In the fall of 2001 I tried in vain to get a reservation for the Pear Lake Ski Hut in Sequoia National Park.  It turns out to be a very popular hut to reserve (evidenced by the fact that I’ve yet to be able to secure the hut for another weekend).

In late December I called to see if any changes had occurred in the availability of the hut - and I was in luck.  There was a cancellation for the first weekend in January.

A group of us made the trek out to the Sequoia Kings Canyon Park where we started our ski.  The hut was wonderful and the skiing fantastic.

This photo was taken with my Mamiya 35mm camera while out skiing runs on a bright sunny Saturday.  The weather was perfect and the snow conditions were great.  It’s always a challenge to decide whether to take the big SLR on trips like these.  The weight is really a pain but the photos are usually worth it.

In this image, I like the contrast of the silhouetted skiers up on the horizon, the wispy clouds behind them and the sun illuminating the single patch of snow up by the horizon.  To me this photo really captures the uphill part of a backcountry ski trip - the long slogs up the mountain required to enjoy the awesome downhills.

Since this trip I’ve gotten a lot better at taking the ‘action’ downhill shots - and I’ve had opportunities to shoot those photos on a few good trips.  But on this trip, I felt like I really captured the switch-backing uphills.

It’s that time of year again, and I’m looking forward to more weekends of fun in the snow.

This is a photo that I took while in Portugal in December 2001.  It was my first (and to-date, only) time visiting Portugal, and I loved it.  I spent several days in Lisbon and just found the city to be perfect - the right size, the right amount of people, a diverse culture, interesting streets and architecture and great weather.

One of the aspects of the city that I loved was the use of tile.  Everywhere you looked there were tiles used to dress up facades - buildings, sidewalks, and streets alike.  There are tiles on doorways, bus stops in churches and restaurants.  They’re used to advertise services and spruce up bathrooms.

I came across this scene while walking among the city’s hills.  I was over near the castle overlooking the harbor, heading back towards one of the street cars when I saw this great walkway displaying tiles both on the ground and on the surrounding buildings.  As I stopped to set up the shot this couple walked into the scene - only enhancing it.

On this trip I had my Contax camera - a manual focus SLR that I just loved.  I eventually sold the camera because I wasn’t satisfied with the zoom lenses available in the Contax lineup (and accurately predicted that Contax would not be a player in the soon-to-explode digital revolution).  If I could have afforded to keep the camera I would have and it would still make an excellent film camera today - expecially for candid street shots like this one.  As a travel camera it was lightweight and small - perfect.  Some day I will again have a camera that felt as right as the Contax.

I took this photo of Maggie and Ellie in December 2004.  Meg had asked me to take some photos of the girls for their holiday card, so the 4 of us trekked up to the park where I took some candid shots.

I always liked this series of pictures; the girls were in good moods and they were really cute in their matching pyle sweaters.

This photo was taken later in the session, when we were packing up and heading back to the house.  The girls were still really giddy and so they marched off waving goodbye.

I used my Nikon N80 and slide film for this series - this was before I purchased my first digital SLR.  More of the photos from this day can be seen here: http://www.picsfromtrips.com/snapshots/2004-photos/nieces/

This is a photograph I took while on a hike near Lake Tahoe in 2007.  I was up there for Thanksgiving and during a break from cooking or eating I went on a hike up in the hills.

I was playing around with a lens I had recently acquired - a Nikon 105mm macro lens.  It’s a beautiful lens that takes really sharp photos.  The weather that day was great - relatively warm (for the November mountains) and sunny.  With this lens I was trying out a lot of closeup shots - of trees, rocks, bark, leaves and snow.

This shot I particurlarly liked because of the patterns in the moss - it looks like a rendering of a neural network - something you’d see in a late night sci-fi movie.  The color too really drew me in - that almost unnatural glowing green - almost because it is in fact natural.

I’m heading up to Tahoe again this year for another Thanksgiving in the mountains.  I’m looking forward to the cold nights, the good food, and a weekend of game playing inside and cool activities outside.

This photograph is from a backpacking trip that I took during the Labor Day break in 2005.  Jim, Mandy, Diane and I head up to the Eastern side of the Sierra, just outside of Bishop for a few days in the high mountains.

The trip started with a pretty good drive up to the trail head and from there we continued to hike up and over a pass (at just about 12,000 feet) which got us into this large basin surrounded by beautiful Sierra peaks.  We spent a few days wandering around the basin and then Mandy, Diane and I head back to the cars while Jim took off for the first leg of his High Sierra traverse.

This image was taken in the morning, well after sunrise but early enough that there are still some shadows across the landscape.  I used my Nikon digital D70 SLR with a standard zoom lens.  One of the beauties of long focal length photos is that you don’t need a big professional lens to capture the image.  Most lenses will do a nice job at f/11 or f/16 - and this was taken at f/9 which falls well within the lens’ ability to capture a sharp image.  This meant that I could take a smaller lens, which is always appreciated on these trips up to the mountains.

I like the composition of this image, with the rock in the foreground creating a strong anchor and really emphasising the distance captured in the frame.  The lake and grass in the midground allow the eye to follow up to the mountains in the distance with their shrinking glaciers at their feet.  The shadows cutting across the mountains help define the peaks and valleys in the mountain faces.

This was a beautiful place to hike, much like the rest of the Eastern Sierra trips that I’ve taken, and I hope to get back here one day soon.

