VRG Sunset

down in flames

another day, another roof...

joe k, shortly before sending

tscholl danglin'

Flagstaff Nights

The Asylum Revisited

Went back to the Asylum today for the first time in about a year. Tried some cool sport climbs and got some photos. Discovered the joys of trying to get into your camera bag to change lenses while hanging on a rope 80 feet up. Got some photos of my friend Jeff on Alpha Monkey the try before he sent it.

Dustin on Evil Party Vortex
Jeff on Alpha Monkey




The cluster of draws and rope I had to deal after shooting photos.

Anvils

Went to the Anvils today for the first time of the season. Guess its that time of the season. Luckily it seems like the lighting there is almost always good for photos and the rock lends it self to cool shots. Here's Dave and Sam on Big Sexy.

Church in the Rocks

Met up with my friends at the Church Sport climbing area in Sedona today after work. Driving back through all the tourist and seeing them constantly taking photos from the side of the road made me start think about how many hundreds of thousands of photos are taken every minute in the world. How many Terabytes are filled up every year. I know my hard drive is getting full.

Here are some photo's from today.

Thoughts

Rants:

So this is what you can do with a D40 and the Gimp. Its better than nothing but its hard not to get frustrated when trying to create images like Chase Jarvis or Tim Tadder who have CS4 and pro SLR's (or better medium format cameras). The first mistake I made was listening to the advice of Ken Rockwell. While he may have a good general review of cameras and lenses available on the market his opinion is definitely off a little. He seems to think if your not shooting with a $7000 Leica M9 or a Nikon D3 then the Nikon D40 is fine and more or less all you'll ever need. While the D40 is fine to learn with the low Mp count and acceptable ISO limit of 400 can some times be feel limiting and painful. Tim Kemples advises buying the best gear you can afford at the time, which means if you can afford the D90 over the D40/D5000/D3000 then do it. The D90 has the internal motor capable of focusing AF lenses whereas with anything lower you'll be manually focusing anything that's not AF-S.

Non Rants:

Anyway, enough ranting and on with the positive. Photography is about creating images that influence people. They need to pop out and grab your attention. They need emotion and feeling. This means going beyond just pushing a button on a camera too creating something out of an idea. I have not yet mastered this art. Probably out of lack of practice. I had an idea for an image that I posted below but it didn't even come out close to how I imaged and I still need to learn a lot about the Gimp and Photoshoping techniques. Less blogging and more practice.