Italian Weekend

This weekend, I went on a little trip to the CDT trail near Dell, MT. I don't actually really know where we were, but it was somewhere near the Italian Peaks! The goal of the trip was to get some work done on the CDT (continental divide trail), but the weather had different plans for us. The first night was filled with thunder, lighting, and lots and lots of rain. Same story with the next day and night. The first work day was pretty much just a hike through 3 inches of mud to the work sites, then scraping mud around or cutting soggy branches hanging over the trail. There was some work to do, but not as much as we'd hoped for. And everyone was soggy from hiking in the rain all day. Some work got done though, and everyone had a great time despite the shittyness unfortunate nature of the weather for the day.

Plus there were epic burritos for dinner, which helped a lot.

The next day I was sick in camp all day, but what I've been told is the rest of the group just hiked all day and found about as much work as the day before. The rain in combo with cows, cows, and cows ruined the trail surface, so not much work could be done in those sections, and there weren't all that many drain dips/trees to work on. It sounded like everyone got a good hike in though, so that's a plus! And another epic dinner happened that night in the form of quinoa salad.

Last day was mostly spent traveling, so nothing to report there.

Despite the weather, sickness, and not being able to help on the second day of work, it was still a very awesome trip. I mean the food was great, so what more can you ask for? ;) No seriously, it was a great way to spend a weekend with awesome people.

Of course I brought my camera, and I've got quite the collection of photos and even a little video to share! It's taken me about 4 hours of editing non-stop, and that's a pretty long time to edit for me. Editing every day for almost a year now, I'm pretty fast, and I've had to pull out almost every trick I know tonight to keep things going smoothly. There were about 500 pictures to first sort in picture to edit, pictures to turn into a time-lapse, and then later which pictures from the time lapse to turn into singles and then a collage. A lot was going on in my head. Batching bracketed photos at the same time as editing panoramas, as the same time as batching settings for the time-lapse is like three things at once! Gotta love task switching. Much entertaining to try to keep track of everything. I'll stop things there and just drive into the three photos for the blog, and then I'll give a little lead in into the rest of goodies for tonight.

So first night was semi clear, and the stars were awesome. One of the group left a light on in his tent, and I grabbed my camera for a long expo of the scene. There was a stand of trees behind the hill the tent was on, so I faces sort of at an angle to them so that the tent fell on the lower left third intersection ( rule of thirds if you don't know ) and then the stars would be in the upper right. All about balance people. The shutter was open for 714 seconds (no idea what that is in minutes) at f2.8 and ISO800. Got a wonderful exposure from that. The stars really started to do the spiny thing as I facing due north (is that how you spell it?), and the whole composition became very spherical. The 10mm fisheye I was using really distorted the edges so it looked like the whole photo was circular. Even the hill on the right side and trees were at the right angle to support the composition I was going for. Wonderful.

For editing, I upped the clarity and vibrance. Also cooled down the temp a bit. Not too crazy of an edit really.

Little noisy, but that's okay.

So the next day's pictures might be one of my favorites all year. And I wasn't really even trying! Funny how that works.

After everyone got back to camp and ate, we made a wonderful fire and talked for hours. The whole time I had the camera running a time lapse. One picture a minute, set to Av at f3.5 ISO200. So set up was super easy and I didn't think but about it. I framed the group and fire on the lower right third, put a tree in the upper left, and then put some sky in top and ground filling most of the lower third. All this to keep the balance nice.

In Lr, I did the following. Clarity and vibrance up a lot, highlights down, shadows and whites up. This gave the photo an HDR look, and really brought out a lot of detail. It made the stars and fire really pop out. There's a lot I love about this picture, and I sure just by looking at it you can figure out what those things are.

So on to the final one.

I've said so many times it's worth it to see the sunrise. You should believe me. The sunset is pretty, but you can see the sunset every day. The sunrise is more difficult to see because you have to actually get up when it's dark out! In the summer that is, in the winter it's not too hard but then again you're probably in a classroom when it comes up so.....I digress.

I was up early this morning, and took a panoramic of the sun rise on the hills in the distance. There was this magical purple glow going on, and the rolling hills were just amazing. I simply shot in Av again at f16 and ISO400 to get a fast enough shutter to not get blur since I was at 135mm.

Pano'd it in Ps, then in Lr I upped the clarity, shadows, and vibrance a bit. I also toned everything a bit more purple to match what I saw. I love how it turned out. Not the most dramatic photo ever in the style I usually do, but it something I haven't done much of.

As for the rest of the photos, as usual, ask if you want to know more about one!

See you tomorrow!