For more images from this trip, you can visit the Backpacking the Eastern Sierra pages, and for more Sierra Nevada vistas, just click on the Sierra Nevada keyword found with any of the relevant photos.

As an aside, I’ve taken a bit of a hiatus from the weekly photo entries during the summer as I’ve recouped from my Africa trip and spent time updating other aspects of the website.  As is always the case, I haven’t gotten around to updating everything that I wanted, but hopefully I’ll be able to kep up with the weekly postings a little better..

While in Vietnam I rented a motorbike to take around for the afternoon.  This was right around the center of Vietnam - outside the towns of Da Nang and Hoi An.  There was lots of activity during the day, a lot of folks out in the fields working the rice paddies.

I saw this hand cart on the side of the road and stopped to take a few photos of it.  I was traveling on this trip with both my 35mm camera as well as my new Digital SLR (the Nikon D70) but for this motorbike ride I brought only with me my 35mm camera, with both black and white and color slide film.

There really is a simplicity to life out in the countryside of South East Asia, which is I know a viewpoint that is hardly original and over-glamorizes the peasant life but it’s hard to escape the feeling, running around in our over-connected lives when suddenly you’re face-to-face with a farmer tending to the fields with his ox-drawn cart.

This image can be seen along with many others from that Vietnam trip, 3 years ago this week.

This is a photograph taken of my niece Ellie, back in 2002. She was only one month old at the time with a head full of black hair.

I like this photo because, if you know Ellie, you can recognize her in this picture even though she is so young. Her cheekbones, nose and mouth still look similar today.

From a classical portrait perspective, this is also a nice shot (if I do say so) with a nice depth-of-field keeping her face mostly in focus but the background, including her seat, out of focus. Additionally, the focus is sharpest on the nearest eye which also has a glimmer of white from a reflection of light. These are all classical elements of a portrait.

I took this image with my Nikon N80 film camera with a Sigma f/2.8 zoom lens - one of their nicer pro-series lenses, but cheaper than the Nikon lenses I have since upgraded to. The Sigma lens was able to produce nice quality images but the feel of the lens didn’t match that of the Nikons or certainly of the Contax lenses that I had recently been shooting with.

A few other images from this day can be seen here, each of which was taken during this week, in 2002.

In 2005 I was getting ready to leave one job for another (this theme is especially relevant to me these days..).  I had a short trip planned between jobs - to Vietnam - and I decided to treat myself to a digital SLR for the trip.

I purchased a Nikon D70 since I already had a Nikon setup with some lenses, etc., and since I couldn’t justify the more expensive D100 (and certainly couldn’t justify the more expensive Pro models).

With my new camera in hand I trekked over to Japantown with my sister and nieces to test out the system.  I was so excited about the immediate feedback from the LCD screen and I even appreciated the extended focal length for shots like these, where I was shooting over a crowd onto the stage.  In retrospect, I should have carried around my 70-200mm lens a lot more as this shot would have benefited from a little tighter cropping.  I try to carry that lens around a bit more these days, though it does weigh a ton.

I fired off several shots of the drummers and eventually settled on the slightly slower shutter speed which helps convey the motion in the blurred hands.

This and other shots were taken on April 23rd of 2005, three years ago this week.

This photograph is from a 2003 road trip I took down to Las Vegas from San Francisco.  I was driving across the Nevada and California deserts when I came upon these large dunes.  I stopped and walked around the dunes and surrounding area for a while with my Nikon 35mm SLR, most likely an N80 model.  I shot this on slide film, probably Fuji Provia 100.  I really was not good enough to be shooting slide film (the exposure requirements are much stricter with slides) but I butchered my way through it.

These dunes are not protected so they are a popular recreation spot for those in the neighborhood with 4-wheelers and such.  While I was visiting there were a few tooling around and you can see some tracks in the sand.

I was really struck with how they stood out from the surrounding desert - which does not have the same pure sandy floor.  These dunes just rise out and stand in the middle of the flat surrounding terrain.

This photo reminds me of some of the images that you see out of Namibia, though that sand is much more orange - which makes me think of my upcoming trip to Africa.  I am really excited to be adventuring to someplace new, and on our itinerary is a visit to Namibia and the Skeleton Coast which is one of the driest regions in the world.  We’ll be spending a few days in the desert checking out the sites and some of the dunes there.

This Photograph was taken in Paris, France back in 2001. I was there with Dan (as he was preparing to run the Paris marathon). This statue is somewhere along the Tuileries gardens - I really can’t remember exactly where anymore.

At the time of this trip both Dan and I were taking a small break from work and so we were able to enjoy a few weeks in Europe (I later want on to spend a week + with my Dad in Germany). This is becoming more relevant as I’m wrapping up my last weeks at StubHub and am staring down the barrel of another break from work - which I’m really looking forward to.

The exact date of the photo is unknown as this was the days before digital so there’s no accurate timestamp.. but looking back at my journals from then it was definitely taken somewhere between April 6th to 9th. I believe I shot this with my Contax Aria camera (which I really do miss..) and shot on Kodak Tri-X film. I do miss the days of black and white - and as much as I say I’m going to get back into a darkroom it just never happens and instead I find myself in front of Photoshop.

I wonder if the sculpter could have imagined these reminiscings as he sculpted these angels?

This and more photos can be seen here in PicsfromTrips