the Boulder Cup pro cyclo-cross races at Boulder Reservoir and South Boulder Rec the weekend before last.  I’ve shot a few pics the first day and none the second; I’ve been way too busy to add extra workflow to my life for fun.  So busy in fact, that I forgot to download the card until over a week later.   Weeee!  I had some fun cropping the photos and messing with the exposures in Lightroom tonight.

Jeremy Powers.

Ryan Trebon.

Tim Johnson.

Todd Wells.

Barry Wicks.

Word.

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.

My staunch work ethic finally crumbled this week. People who know me wondered, “how long can you keep this up?” I kept it up until Thursday. Glorious Thursday, when editing be damned, I had to get out onto the trails and out in the glorious fall weather. I knew the leaves were turning up there. I’m very happy to report that many of the aspens in Ned are just starting to turn, so there is still a few more weeks of glorious color up there. Get out and enjoy it! Here are some pics to motivate you.

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 headed out on a pretty big ride this Sunday. It wasn’t actually *in* the Indian Peaks Wilderness, because that of course would be illegal, and we all know that that would never happen. These shots were just above Yankee Doodle Lake, with a nice view of the peaks in the background.

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!

My goal is to go mountain biking twice a week. I’ve been failing! I can’t complain too much because the photo biz is keeping me super busy midweek. So I’m a Sunday rider and this week we traveled down to Buffalo Creek for some classic Colorado buff singletrack.

Some of the terrain in the area is still recovering from a major burn that happened 8-ish years ago. This was the burn that was started by a Forest Service worker who was burning old love letters from her boyfriend. I guess she got fined 11 million dollars. She’s going to have to work a lot of overtime!

This is Issac. He still got the hall pass from the family today despite the fact that the last time he rode with him we made him get home late by taking him on a ‘special’ route.

The other news, is I’m playing with my new tilt-shift lens. That’s why the photos are all blurry in places. No, it isn’t photoshop. I’m still figuring some things out with it, but it’s pretty fun!

I needed to do some testing of my 28mm 1.8 lens so I took some pictures out at the park by my house. They weren’t very exciting, so I tweaked them out in Adobe Camera Raw. The Buddha was there.

One byproduct of all this crazy Colorado spring weather has been lots of cool clouds to shoot under. Last week I woke up early one morning to notice a cool, moody overcast sky. I was itching to overpower the sun with some of my Strobist gear so I tried rounding up a model at the last minute. I wasn’t successful, but I did convince my fellow photographer Bobby Turner to bust out a business suit and some pomade and head out to the country.  Later that day I ironically came across a story in The Onion about Guys With Slicked Back Hair!

By the time we started shooting the clouds were just breaking up, and gave way to beautiful puffy clouds and blue sky. I’m really happy with the wrap around lighting that I used. I think the images have a nice 3-D look to them. If you are interested in more of the details of the shoot and the technical, how-to, Strobist info, you can check out my post on the Boulder Strobist website HERE.

I’m getting more and more requests for cool, edgy, and fun business portraits. It seems a lot of professionals are tired of having their photos taken in front of boring blue studio backgrounds.  Which is of course great news for me!  I just had a great photo session in Denver yesterday for a paid client, so this type of shoot is becoming more common for me.  Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

I was just sitting in my office today trying to get some work done like a good boy when I got the call. Barnow and I have been talking about going flying for a year now. I considered declining . . . but I figured that I shouldn’t let another year go by. There is always time for more work!

Jeff had an errand of sorts to run in Longmont so we flew out East. It was kindof overcast over the mountains so it wasn’t the most scenic day ever. That was OK because it gave me the chance to put the camera down and actually FLY THE PLANE!

Yeah, that’s right. Not only did I fly it while in the air, I actually took the thing off the ground! I flew most of the way to Longmont and kinda sorta felt the controls while we landed. I felt the controls to know that with the crosswind we surely would have splattered if the landing really depended on me. I had thoughts of an ‘Airplane’ type situation, what it would be like if I actually had to land the plane myself. Stryker!

