Boone, NC

We were in Boone, NC this weekend for a good friend’s wedding, and our hotel happened to have an incredible selection of flowers on the grounds. Perfect time to play with the Olympus and see how it handles with the 60mm macro.

San Antonio Botanical Gardens

We spent this weekend in San Antonio for John’s graduation, and our morning entertainment was to head to the Botanical Gardens for a quick walkaround. It was the first time I’d had the macro lens out in quite a while (not counting our trip to the bluebonnets, not posted), and I was perhaps a bit rusty. All in all I was surprisingly pleased with the general facility – while it doesn’t have the size of the Dallas Arboretum, it’s close to being in the same league in terms of landscaping and plant variety. There are, of course, the general staples (pansies, lilies), but also some more unique things (a desert section, and some nice orchids). Definitely worth dropping by if you get a chance.

Full gallery available here.

A breaking D90… that still (sort of) takes pictures

So for those of you who haven’t heard, my D90 is having issues.  Specifically, it seems to be deleting my pictures on the camera with a mind of its own. Over the past week or so, I’ve shot a variety of pictures trying to determine if my camera has an issue, and today I sent it off to Nikon for repairs.  Sigh.  I’ll just have to shoot the D300 for a while, which really isn’t the worst thing one could say.

Anyway, a few shots from the random clickfest.

Colorado

For those of you who don’t know, I spent almost two weeks in Colorado recently, and am just now getting around to putting pictures up. A group of five of us spent 9 wonderful days on the trail, treking through some of the most remote and beautiful parts of Colorado in the Weminuche Wilderness. For those interested in the details of our route, just ask and I can break it down step by step, but many parts of it will be clear from the comments on the full gallery of pictures.

For those interested, I took the D90 with a Tamron 17-50 2.8, and Seth graciously loaned me his Nikon 55-200 VR.  In addition I took my gorillapod and three batteries – the whole rig contributing about 4 pounds to my pack.  In retrospect, I would probably swap out the 17-50 for a lighter 18-55, even though the quality likely wouldn’t be as good – the weight would be hard to argue with, though. Additionally, I did suffer a near-catastrophic failure of my memory card, though with some good recovery software I was able to get a few of the images off. Not quite sure about the reason for the failure yet.

A full gallery, along with subtitles, is available here.

i00037

View from our campsite on the first night.

i00087

A Rocky Mountain Columbine

i00108

The first part of our trip was hiking up the Vallecito Creek, shown here.

i00135

Lots of lily-like flowers along the trail.

i00161

The Guardian, as seen from our third camp.

i00175

One of many mountain waterfalls.

i00190

Leviathan Lake, pretty much the most beautiful place ever, even in this HDR-ish shot.

i00227

A view of the lake in the morning, with the water still.

i00286

Needed a new Facebook profile picture.

i00372

We were joined by two goats – in this case Buddy.

i00432

Yes, had to do a long exposure even in the mountains.  Why else would I take 3 batteries?

i00445

Looking back to the west over the whole of the lake in the morning.

i00512

Jagged Mountain. Note that Buddy (and Mable) decided to follow us over the pass.

i00625

This is Floyd, our friendly neighborhood marmot.

i00647

Brent, fishing on the Animas.