More Photography Stuff

A couple of quick notes:

As I learn more about photography, I'm thinking that's it's not always the camera that makes the shot.  Case in point: I took my camera out last Monday for a walk around the nature preserve by my house (along the old Erie Canal) to work on my photographer's eye and try to get a few good shots.  I ended up deleting most of them.  This was probably my best attempt:

 

Not so good.  It was the middle of the day, so the light wasn't really stellar, and to tell you the truth, the scenery was a little boring (would have been a good place for some xc skiing, though). Contrast that with this picture (another find from my old closet) I took when I was in New Zealand for a semester in college:

That picture was taken with an old, cheap, 35mm camera, developed as a 3x5 and then scanned in to my computer at one of the lowest settings.  And it has a date burned into upper right corner!  And it still looks a million times more artistic, creative, and lively than that drab picture from the Nature Preserve.  I guess there's only one solution: go back to New Zealand.

All hope is not lost, though.  If it takes me a while to get the hang of photography, I can always fall back on video.  I thought the video feature of my new camera was kind of a nice bonus, but not really of much use for serious film.  I was seriously mistaken.  Here's a video shot entirely with my camera (the Pentax k-x):

Scion Snow Tour 2011 Roundtop Rail Jam from Manhouse Media on Vimeo.

Sick.

Weather might be a little sketchy this weekend (thaw/freeze/thaw/freeze/wind), but I'll be skiing both days.  Maybe I'll see you at the mountain.

Livin'

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  I've been super busy.  I picked up another skiing job (instructor of a skiing class for a local community college), so I'm doing that on Tuesdays and Thursdays until mid-March.  Plus, I have regular work (which seems to be picking up lately), plus my parents are going on vacation, so I have to look after their dog for a week (which should actually be pretty fun).

We got hit with a pretty bad rainstorm Monday, but skiing was decent on Tuesday and Thursday at West, so I hope there's some promise for the weekend.  I'm actually going to ski Royal Mountain (outside of Johnstown) tomorrow, and Gore on Sunday.  Hopefully, when I come back on Monday, I'll have enough time to write up a report.  Of course, then I'm going to ski Willard on Monday night, so the report might not come until Wednesday.  But Lost is on Wednesday, and I really want to see what happened at the end of last year, so maybe the report won't come until later . . .

I'm sure I'll fit something in sometime.  But really, when I get old and look back on my life, am I going to say "I wish I spent more time on my computer"?  No!!  I'd rather be skiing.

Almost here . . .

I feel like it's getting close (never mind that today was 65 degrees).  I was driving by Hunter Mountain the other day for my real job, and I snapped this pic of some snow that had fallen on Thursday night:

Then, after a day of being hungover on Saturday (ugh . . . I should stop drinking so much), we hiked Prospect Mountain on Sunday with Ace's brother:

Then,  we cruised over to Hickory, where they were having an open house/brewfest.  I don't know if I'm going to get up there too much this year (Gore always seems to call my name on Powder Days - free ticket, I know the mountain really well, and I always seem to find someone to ski with).  But Hickory looked pretty decent:

Then, Ace and I took advantage of the nice weather today to go on a 30 mile road bike ride on the Mohawk-Hudson Bike Trail (beautiful).  So it's all pumping me up for ski season.  I'm putting my new ski boots now to further break them in.  I might ski Killington next week (if my job doesn't get in the way).  Let's do this! 

Mini Hike

Sweet mini hike yesterday @ John Boyd Thatcher State Park.  We did the Indian Ladder Trail.  Kind of crowded, but fun nonetheless.