These photos were some of the last I took during the Summer Intensive course at the RMSP.  A brief but intense afternoon thunderstorm had just passed over while some friends and I were out eating sushi for dinner.  After the rain let up, those of us with cameras spent some time shooting the departing thunderheads and the puddles they left behind.  The part of town we were in wasn’t very picturesque in my opinion, so I spent more time shooting in close on the clouds.  But those images were a little uninspiring, so I started using some creative techniques like spinning and zooming to make the clouds a little more interesting.  After shooting upwards for a while, it eventually dawned on me to look down and shoot some of the puddles and their reflections.

The hills just to the north of town are basically open grasslands with a few pine trees popping up here and there.  But, if you head up there on a beautiful day with a bright blue sky and puffy white clouds, you can get some really nice shots.  The first image above is one of my favorite landscapes from the summer.  I took these in early August near the end of the Summer Intensive course at RMSP.

On an early August weekend, I rode my bike across town to Fort Missoula to watch and shoot a rugby tournament.  The tournament was scheduled to run from noon to around 3pm on that particular Sunday, but when I got there at around 1:30pm, I discovered it was already over.  Since, I had ridden all that way, I decided to head over to the museum and look around.  I checked out the old trains and logging equipment on display there, climbed the old fire watch tower, and took some pictures of the flower gardens.  It’s not my typical subject matter, but I didn’t want to waste the trip.

I thought I’d take a break from my summer recap and show you some pictures I took this afternoon.

If you saw my Twitter post this afternoon, you might be wondering what a Manfrotto Magic Arm is.  It’s easier to send you to a product page than it is to try and describe it, so click on one of those last two links.  I bought it as a kit that also includes the super clamp, giving me the ability to attach my camera to all sorts of things.  So today, I clamped the arm to my mountain bike, attached my camera to the other end, hooked up my remote cable release with interval capabilities, and went for a ride up and down my block.  I set the remote to fire the camera every two seconds as I rode.  After a couple of times up and down the street, switching the angle and mounting location each time, I had several hundred shots.  These are the four I liked.  The last two almost look like static poses because I had the shutter speed too high to get any motion blur, but I was riding at the time.  In the first two, you can definitely tell I’m moving.  Since I was using an ultra-wide angle lens (my 12mm), you get that distorted perspective where my hands look really, really big compared to the rest of my body. :)  The magic arm opens up a whole range of possibilities to get some unique shots from different perspectives.  It’s going to be fun.

Towards the end of Summer Intensive, I headed up to Lolo Pass, just across the Idaho/Montana border, to try and get some trail pictures for my final project.  I only got a couple of trail images I liked, including the one in the lower right up above, but I got some other good images from the trip.  It was really pretty up there, but the trails weren’t marked very well.  I started following a trail only to have it disappear completely.  I had to wander cross country to find my way back to the main trail, which was a loop.  I was inside the loop, so there really wasn’t much danger of me getting lost.  The trail picture above isn’t actually part of the hiking trail.  It’s just a deer run that I happened upon as I made my way back to the main trail.  The grass was at least waist high.  The quote, "Don’t go into the long grass!!!" from the movie Jurassic Park kept running through my head as I walked through it.  Thankfully, no velociraptors or anything else attacked me…well, except for all the mosquitoes.  They were a bit nasty while I was there.

Every Thursday in July, they hold a kayaking competition at Brennan’s Wave in downtown Missoula.  This was the last one of the summer.  They use the big blue raft in the middle of the first picture to take spectators out to the island in the middle of the river.  I think they’re nice enough to bring them back too. :)  I think it’s cool you can sit and watch stuff like this in downtown Missoula.

I took a lot of pictures during this event and even shot some video.  I haven’t done anything with the video yet.  Maybe someday I’ll put together a little video/still image montage and set it to music…maybe.

The top image is my favorite landscape photo from this summer.  I just wish I had thought to take multiple exposures so I could have stitched them together in a true panorama.  Then, I could print it huge.  But, I didn’t.  I just cropped a single frame to the panoramic aspect ratio you see above.  I can still print it pretty big, but not huge.

The other two images are shots that I took as I started my drive back down to my campsite.  They were the last images I took on my first trip to Glacier.

If you a Gmail user, you can now download a small browser plugin that will allow you to do voice and video chats from your browser directly inside of Gmail.  Of course, you’ll need a webcam to use the video feature or a microphone to use the voice.  I already have it installed, of course, but I don’t have anyone to try it out with yet.  Call me.

Here’s the link to the plugin and more info: GMail voice and video chat

The first picture is Reynolds Creek as it runs down from Logan Pass. The second image is the waterfall that occurs just below the first picture as the creek runs down the mountain.  I shot these just before sunset, so this particular valley was completely in shadow.  This allowed me to do some long exposures for that silky water effect.

Tomorrow, you’ll see the last of the pictures from my first trip to Glacier National Park.  One of which, is my favorite landscape image from the entire summer. 

I took these on the hike back to Logan Pass from Hidden Lake in the early evening.  Both pictures have hikers in the frame.  You’ll have to look a little harder in the second one.  Like I said in a previous post, it was pretty weird walking across deep snow in the middle of July.  It was also very slippery.  I had to try very hard not to fall because I was carrying two cameras, my Canon 40D with the 70-200mm f2.8 + 1.4x teleconverter and my Canon 5D with the 24-105mm f4 lens.  That was about $6K worth of equipment around my neck…definitely not something I wanted to fall on.  Thankfully, I didn’t, but there were a few close calls.

Why carry so much equipment?  I carry the 40D combo for shooting wildlife and the 5D combo for shooting the landscapes.  I don’t like to constantly change lenses as I hike, so I carry both so I don’t have too.  Wildlife doesn’t usually hold still long enough to change lenses and still get the shot.  Even landscapes can change quickly (clouds/shadows moving across the scene, rainbows that appear suddenly and then disappear just as quickly, etc.) and you don’t want to miss a great shot because you were busy swapping lenses.  Besides, the more often you change lenses in the field, the greater your chances of getting a dirty sensor, exposing your electronics to the elements, or simply just dropping a lens.  I’m willing to carry a little extra weight (one extra camera body) to prevent that.