Ok, this will catch things up for a while.

In the latter half of June I was fortunate to be able to join my brothers and some of my nephews in our third trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area in Northern Minnesota.  This has turned in to an every other year trip for us and is a great time to get away, relax, enjoy good company and great fishing.  This year we spent 9 days on the water. Our route covered about 75 miles with about 10 miles of portages.  If you include all our side trips and fishing we easily covered 100 miles.  The weather was wetter than we have experienced before, but nothing we hadn't prepared for. (Seems to be a common theme wherever I go this year.)  We carried all our food and gear for the 9 day trip except for the fish we caught to supplement dinner.  I managed to lose a fishing rod and reel the second day when the fish I was trying to let go flipped the wrong way and knocked the rod in the water.  Fortunately we learned a few years ago that extra gear is a good idea, so I fished with my backup gear the rest of the trip.  To prevent camera gear getting wet I used my trusty Lowe Pro Dry Zone.  It easily held my 1Ds Mk III, 24-105 and 70-200 lenses, a 1.4x extender, extra battery, cards, and filters.  It did mean I had two packs to carry each time we portaged - along with taking my turn carrying the canoe.  I also brought my Gitzo 1227 tripod with an Acratech Ballhead and leveling base.

This is primarily a canoeing and fishing trip with a few opportunities to take pictures.  It's often a bit dicey trying to get the camera out while in the boat, so I didn't do much of that.  The result is not nearly as many images as I would usually take in a 9 day trip.  We had lots of good times and are all looking forward to doing it again in two years.  The images from this trip are in Boundary Waters 2010.  Hopefully you can get an idea of what a beautiful place this is.

Jeff 

   Lower Part of Upper Basswood Falls 

Here's the second installment of the week.

In early June my friends, Gus and Gary, "dragged" me down to Moab for some photography. (They actually only had to mention it and I was ready to go.)  The weather is usually getting quite warm by June in Southern Utah, but we were blessed with some cooler weather.  Of course, the only way to cool the desert in the summer is to rain on it.  The rain and clouds worked to our advantage this time, except for one sunrise where we sat in the car and talked for a couple of hours while it poured at Dead Horse Point. We also nearly regretted our choice of sitting on the covered patio for lunch one day as we watched the streets fill up with water during an especially violent cloudburst.  We did some hiking while the weather was better as well.  We discovered a "scenic" route to False Kiva that involved a lot more up and down and prolonged the experience considerably.  When we got there is was well worth it.  The clouds in the sky really made a nice background. We didn't have time to get to all the places we wanted to go, but it was a very worthwhile and fun trip. We are going to try to go back next year a few weeks earlier in hopes of getting there before most of the wild flowers have dried up.  The images from this trip are posted in Moab June 2010.  I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I did taking them.  Your comments are appreciated.

Jeff 

 False Kiva with Cloudy Sky 

I recently returned from a photo trip to Alaska.  I had been to Alaska 11 years ago on a fishing trip and have regretted ever since that I did not spend more time photographing then.  This trip more than made up for it.  My friend, Larry Calof, and I have been planning this trip for about a year.  We met our group in Anchorage and then drove about a million miles. Actually it was "only" about 2000 miles of driving plus additional travel by boat, train and float plane.  Our group was led by Kristin Cole of Cole/Marr Photography.  She has been to Alaska many times and did a great job of giving us an introduction to it. We are already talking about another trip and where we want to spend more time.  We saw some fantastic scenery and lots of wildlife. In spite of 3 very wet days we had a great time. I came back with nearly 3000 images.  It has been quite a process to get that down to a manageable number.  I've posted about 50 of them in Alaska September 2009. I hope you enjoy them. When I get the time I will put together a book that includes these plus some others.  I shot quite a bit of video with the Rebel T1i and will next be working on editing and compiling that.

I also finally managed to get my images from the August trip to the Tetons posted in Tetons August 2009.

On a technical note: Larry let me use his Canon 300mm f/2.8 IS lens a couple of days while he was shooting with his 500. I used to think my 300 f/4 was close in image quality, but it's not. The bigger lens also focuses much faster allowing for some shots I just couldn't have gotten with the f/4.  Larry encouraged my wife, Vicki, to get it for my birthday.  Thanks to both of you!

Jeff

Denali North Peak wreathed in clouds 

I spent three days last weekend exploring and photographing the Grand Tetons National Park with three friends.  We had unusually cloudy and rainy weather which made us juggle our planned shooting some, but did present some opportunites to photograph the Tetons in less common settings.  I'm still working on some of the images from that trip, but I did shoot some 720p video with the Canon Rebel T1i that I recently aquired.  I've assembled some of those clips along with a few of my images into a short video showing our trip.  I hope you enjoy it.  I'll get the  images posted soon.

Jeff

For additional playback options right click on the video and select "Watch this on Vimeo".

I occaisionally try to do some "housecleaning" on my computer to make sure things are organized.  During my last such effort I came across a batch of images I had taken in Monument Valley last year which had been overlooked.  I worked on them and added the landscape images to Monument Valley April 2008 in the Image Catalog and added those images plus a few shots of our friends on the trip to the family Web Galleries under Monument Valley April 2008.

In looking over my images from last month's trip to Yosemite I found myself drawn back to this image that I called "Enchanted Island".  The reason I keep coming back to it is that of all the images I came home with from that trip, it's the one that brings back the quiet, peaceful feeling of being in the back country of Yosemite (or many other similar places for that matter).  I like it so much I made it the image on the home page of my web site.  It can be found here, linked to a larger copy by clicking on it.

I'm off to Jackson, WY and the Grand Tetons at the end of the week with several of our friends.