Well it took me a week or two longer than I wanted, but I put together a collection of what I think are some of my better images from 2009. These images represent a cross-section of the places I visited and some projects I experimented with. Highlights include a two week trip to China, vacation in Montreal, and a road trip from Albany, New York to Dallas, Texas.
This idea was inspired by a series of posts on this blog which I read from time to time. Here is a specific post with a bunch of other “best of” posts and gallerties. Enjoy.
I hope everyone is having a nice Thanksgiving vacation. I am home visiting the family. My parents have been hosting our family’s Thanksgiving holiday since I was a kid. Food was great, tons of Turkey, meatballs, briscuit and of course some sweet potatoes. I did get a 3 mile run in before dinner. It helps our when you take your second helping of apple pie.
So I am in the market for some new ski gloves this year. After roughly 12 years I feel it may finally be time to replace my Reusch Racing gloves. I love my old gloves, full leather and they held up forever as you can tell. I may go with another pair of Reusch but I have been looking at the Hestra offerings. Anyway, check out this review on the Hestra Heli 3 Finger glove, raw, uncut and unedited. Enjoy!
These gloves are just crazy. I use them for skiing but they would be great for snow boarding because you get the pointer finger unlike mittens but they are way warmer than gloves. The hestra people are just genious! So what you look like Yoda, you will stay warm and alot of people think these things look sick (like me). I’m only 13 (well I’m 14 now but when I was using them I was 13) and when you’re younger your hands get colder and my hands got cold only once on a chair lift going to the very top in Utah when it was crazy windy but seriously, any grown man would still be warm. They are really long which is good because when you bite the dust, you won’t get snow in your gloves. The leather palms are really nice and really really tough and pretty grippy. These are well priced for the quality but blowing 100 on gloves can sound crazy to some people but these were sooooo worth it. These are all you need unless your in like the north pole. haha well I love these things and anyone and everyone who skis or snowboards should just buy them.
Saturday was a lovely fall day. Mel and I went for a day hike up to the summit of Westkill Mountain in the Catskill Mountains. We left early in the morning as it was almost a 2 hour drive. When we left there was a thick fog covering downtown Albany. By the time we got to the trailhead the fog was gone.
I am back from last week’s road trip to Dallas. In an earlier post I talked about the first night where we drove from Albany to Buffalo. The next day was our longest drive of the trip. Our trip was from Buffalo to Louisville, Kentucky. It took us around 8.5 hours with a quick stop for lunch. We still had enough time to enjoy dinner at a nice Cuban restaurant and head downtown. We went to an area called 4th Street Live. In case you couldn’t figure it out, it’s on 4th St. in the city. Read the rest of this entry »
Mel and I enjoyed a great day down in Woodstock, New York. We started off the day with a hike to the summit of Overlook Mountain. This is very fun hike, it’s about 5 miles round trip so it’s not too long. It’s also not very difficult, basically fire roads almost all the way up. At the summit there is a working fire tower which you are allowed to climb to the top. You can enjoy terrific views from the summit as you are above all the trees.
Check out my previous post which shows a video I put together. Below are some pictures from the day. I will post more of when we were walking around town.
I am back from my road trip to Dallas, stay tuned for a final write-up on that. I had a great time driving down with my brother and helping him get settled in his new place. I finished editing this video before I left but didn’t have a chance to post it before I left. This was the first video I put together where I planned out the shots I wanted and roughed up a storyboard before I started shooting.
I had a great time filming and thoroughly enjoyed the hike. The views from the top of the firetower were spectacular. The firetower on Overlook Mountain is one of the few remaining firetowers left in the Catskills Mountains where hikers are still allowed to claim to the top. From the top you have a great 360 degree view of other Mountain tops, Albany and can look in the general direction of New York City.
My road trip to Texas started today after work. Around 3:00 today I realized that I wasn’t going to get everything done that I wanted to for the day. Actually I realized that around 10:00 but I tried to convince myself it could happen.
I did take a break after lunch to open a package I was expecting. It contained my new Canon 50mm F1.2 lens. I will write a post after spending some time with the lens but after mounting it on my Canon 5D Mark II, all I can say is WOW. This lens/body combination just feels right in your hands. The weight seems perfectly balanced. Read the rest of this entry »
I know I have posted in about a month, it has been a busy summer. Weddings, work, enjoying the nice weather once the month of rain was over has gotten in the way of posting some new content. Never fear, I have some new projects and ideas planned which I will be sure to post about here.
Some of you probably know that my brother is moving down to Texas to accept a promotion at his company. The time has finally come, he will be leaving in a week. Instead of letting him drive down straight through I decided to turn it into a little road trip and make the drive down with him.
I haven’t been to this part of the country so I figured I would make the most it. We are planning on extending the trip by a day or two so we have some time to stop and enjoy sites along the way. Read the rest of this entry »
As a quick little getaway I headed up to Montreal to catch the tail end of the 2009 Montreal Jazz Festival. If you like music, I suggest you take the opportunity to check out this event. The festival basically takes over a major part of the city for about two weeks. The festival isn’t just about Jazz, though that is obviously a major focus. They have tons of other types of concerts, performers, art venues and general festival goodness throughout.
As you may have saw in a previous post I stayed at the W, Montreal. What a great hotel. It was right in the heart of downtown. It was a very easy walk to the main festival grounds, Old Montreal, St. Catherine Street and basically everywhere else you want to visit. Read the rest of this entry »
This weekend I got to test out my one week old Canon 5D Mark II. First off, yes this camera is awesome. I’m not going to write a review on it as there are tons already out there that go into extreme detail. Suffice it to say the high ISO images, superb images on the full frame sensor and the 1080p movie mode are welcome improvements from my Canon XSi. I’m not knocking the XSi, I still plan to keep it around as a backup and to let the girlfriend use it.
Back to the fireworks. Last year for the fourth I shoot fireworks up at Alexandria Bay in the Thousand Islands. You can see that flickr set here. Overall I was impressed with some of the shoots, but I was excited to see what I could come up with this year. The fireworks in Albany are set up from the Empire State Plaza. I decided to set up shop just across the Hudson River. I had a perfect view of the fireworks along with the larger buildings to better frame the shots.
