I’m sitting here listening to the near constant roar of motorcycles driving by today.  Hell’s Angels are in town this weekend for their annual gathering.  This year it’s in Missoula.  I can’t decide whether I want to walk around town and check things out or get out of town entirely.  I’ll probably do a little of both.  I’ll probably walk around a bit early this evening.  It’ll probably be pretty quiet since the majority of Angels won’t be here yet and I’ll be avoiding all the drinking establishments.  Then, tomorrow, I’ll be heading up to Glacier for at least a night…probably two.  I’ll get back into town on Sunday when things are beginning to quiet down.  I don’t really think things will be that bad.  From what I’ve read, the gang usually doesn’t cause many problems and are pretty well-behaved, but occasionally there are exceptions.  And actually, from what I understand, the last time they were in Missoula in 2000, it was the police that got a little out of hand with the locals.  The chief of police ended up getting fired because of it.  Apparently, the gang can cause problems even when they’re behaving.

So this weekend, I’ll be avoiding either Hell’s Angels or grizzly bears.  Which is worse?

Allison Leach shows us how to shoot on location under bright sun.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve posted a pretty good sample of pictures on my website, wanderinglightphotography.com.  All the good pictures from the first month and the first couple of days of July are posted in the RMSP category shown on the home page.  I’ll probably be posting most images there from now on and only post blog images or images from my phone on Flickr.

Looking at what I’ve taken so far, I realized I don’t have many wide panoramic type shots of the mountains yet.  I need to work on that I think.  I may have to head up to Glacier this weekend.  We’ll see.

In other news, I’ve declared that I’m not spending any more money on photography equipment this summer.  I just spent another boat load on a carbon fiber tripod and new tripod head.   My old tripod is just too heavy to carry on long hikes.  I needed something lighter.  My new Gitzo tripod only weighs 2.1lbs plus another 1lb for the tripod head.  My old tripod legs weighed more than that themselves not including the head.  I think I cut the weight in half with this purchase…and probably my bank account as well…just kidding. I still have plenty of money left for the summer and fall.  But I won’t if I keep upgrading gear, so I’m done…for now. :)

I’ll be back in the studio tomorrow shooting still life…

Tomorrow night, we have a guest speaker: Peter Read Miller.  You’ve probably seen his work if you’ve ever picked up Sports Illustrated.  I think he’s going to talk to us about sport photography…just a guess.

Mosquitoes are eating me alive so I’m done shooting for the night.

Edit:  Camera phones don’t work so well at night.

Mt. Sentinel is currently burning.

Details will come at a later date. :)

I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I’ve been keeping pretty busy.  So here’s a quick recap on what we’ve been doing in school.  We’ve basically covered the technical side of photography at this point and have started to move into the creative side of things now.   We’re learning to critique photographs and discussing what makes a good photograph.  We’ve also had our first print lab where I got to print out a couple of my photos.  It’s amazing how good they look when you have a good printer. 

We also had some more studio time, this time working with multiple light set-ups.  I’m not really getting into the studio work.  I’m finding I like shooting outdoors much better…big surprise, I know.  One of the last technical concepts we covered was the color zone system.  I’m finding that it makes my life much easier when shooting.  In the last week or two, I’ve found that I can get the exposure right the first time on the majority of my shots rather than having to take additional shots to make adjustments.  I think I’m finally making some improvements here. :)

Last weekend, much of our class went to Augusta, Montana to shoot the rodeo.  I ended up with a few good shots, but the majority were not as great as I hoped, primarily due to the lens I was using.  The 50-500mm lens I have just isn’t very good.  So the following Monday, I cracked open my wallet and bought the Canon 70-200mm f2.8L IS lens and the 1.4x teleconverter.  It’s not as long as the 500mm obviously, but it’ll work in most cases and will give me much better results.  It’s a very nice piece of glass.  And just for fun, I bought a Lensbaby 2.0 as well.  If you’re unfamiliar with those, you’ll see some shots from it in a week or two.  It’s a lot of fun.

Speaking of photos, I’m way behind in my processing, which is why you haven’t seen many being posted lately.  I’ve started catching up so you’ll start to see new stuff being posted little by little in the next couple of days.   The moon shot above is from the middle of June when the moon was full.  We had to stay out until about 11:30pm before it was high enough to clear the mountains.  My 500mm worked well for this type of photography so I guess I’ll keep it around despite having the new lens.  There’s a few more shots of the moon on my Flickr stream.  The shot to the right is from a old growth cedar grove I visited during the second or third week here…I forget when.  Days and weeks are starting to run together now.

Tonight, I’m going to try my hand at photographing fireworks.  With any luck, you’ll get to see any good shots I get by the end of the month. :)