Gotta love dogs

Only way you can stand to have them around! Sitting here on the computer eating breakfast (peanut butter toast, a favorite) when I turn around and see Chester, my Chocolate Lab, drooling up a storm. He's got tentacles of drool halfway to the floor. If that doesn't help breakfast I don't know what will. I look down and see my camera case below him, fortunately it was closed or everything would be bathed in dog drool. It's covered in spots of drool and the carpet is sprinkled with them also. Just awesome. Thought I'd share a few of the spots with you! Enjoy.

RadioPoppers

I got my RadioPoppers in Monday and wanted to share with everyone. What are RadioPoppers you ask? Well, if you want all the info you can head over to the RadioPopper site and read up about them. In a nutshell though, RadioPoppers take the visual signals that flashes like a Canon 580EX or and ST-E2 send out to control off camera flashes and convert them to radio signals. A receiver on the off camera flash converts them back into light signals to trigger the remote flash. This lets you use the small dedicated flashes outdoors in bright sunlight without having to worry about line of sight anymore. Their range outdoors is something like 300 feet.

Getting RadioPoppers is almost anticlimactic in a sense. They don't make you a better photographer, they don't add new capabilities to your camera system. What they do is take a system that camera makers developed halfway and complete it and make it better. The sometimes frustrating line of sight and distance limitations of the old visual system are gone and now replaced with a dependable radio triggering capability. I know I've tried to use umbrellas outdoors and had no luck triggering my flashes using the standard Canon system. The sending unit on the camera and the flash couldn't see each other because the umbrella was blocking them. I've also been in a large room indoors before and stepped too far in front of my flashes and had them not trigger. All that's gone now. Anything you could do before with the old line of sight system now works by radio.

Getting these, I finally broke down and did something I swore I would never do. I put velcro on my 580EX flash. I always wanted to keep it pretty since it was so expensive but now I realize I was being silly and these are tools and should be treated as such. I even went so far as to put velcro on the sides of my flash to hold a modification I made to the Popper system. When you first get these you attach the little cable sending unit over the flash sensor using supplied gaffer tape. I didn't like that and after putting it on and taking it off a few times you needed a new piece of tape to hold it in place. I made a little strap to hold the sensor in place that I attach using the velcro on both sides of the flash. Didn't take long to make and works much better IMHO. I'll include pictures of it here if you are interested in making one yourself. It's just a piece of elastic, some industrial grade self sticking velcro and a little square of white foam. The white foam helps to ensure I get dependable pops outdoors in case there is any light leakage around the sensor and also gives thickness to the strap to ensure the little sending unit doesn't move off the sensor of the flash. It compresses around it nicely holding it securly in place.

I've only had the chance to use these once quickly so far so I haven't done any great works with them yet. I will post one picture up here just so you can get a glimpse of what these are capable of doing. This shot was a quick grab in a parking lot of my friend Moni. We were at a camera club meetup and I showed up with a camera and light stand, grabbed her out of the meeting real quick and took this snap out in the parking lot. The setup was simple. It was late in the afternoon and you can see the sunlight hitting her from behind and lighting up her hair. The flash is camera right with no diffusers on it. Just straight on flash. I didn't have time to set anything up and being Colorado the wind was kicking pretty good. You can see her hair blowing. I used my 85 1.8 lying about 20 feet away on the ground to get some sky in the picture and lower the horizon also. There was a hill behind us so I couldn't shoot straight on. I metered for the sky with my camera, took a shot, checked the histogram, dropped my flash exposure compensation to about minus 1/3 and got this shot. I wish I had more time to play but we had to get back to the meeting. The final settings here were 1/5000 of a second shutter speed and my aperture was set for f/2.2. You can see how blurred the branches are behind her. I'd liked to have bumped my shutter speed up more to darken the sky a little bit more and pull more color and saturation out of it. But I know I can now do that easily. Anyways, here's the shot, enjoy.




Here are my shots of the strap I made to hold the sensor in place.

Hangin in Manitou

Went out this weekend with a group of photographers to do a little street photography while walking around Manitou and enjoying the beautiful weather we had that day. It's amazing how it was up in the sixties and snowed the next day. At least it isn't boring around here. Enjoy a few of the shots I took. I must admit though that I was feeling very uninspired this day simply because it was so nice and I'd been just as happy lying in a hammock under a tree somewhere. Must be my Southern showing!

Heading Over to Cripple Creek

Went to Cripple Creek the other day to check out their first annual Ice Carving exhibit. Rhonda, Chuck, and myself made the road trip. First time in ages I got to go out that way and not be driving so really enjoyed myself. It looks like they might have a hit with this. There was a good turnout of people and I saw a few different television crews around filming everyone checking out the ice. The kids seemed to really get a kick out of it. Hopefully it will be even bigger next year.

After we saw the ice festival we went driving around for a little while to check out the sights and find an over look that Rhonda knew about. With all the mining going on in the area they are constantly changing the landscape and we had a little bit of trouble finding it. Check out the picture of the big truck that topped a hill we were headed up. It's an interesting feeling to be driving around in a small car and have basically a moving building come over a hill directly at you. We stopped in the median of the gravel road and the guy driving stopped and climbed down the steps to basically tell us to get out of there. Seems we weren't supposed to be on that particular road, we had missed the sign telling us the proper direction to take to get to the overlook. The funny part was when we turned around to go the other way another one topped the other hill coming at us from the opposite direction. I don't think Rhonda cared for that too much, to say the least! We did find the overlook eventually and spent a little time checking out the sites. You can see the picture of all the mining going on in the area. Kind of a shame what we do for gold, isn't it?


On the road.


Pikes Peak in the distance. You can also see
the old Manitou Incline. I actually rode that
years ago before it was taken out.


Overlooking Cripple Creek


I just thought this was funny.










It's amazing what you can do with a chain saw.


Some of the colors in the ice were fantastic.






This was really impressive in person.




This is the backside view of the train sculpture.




Those are steps going up the front of the truck
just so you can get a feel for how large this truck
actually was. This thing is at least 3 stories high.


Here's the view from the overlook we eventually
found.

Carnivale in Manitou Springs

Went to Manitou Springs today to celebrate Mardi Gras Colorado style. Not quite the same as going to New Orleans but I still had a good time. Started out the day with the Mumbo Jumbo Gumbo Cook Off but I didn't get any pictures of that. I was way to busy eating gumbo, a weakness of mine. Frontrange Barbecue won first place and they deserved it. I had a least three servings of theirs! I'll probably be heading up there soon to have a proper sit down bowl of gumbo! Anyways on to the pictures. This is just a few shots of what all I saw today. Hope you enjoy them.

50th Wedding Anniversary of Sam and Tess

I had the honor recently of covering the 50th wedding anniversary and the renewal of their wedding vows for Sam and Tess. It was a big family affair with plenty of friends and family in attendance. These are the parents of a friend of mine, Eric. You've probably seen his daughter a couple of times on my blog here. She's the one sitting in a teacup if you look at older posts. Here she is coming up the aisle with her youngest older brother having a ball following her. She's really getting big. Last time I saw here I don't think she was walking yet.




The ceremony was a nice affair with all the family participating.




Eric got a little choked up while doing his speech. I always enjoy these types of ceremonies where you can feel the love.









After the ceremony we all headed over to the reception for good food, cake, and dancing.



Fortunately the newly rewed couple were nice to each other for the cutting of the cake. No smashed faces here!






Just to close this out, here's a shot of the family all gathered around the head table. I just want to say thanks again to Eric for letting me be a part of his parents celebration.