Here’s a photo I made this evening on a hike above Ouray, Colorado. I tried to use the gusty wind to my advantage by taking long exposures showing the movement of the wildflowers and clouds.

This photo deserves a bit of explanation on how I created it. It’s mainly a stitch of two vertical photos, taken one after the other using a tilt/shift 17mm lens – one with the lens shifted all the way up, and one shifted all the way down. When making panoramas with a tilt/shift lens, the camera does not move at all; only the lens is moving up and down. The beauty of this is that the two photos fit together seamlessly, requiring no stitching software or cropping. Anyhow, since the 17mm is already a really wide angle lens, this double-shot vertical panorama is showing a huge angle of view here, from the little flowers right up close to the lens, to the dark clouds almost overhead.

I also used a little photoshop trickery in the flower portion of the image. I had taken numerous 30-second exposures, and in each one (depending on the wind during the exposure) the flowers ranged from totally blurry, to somewhat sharp with a little bit of blur. The fairly sharp one still had too much blur to use on its own, while the totally blurry one was probably too abstract, just streaks of yellow lacking any context of flowers. So I stacked up three of those flower exposures in photoshop, and turned the upper two layers to “lighten” blend mode, meaning that only the parts of the layers that are brighter show up. The result is this composite of three flower exposures, showing a combination of some sharpness and some blurriness (ok, mostly blurriness). Of course our eyes don’t see like this naturally (at least when we’re sober), but the effect adds a bit of visual interest to the photo by showing the windblown chaos. What do you think… dig it or ditch it?

And, in an unrelated side note – last night it snowed a little bit on the high peaks around here! Yes, the air is getting cooler and Fall feels like it’s right around the corner!

Here’s another 4×5 photo “from the vault.” This is Litlmolla island, near the town of Svolvær in the Lofoten Islands, just north of the Arctic Circle. Taken in August of last summer, during a six week trip through Norway.

#2, you ask? Here’s “#1.” When I first edited my photos after the trip, I chose to post #1 in my gallery, probably because I initially preferred the warmer light on the island and horizon. However, a year later as I look at the two again, this one here is clearly my favorite. I prefer its subtle tones and softer colors, and as a whole it has a lot more feeling to it. As an extra bonus, #2 was shot on large format film (#1 was from a much smaller resolution digital camera).

A photographer friend of mine Dave is traveling somewhere over there right now… I’m looking forward to seeing his photos after he gets back.

The obvious main new element of the design is the huge colorful background photo. I plan on changing this photo on a regular basis, so my entire blog will “look” similar to the season or whatever I’m up to lately. The opaque black background tints may not work properly in IE6 browsers (they may be solid grey instead), but if you’re still using IE6 you probably don’t deserve to browse the internet anyways. Seriously, though, if you are one of the 7% of people out there still using the horrible IE6 browser you really should upgrade – preferably to something other than Internet Explorer, like Firefox, Safari, or Chrome for instance. But I digress…

In addition to the design facelift, I also souped-up my WordPress theme with some useful and powerful new features and plugins, including:

• Threaded Comments. Now, instead of one long simple list of comments on each post, people can reply directly to other people’s comments, and it all displays in a logical threaded manner. Since my WordPress theme did not support this newer feature, I had to upgrade it myself – a complicated process, but thoroughly explained here. The comments also show “gravatars”, the little images next to each commenter (if they have one).

• Page Numbering. If you’re browsing through the various pages, whether from the main page or within the categories or archives, there is now a row of page number links which makes it much easier to quickly dig deeper into the older posts. Achieved easily with the WP-PageNavi plugin.

• Improved Search Results. Now when you use the search box it shows ALL search results (before it would only show 10). Also the keywords are highlighted in the titles and relevant text snippets, thanks to the Search Excerpt plugin.

• Popular Posts list. The sidebar now includes a list of my most popular posts, in addition to the regular “recent posts” list. Via the WordPress Popular Posts plugin. Since I just installed this, it will take some time before it collects enough data to be accurate.

