In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve posted a pretty good sample of pictures on my website, wanderinglightphotography.com.  All the good pictures from the first month and the first couple of days of July are posted in the RMSP category shown on the home page.  I’ll probably be posting most images there from now on and only post blog images or images from my phone on Flickr.

Looking at what I’ve taken so far, I realized I don’t have many wide panoramic type shots of the mountains yet.  I need to work on that I think.  I may have to head up to Glacier this weekend.  We’ll see.

In other news, I’ve declared that I’m not spending any more money on photography equipment this summer.  I just spent another boat load on a carbon fiber tripod and new tripod head.   My old tripod is just too heavy to carry on long hikes.  I needed something lighter.  My new Gitzo tripod only weighs 2.1lbs plus another 1lb for the tripod head.  My old tripod legs weighed more than that themselves not including the head.  I think I cut the weight in half with this purchase…and probably my bank account as well…just kidding. I still have plenty of money left for the summer and fall.  But I won’t if I keep upgrading gear, so I’m done…for now.

I’ll be back in the studio tomorrow shooting still life…

Tomorrow night, we have a guest speaker: Peter Read Miller.  You’ve probably seen his work if you’ve ever picked up Sports Illustrated.  I think he’s going to talk to us about sport photography…just a guess.

I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I’ve been keeping pretty busy.  So here’s a quick recap on what we’ve been doing in school.  We’ve basically covered the technical side of photography at this point and have started to move into the creative side of things now.   We’re learning to critique photographs and discussing what makes a good photograph.  We’ve also had our first print lab where I got to print out a couple of my photos.  It’s amazing how good they look when you have a good printer. 

We also had some more studio time, this time working with multiple light set-ups.  I’m not really getting into the studio work.  I’m finding I like shooting outdoors much better…big surprise, I know.  One of the last technical concepts we covered was the color zone system.  I’m finding that it makes my life much easier when shooting.  In the last week or two, I’ve found that I can get the exposure right the first time on the majority of my shots rather than having to take additional shots to make adjustments.  I think I’m finally making some improvements here.

Last weekend, much of our class went to Augusta, Montana to shoot the rodeo.  I ended up with a few good shots, but the majority were not as great as I hoped, primarily due to the lens I was using.  The 50-500mm lens I have just isn’t very good.  So the following Monday, I cracked open my wallet and bought the Canon 70-200mm f2.8L IS lens and the 1.4x teleconverter.  It’s not as long as the 500mm obviously, but it’ll work in most cases and will give me much better results.  It’s a very nice piece of glass.  And just for fun, I bought a Lensbaby 2.0 as well.  If you’re unfamiliar with those, you’ll see some shots from it in a week or two.  It’s a lot of fun.

Speaking of photos, I’m way behind in my processing, which is why you haven’t seen many being posted lately.  I’ve started catching up so you’ll start to see new stuff being posted little by little in the next couple of days.   The moon shot above is from the middle of June when the moon was full.  We had to stay out until about 11:30pm before it was high enough to clear the mountains.  My 500mm worked well for this type of photography so I guess I’ll keep it around despite having the new lens.  There’s a few more shots of the moon on my Flickr stream.  The shot to the right is from a old growth cedar grove I visited during the second or third week here…I forget when.  Days and weeks are starting to run together now.

Tonight, I’m going to try my hand at photographing fireworks.  With any luck, you’ll get to see any good shots I get by the end of the month.

I arrived in Missoula, safe and sound, on Thursday night after two very long days of driving.  I left Chippewa Falls at around 11:30am CDT on Wednesday morning and arrived in Rapid City, SD at 9:30pm MDT for a total of 11 1/2 hours (with the time zone change) behind the wheel.  After spending the night, I left Rapid City Thursday morning at 7:30am and arrived in Missoula at 7pm, completing my second 11 1/2 hour day behind the wheel.  I believe that’s about my limit.  I was pretty exhausted.