Yeah so there is the latest story of a day in the life of Steve Z and why I can’t get around to getting my taxes done.  Ah yes it was a great day to not be stuck in the office! Hopefully Jeff will take me up again when the light is good and we can fly over the mountains . . . right?!?

]]> http://www.steve-z.com/i-flew-a-plane-today/feed/ 4 http://www.steve-z.com/duelling-bianchi-rita-singlespeeds-at-heil-ranch-first-ride-of-the-year/ http://www.steve-z.com/duelling-bianchi-rita-singlespeeds-at-heil-ranch-first-ride-of-the-year/#comments Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:17:06 +0000 stevez http://www.steve-z.com/2008/03/26/duelling-bianchi-rita-singlespeeds-at-heil-ranch-first-ride-of-the-year/

Spring is officially here and yesterday I dusted off the singlespeed for the first ride of the year.  I was going to do a quick road ride, as my geared bike is in pieces.  But Ryan called and convinced me that riding a singlespeed for the first ride of the year is the only way to prove that you are a Real Man. We went up to Heil Ranch which is an extremely single speed friendly kinda ride.  The new loop has been a really great addition and make the overall rockiness of the place tolerable.

The weather was perfect and the trails were pretty clear except for an abnormal number of hikers.  It was so much fun that I just might have to go for another ride today.

As a photographer, my senses have become attuned to ‘good light’. Sometimes I’ll be working at my computer and all of a sudden I will detect a change in light. The ambient light will shift slightly to a pink or yellow hue, and instantly I will know that a great sunset is happening, even if I’m inside and I can’t see the actual sunset. Last night’s sunset was really awesome, unfortunately I only saw it from the inside of my dirty windshield, as I was driving to an event.

My sensitivity to first and last light has grown to the point where sometimes I get woken up by the sunrise. Even with my eyes closed, I can see great light. This morning was one of those mornings. Someday I will live somewhere where I can photograph great scenic sunrise/sunsets from my bedroom. But in the meantime, this is what it looks like when I get woken up by the sunrise drifting in through my open blinds.

The pointy hill on the right is Sugarloaf. I can almost see Paul’s house. Hi Paul!

The picture below is my self portrait today.

And here we have another non-standard Flatirons shot to add to my collection.

Well Sunday morning had some beautiful clouds and morning light.  I was given the exercise to consciously shift my attention near and far.  I thought about how a zen-like attention is integral with capturing great photography.  A sense of peace and comfort can be achieved by tuning in to the infinite compositional permutations of landscapes and detail shots and portraits and moments that are around us every second of our lives.  This peaceful feeling of oneness is what draws thousands of photographers into nature photography.  I found that it is also possible to have a similar experience at a shopping center.

When I went to the parking garage to get my camera, this old woman was staring at me.  She was quite surprised find out that she was to be featured on such a prestigious website.

My camera data tells me that all these images were taken in a period of 11 minutes.

All of the Photoshop was done in Camera Raw.  Not much was done to the photos, other than color tweaking and a 4:5 crop.

He was very nice. He was a little upset that I didn’t have any treats, but I made it better by rubbing his belly.

This was a sculpture outside a furniture store.

And so was this.

I enjoyed taking some time on my Sunday evening to play with some random photos.  I hope you enjoy.  Coming up this week, plenty of pictures of pretty people!

Enough of this Tour de France silliness. I have a lot of photo shoots rattling around in my head and I need to get back to shooting. I was going to drive somewhere and scope out a shoot that I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Then I found that my car battery is dead, again. So I went to the park by my house and tried to make due with what I had to work with. This is what I came up with. I used 3 SB-26 flashes Strobist style. I’ve been more or less keeping up with my homework during Lighting 102 that is going on. I’m getting ready to do my first assignment ‘Cooking With Light’.