Adventures of a Quantum Cowboy

This last weekend was probably our most rigorous hike yet. About 10 miles roundtrip, with a nice 1800 ft climb thrown in. I was worried about being too cold this time of year, but I needn’t have worried. It was a pleasantly cool day in the San Gabriel Mountains, cloudy but mostly sunny, and about 60 degrees.

The hike was Trail Canyon Falls, in the southern part of Angeles National Forest. The trailheaad starts near the big bend in Big Tujunga Canyon Road, and tracks more or less northward for about a mile and a half to the top of the falls. From there we continued on down the trail for several more miles, climbing all the way… with some fantastic views as a reward!

The trail decends somewhat into a shady forested area right up near the stream, where we had lunch on some rocks. Very moist and green, with soft earth covered by leaves; it definitely reminded me of northwestern Washington. A little further was Tom Lucas campground, where unfortunately we couldn’t stop due to the 40-some Sierra Club members taking up every available space. So we turned around and headed back down the mountain.

Fantastic variety of birds… I *really* need to get a field guide. Oof… and a good workout too.

Woodpecker Chillin. He let me come quite close before flying off.

Trail Canyon Falls at a Trickle. I assume the falls pick up in the spring, but gorgeous anyway.

Dancing Water. Tried to freeze the water splash in the exposure while blurring the outside. Didn’t quite work the way I visualized it, but I thought it turned out pretty neat anyway.

Mountain Adventure. I really liked the way the light was coming down through the clouds.

The Eye of Sauron? Holy crap I was freaked. But it *is* pretty.

Golden Reflections. Sunlight reflected in water always attracts me… “Oooo flashing lights…..”

Duke of the Forest. This fantastic photo op was dumb luck. I was actually putting my camera away in the trunk of the car at the very end of the hike when suddenly I hear a loud squawking. Looking up, I see this Red Tailed Hawk perched atop a pine tree quite nearby. I got several shots of him, the best of which I think is this one where I moved to put the moon behind him. There are others where he’s looking up at the moon which are cool too, but I can’t post them all! What luck… its almost like he wanted to have his picture taken.

All in all, the best yet, both for hiking and photography. I will definitely be coming back here in the spring and fall. Highly recommended hike!

TRAIL STATS:
Mileage: 10
Elevation delta: ~1,800 ft
Time on trail: 5.5 hrs (including lunch and some water breaks)
Nearest highway: CA-2, Big Tujunga Canyon Road

Last weekend Darin and I decided to start the hiking season early and hit Devil’s Chair, which is a bit of a hike from the more commonly visited Devil’s Punchbowl. These fascinating rock formations are so named for the one’s striking resemblance to a sinister throne of rock on a sort of natural altar in the middle of a canyon which happens to be somewhat bowl shaped. I have to admit the rocks do look like floating ice cubes in the right angle and lighting. We hadn’t planned for the temperature at 5500 feet however, and after about 3 hours we decided it was a bit too cold to continue in our present attire. Managed to get a few good shots along the way however:

Footsteps in the Sand. Perhaps some sort of bird?

Pretty Blue Bird. Can anyone tell me the type of bird? Man I’ve got to get a field guide or something.

Red Plant. Don’t know the name of this one. Anyone?

Acorns Underfoot.

Melting Ice Cave.

Mountain Soaring.

Remnants of Ice.

TRAIL STATS:
Mileage: 7
Elevation delta: ~1,500 ft
Time on trail: 3.5 hrs.
Nearest highway: CA-138

Thanks to my wonderfully fantastic and loving girlfriend, one of my roommates and I recently had the opportunity to watch the US-Denmark international season kickoff game from VIP midfield seats. w00t! Aren’t I lucky?

Denmark scored first against some lazy US defense, and things looked grim. But the Americans got a break on a penalty kick and evened the score for the half. Spirits lifted, the U.S. midfield (and to a lesser extent the forwards) made up for some defensive foot-dragging and managed to finish 3-1 against the Danes. A fine start for the U.S. in their first international game of the season, but they will need to shore up the rear line before taking on Mexico in Phoenix in a couple of weeks, or they might be in for a disappointment.

In between cheering and getting more beer and nachos, I was able to snap a few shots of the action. Oof, I need to get better at using my camera settings… of 127 photos taken, only about 30 were worth keeping, and few were spectacular (even by my standards). I guess that’s why we practice… it was a good experience, for both my soccer and photography passions.

Due to some extensive cropping that I needed to do in order to get the composition I wanted, most of these were cut down to 2.5 - 4 megapixel… as such unfortunately large size prints are not recommended, though normal sizes should come out fine. Clearly I need a longer telephoto? Hmm…

GO TEAM USA!

Gameday Goods.

Donovan Busts a Move.

The Danes Let One Slip.

And the Crowd Goes Wild!

Boswell Fires a Bullet.

And the Danes Can’t Compete!

Whew, that sucked… redeveloping everything. Anyway, I may still take a few wierd or bad pictures, but if something looks egregiously off from now on, please let me know. Hopefully that monitor setting tweak did the trick.

By the way, if anyone has the same configuration or similar (HP zv5000 w/ NVIDIA GeForce4 440 Go 64M) the (pretty darn close) correct settings are in the screenshot below:

Right click on desktop, click “Properties”, click “Settings” tab, click “Advanced”, click “GeForce4 440 Go 64M”, click “Color Correction” at left.

Previously uploaded photos from the new Canon will be temporarily unavailable. Apparently my laptop’s graphics driver settings turned out to be significantly off visually from that of most monitors and prints. This of course means that my sunrise and sunset photos were significantly off in terms of exposure level and color balance. If they showed up as looking severely under-exposed and way more red than they needed to be, well that was why. Using a printout from one of my photos I have manually retuned my monitor to settings that are much closer to reality. I will post a notification when the photos have been re-developed and re-uploaded. Sorry for the inconvenience and the crappy images.

As promised, sunset pics are now available.

Clouds at Dusk.

Desert Dusk.

Treeline at Sunset, 110th St. East.

Joshua Tree at Sunset, 90th St. East.

Mojave Sunset, 90th St. East.

It’s been frustrating trying explain to people how beautiful my commute is without pictures, so today I left for work about half an hour early (at, as my girlfriend would say, “the buttcrack of dawn”) in order to be able to shoot some photos of the sunrise. The following images were taken near 120th St E. and Avenue I in the Antelope Valley, between Palmdale, CA and Edwards AFB. It really is out in the middle of nowhere, and of course the stillness out there once the car engine was off only added to the atmosphere. It was really cold though… like say, 12 degrees. And of course I don’t have a pair of gloves dexterious enough to operate my camera, so basically I nearly froze my fingers (and come to think of it, the camera). Worth it though, eh?

Crow Delivers the Day.

Crow at Dawn.

In the Bushes at Dawn 1.

In the Bushes at Dawn 2.

Had to get down in the dirt for the last two, must have looked silly. Oh well. Stay tuned… sunset pics from the same day and location coming soon. Oof, these things take so much time to process right!

With all the hiking and photography I’ve started doing lately, I thought it was time to move all such related stuff to their own blog, reserving my main site for more bland things like personal updates and rather uninteresting political rants.

All posts before this date were transferred from my main blog, and were from hikes and travel using my old Fujifilm point-and-shoot; many of the photos below are not even mine (as indicated in the captions). From now on, I aim to display only original work done with my new Canon EOS 400D, and maybe post some interesting travel essays to go with them.

I’m very much an amateur, and do photography as a side hobby only. I have much to learn about this amazing art, of which I have only recently begun to scratch the surface. Feedback, comments, and constructive criticism are welcome.

Enjoy!