Friday was insane. Lan & New Dan, if you are reading this, you know too well what I mean. By 1pm I was itching to ditch the office and dreaming of an outdoor adventure. Any outdoor adventure. A few hours, a couple of text messages, and absolutely no "lori dawdling" later, I found myself on the perfect Friday afternoon escape: hiking to Talapus Lake.
My dear friend Del had visited the trail awhile back, but wasn't in the right groove for pictures, so he wanted try again. Plus, this time he had a new camera! The trail was beautiful and the lake itself was pretty cool, too. Oh, and full of bugs. Many, many bugs. I wish we had a bit more daylight, because I barely even explored the area. You'll see...
"Sideways Cokin"
Right away I noticed a very cool tree with a burned out area at the base of its trunk. There was a knotty-hole in the trunk too, allowing visitors to peek through the tree to the plants in the back. I tried to get a picture of it, and found that the harsh setting sun made the top corner too bright (see pic below, on the left). I grabbed my Cokin 2ND filter and used it sideways to cut out the glare (see pic below, on the right). It worked! I was thrilled!
"Branches"
I think that I may have used "branches" as a title already, but, man, who cares? I moved from the big trunk to some trees a few feet away. This shot was taken with my compact macro lens.
"The Reflections"
Talapus is so calm and flat. It is truly beautiful. The calmness of the water made the reflections so clear! The area that we were in didn't have a beach... you entered the lake via a series of fallen logs. It reminded me of the beach at Kayak Point, where, as a kid, I would navigate the beach by balancing and jumping from log to log. Except falling off of these logs wasn't an option; I don't think the lake was very deep, but still....
"Arrows"
By the time I made it to the lake (silly me, the cool stuff on shore distracted me), the lighting was kinda crummy. Crummy light=blurry pictures=need a tripod. Sadly, there wasn't much room on the log for a tripod :) I tried my best to steady my camera where ever I could to get a decent shot, and the one below is the best I could do.
"When in Rome 1 & 2"
I am a big believer in the whole "when life gives you lemons make lemonade" approach to crumminess. So, I figured I would try some macro shots and use the lake as a background - because backgrounds are supposed to be blurry, right?
"Macro in Vain"
Armed with my somewhat trusty compact macro lens, I went a little crazy snapping pics of random leaves, berries, and flowers. I ran into the problem again of lack of tripod space on the logs. At one point, I was sitting on log, peeling leaves off of a berry bush, and not breathing in order to get a non-shaky macro. No luck. I kept talking and chatting with del and my own stinking knees made the bushes move. Dang it! Just before we left I managed this one, sweet little macro shot. Enjoy. (OH, and can you tell... this is my first shoot where I was able to focus on something that isn't smack-dab in the middle of the shot! Super.)
"Shoes"
Moderately self-explanatory, the two pics below are shoes. As you can see, one pair has seen many, many more trails than the other. Can you believe that dude hikes in Sketchers?
"f2.5"
I only recently learned that you can use a faster shutter speed by using a lowered number f-stop (thanks dma!). How friggin cool. First metering, and now this? What wonderous things I can do with this knowledge! Wonderous things like take a picture of the trail at twighlight, hand-held. I like it.
And that wraps up my Friday evening. A bit of fresh air, a bit of heart-pumping uphill treking in the wilderness, and some challenging but fun shots and all of my frustrations from the day seemed to vanish. Thanks yo ;)
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