Sunday, June 22, 2008

My attempt to be a Photographer

Here are a few pictures from my latest adventure (in American Fork Canyon at Silver Lake) that I took with my new camera. I'm still trying to play around with the different features and settings so that the pictures turn out good. Most of the pictures I took were duds but I got a few that I was pleased with. I apologize to the rest of the people with me if they got annoyed with me stopping at every bend to take a dozen pictures. I'm sorry I'm sure this will wear off in time but I'm a little obsessed right now. I'll do a posting on the adventure later. Enjoy.


My camera has a cool macro setting that I like to use.

Playing with the ISO

This is the moon coming up captured by having the shutter open for a longer time

The credit for this picture actually goes to Liz. I really like the symmetry in it.




Wednesday, June 18, 2008

New Camera!!

A week ago I decided I wanted to buy a digital camera. So I began the quest to find the right camera. That quest consumed my life and for a week I was a slave to learning about cameras. Finally, after hours and HOURS of reading reviews, 4 trips to Best Buy, 2 trips to Circuit City, talking with 6 sales employees, and Shonda twice, I bought one. I decided on the Canon powershot sd 870 IS digital elph. You know with a name like that it's gotta be good. So far I'm loving it. I've read over 100 pages in the manual and have learned way more then I'll ever remember. I just want to take pictures now.

Sunday, June 1, 2008

The Return to Moab

I had so much fun the last time I was in Moab I was anxious to take some more friends down and show them the good things Moab has to offer. Sadly this kind of marked the last campout or big activity that some of us would have together as some of my friends we're moving on (Jared and Ann moving to Denver, Brett to Chicago). Our cozy little camp site.

There was 9 of us that went down to Moab. We started our days adventure with the hike to morning glory. This is the hike I had previously done with Michelle about a month ago.


Our modern Moses leading the way...
Teaching them the ropes at the first repel...


We did the second repel over morning glory arch a little differently this time. We did what is known as a simul repel. That is where two people go off the arch at the same time on opposite sides using each others weight as the counter balance. Brett, weighing 30 lbs more, and I were the first ones to go. I got a little nervous after we started walking backwards and I started to get tugged back up the arch a step. Visions of me flying over the side flashed through my mind. However we made it down alright and anchored the bottom for the everyone else. It was sweet repelling down together! We were greeted by what seemed like the paparazzi as a bunch of onlookers were taking pictures from the bottom.


This is probably one of my favorite pictures. I think everyone was a little nervous and needed a little assurance that things would be ok.


The second arch on our list was Corona Arch. This one was new to me and so I was really excited to repel it. The hike to the top of the arch followed these footprints that were worn into the rock and ran up this really steep (almost vertical) sketchy slope. We managed to get to the top and as the sun was starting to set we repelled off the 140 ft arch.





The scenery was gorgeous. And we all got your glamour shots taken...

Jared
Brett
Devin
Me

The theme of the trip was to be "Hard Core" and we we're all proud that we had become so.