The drive from Wisconsin to Western South Dakota is one of the most boring drives ever.  There really is nothing to see until you reach the Badlands (and it was dark by the time I got there).  I’ve done this drive several times when visiting my brother and his family in Rapid City, which makes it all the more boring.  What little there is to see, I’ve already seen before.

The drive from Rapid City to Missoula, on the other hand, is incredible.  It starts in the Black Hills, briefly degenerates to open grasslands, but then jumps into one mountain range after another.  It just keeps getting better.  Even though I was tired from the previous day, I still really enjoyed it.  I tried to take pictures while I drove (not that safe, I know, but there was very little traffic and I shot everything one-handed without looking through the viewfinder) and I ended up with a few really nice ones.  This is my favorite:

You can view the rest in my Flickr stream starting here.

I posted my latest self-portrait over on my photoblog.  It’s a picture of me drinking my new favorite beverage…V8 Fusion.   That stuff is liquid candy.  If it wasn’t 100% fruit and vegetable juice, I’d probably feel guilty about drinking an entire bottle in one day (which happens quite often). 

Unfortunately, I wasted close to an entire bottle trying to get the shot.  I got a few good gulps out of it though.  The picture I posted was one of the last shots I took before I ran out of juice.  It’s the only one I really liked.  I just couldn’t seem to get the timing right.  I’d either take the photo too early (before the juice left the bottle) or too late (after it was already in my mouth…or splashing on my chin).  I wish I could have kept my eyes open, but they instinctively closed every time as soon as the juice was coming at me.  I guess that’s a good thing.  Sort of takes away from the shot a little though.

In case you’re wondering, I was standing in my bathtub when I took the photo.  It was a lot easier to clean up that way.

After I posted the self-portrait last week, I realized I probably should have posted on my photoblog rather than here, so I moved it.  There’s also a new picture on the photoblog.  Go check it out.

I was looking through my photos tonight and realized I can count the number of pictures I’ve taken so far this year on one hand and still have fingers left over.  That’s pretty sad.  I’m not sure why I haven’t been shooting much this month.  I think it might be the cold weather.  I usually shoot a lot outdoors so with temperatures staying consistently in the single digits or below, I haven’t been spending much time outside.  And I don’t have a lot of interesting subjects in my apartment, so that hasn’t produced any images either.

I was thinking of doing a self-portrait tonight, but I discovered I couldn’t find my shutter remote.  It’s a wireless system.  I have the transmitter, but I can’t find the receiver that plugs into the camera.  I looked everywhere I could think of.  The last time I remember having it was when I was shooting the pictures of the deer last fall.  I’m thinking I must have dropped the receiver in the woods somewhere the last time I was out.  Since it’d be buried under snow now, there isn’t much point in heading out to look for it.  I doubt it would have survived this long anyway.  I wasn’t too terribly impressed with the build quality of the components.  I don’t think I’ll buy the same one again.

I’m still excited and looking forward to photography school this summer, so this isn’t a lack of interest in photography.  It’s just a little lull.  I’ll start shooting again soon.  In the meantime, I’ll start shopping for remotes.

Now this would be fun to play with: a Casio Exilim EX-F1.  It’s capable of shooting at bursts of 60 frames per second (fps) and movies at 1200 fps!!!  Just think of the cool action shots you could get with this camera.  For comparison, my Canon 5D is only capable of shooting in bursts of 3 fps and most camcorders record at around 30 fps.

My old blog at www.tonyrix.com has now been converted to a photoblog and has its first post.  Go check it out!

You may notice the watermark on the photo and wonder, “What the heck is wanderinglightphotography.com?”  Well, that’s the name I chose for my photography brand, or business, or whatever you want to call it.  It has its own domain and website where you can view my best work and even purchase prints if you like.  As to why I chose “Wandering Light”, I’ll cover that in a future post.  I’m not in the mood to type it tonight.

On my way to go hiking on the day after Christmas, I swung by Mount Rushmore and snapped a few pictures. I just pulled off on the side of the road in designated areas. I was too cheap to pay for visitor parking at the monument itself, which is why none of the photos are from the front of it.

Click on the image to view the entire set.