• Automated Site Mapping. This is more of an “under the hood” feature, utilizing the Google XML Sitemaps plugin, which automatically generates a sitemap and updates it whenever I add a new post. This is a subtle feature that helps with search engine indexing.

Last night I was up until 4am researching and installing the above upgrades, and I spent the morning today revamping the design itself. I may have missed something, so please let me know if you notice any bugs, errors, or any details that might look wrong. And of course, I’d love to hear what you think of the new design, and if you have any suggestions.

Here’s a photo I just dug up from the archives, taken back in August 2006 during a 4 day backpacking loop hike in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. This photo was shot with the large format 4×5 film camera, with a 135mm lens. Seeing this makes me want to get back to Wyoming again for a summer backpacking trip!

The International Space Station zooms through the evening sky over Ouray, Colorado as the full moon is about to rise from behind the Amphitheater. The 30 second exposure (24mm lens) shows the streaking path of the space station, which looks like a normal satellite except much faster and brighter.

I just posted some photos from a 3-day loop hike starting and ending in Ouray, Colorado, passing through the vast tundra of the Uncompahgre Wilderness along the way. The spectacular sunsets of this summer keep on coming!

>> Click here to see the photos! <<

Alpenglow on the peaks above the town of Telluride (which is not visible, but is down in that valley below those big peaks).

Sunset behind aspens. Wilson Peak and the San Miguel Range are in the background. You can also see Mountain Village at the left.

This summer has been notably excellent for the quantity and quality of sunsets and sunrises here in the San Juans in southwest Colorado. It seems that almost every night or every other night there’s an incredible sunset. I don’t often wake up early enough for sunrises, except for when I’m camping, but then too I have seen a number of great sunrises.

I’ve had summers here when I’ve thought that there haven’t been many good sunsets/sunrises, but I always thought that I’ve just missed them – that my own timing was off. Only this summer have I realized that the “light” season can be much like a snow season – some are simply better than others. And some, like this summer, are outstanding!

The reason has been the predominately stormy/cloudy/rainy weather we’ve had here the last few months, but there always seems to be gap of clear sky at the horizon which the sun beams through, lighting up those clouds at the last (or first) moments of the day. As far as I can tell, this means that the stormy weather has been mainly located on and around the mountains themselves, while the western plateaus and deserts have stayed clear.

I have managed to capture a number of these fantastic sunsets and sunrise with my camera while hiking and backpacking, but I must admit that many or most of these light shows have just been admired without camera, at friends’ houses or just running outside of my own house in Ouray when I notice the funky light. The two photos above, in fact, were taken from the street right in front of my house on Monday evening. It was raining like crazy most of the day, and even during the sunset, but still somehow the sun snuck through at the last few minutes.

I’m not sure that these light shows will continue, however, with a forecast of clear, sunny skies for the foreseeable future.

On Sunday we hiked/climbed up the fun southwest ridge of Mt. Sneffels to watch the sunset from the summit. The clouds that afternoon were slowly building up in the blue sky, but they weren’t moving much or doing much so I figured we could go for it without getting thundered out. Sure enough, they started dissipating right before sunset, leaving just enough to catch the warm sunset light. Anyhow, check out the photos here!

The route we took passes through four rugged valleys and over three high passes. This is a strenuous wilderness route, seldom travelled, with slight unmarked trails for only about half the way. The rest of the way requires good map reading, terrain intuition, some bushwhacking, and lots of trial and error. This is the third time I’ve done a long high route in the Needle Mountains, and every time I get a bit lost at some point(s)!

Here I am with the camera.

More off-trail hiking, with the ever-present dramatic backdrop.

Hiking by an unnamed alpine lake.

Here comes Claudia!

Never pass up an opportunity for some high alpine cliff jumping! Here I am dropping out of the sky.

Can you spot Claudia? Lots of scrambling through rock fields too..

Claudia stays warm as we watched and photographed the sunrise from the summit of Peak Three in the Grenadiers.

>> SEE MY GALLERY OF PHOTOS FROM THE TREK HERE! <<