Denny Creek Hike

C and I hiked part of the Denny Creek trail this winter in snow shoes. There was probably 10 feet of snow on the two bridges over the river. A few days ago I had the opportunity to hike it again during the summer. And Trish was nice enough to be my photosafari buddy.

A mile up the trail is the first big event. The rocks and the river make a natural water slide that people's children seem to love. I was tempted to try it, but wanted to get some pictures first. Then never got around to doing it. Climbing up above the water slide area is where the really nice falls are. But it takes some fancy foot work to get there. Neither of us were capable. I slipped and put one shoe in the river. Trish lost her shades and then put both shoes in. I thought it was pretty funny.

The black and white pictures are from the Digital Infrared camera.

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Issaquah Zoo

I realize the Issaquah Zoo is really called the Cougar Mountain Zoo, but Issaquah is easier to find.

It's really small, but not bad. They do have cougars there and they were walking around at the end of the day. They showed off some baby tigers for so long that the crowd mostly disappeared before they put them away. That's hard to do because these babies were totally cute and so playful. So I got to get close enough to get some decent pictures.

I got to feed some llamas. They made hilarious whimpering noises when they saw they were about to get fed. They are gentle when they eat out of your hand. Some of the other large birds peck pretty hard. The cougars made some funny noises too. They really are just big cats. Really big.

We also ran in to Baby J & family who we haven't seen in way too long.

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Fireworks in Sammamish

The 4th of July fireworks in Sammamish weren't too bad.

I got to use my Gorillapod and remote to take all these. I set the white balance to "Fluorescent" in one picture and it turned the sky a cool blue color but left the fireworks close the correct colors. I used an ISO of 1250 and f/16 with shutter speeds ranging from 1 to 8 seconds.

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Digicam

I got C a digicam. a Canon SD800IS. It rocks. It's fast, the face detection focus system really works! And it's small and light, unlike all my gear.

She made me list (in an email) all the reasons I wanted this one instead of something worthless and trashy, I mean cheaper, before I was authorized to buy it. Good thing I like to make informed decisions once in awhile. I rattled off a series of things that I wasn't sure she'd even read. Next time I'll write something about how it'll do the dishes to see if she's paying attention.

C diligently opened the manual to learn more about it, but thanks to tech-support-hero-Kelly (who has one too) she didn't get very far. Whew!

It arrived just in time for her trip to Virginia. I hope she uses it to shoot pictures of all the relatives I'm missing and videos of her sister being herself. :)

Waiting for VBS

While I was waiting for VBS to start I wandered outside to shoot the lovely leaves and flowers in the bright sun. I shot the red leaves from underneath and the water drops are on top.

24-70 2.8L

It's really big. It's really heavy. It looks really sweet with the lens hood on.
I love it!
I've rented this lens a lot but it wasn't until recently that I managed to save enough to get it.
I find myself needing the f/2.8 a lot. I try to use my 50mm 1.8 but the lack of zoom (and quality) is limiting.
A major reason for choosing this one over the EF-S 17-55 2.8 IS was that it will work on my 10D IR too. When I got the 10D modified to IR I also got the focus calibrated to the 50mm 1.8. I haven't thoroughly tested this lens and the 10D's focusing, but from one or two quick shots, viewed on the LCD, it doesn't look bad. It's funny that this new lens has IR focusing marks because I can't use them since the camera's focusing has been recalibrated. Oh well.

The rain and the sun fought all day. I ran outside between downpours to shoot some roses near our parking space. The sun was bright and the flowers were soaked. I love the shallow depth of field of this lens. And the out of focus areas are so smooth.
I bet the neighbors thought I was crazy.

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We finally got a new car

It's blue (most important), it's an outback (not quite an FJ like I hoped), and we're thrilled it's over (finally)!!
I think we dealt with 2 dealers and 4 different salesmen over a couple weeks.

It had dog hair all over it when we first drove it. But they cleaned it before we took it home. I doubt we'll use the heated seats very much. But the ground clearance is going to be awesome.
Now we'll have to try some of those really rough forest roads on our next backpacking trip!

This first picture has more significance because of the lens I used (more on that later)...