fun with photoshop

i realized recently that because of scott's student status, we can get education-related discounts of software ... specificially adobe cs5.5 design standard, home of indesign, illustrator, acrobat pro, and photoshop.  i acquired that little bundle for myself for $229 (around $1300 without the student discount) as an early birthday present and have been having a delightful time with it.  i'm working on a project in indesign (more on that at a later date), am utterly confused by illustrator ... but photoshop.  oh, photoshop.

my first stop was to download the pioneer woman's action sets (here for the photoshop cs versions, or here if you're an elements user like my dad), look through some of her action set tutorial posts, and start playing.  for some of the actions, you just press a button and it's done, for others you get to play with settings.  i have yet to do anything other than using actions in photoshop yet, but it's an easy first step in learning how the program works since it can be super intimidating opening up photoshop for the first time.

one of my favorite pictures thus far, entitled "swinging in sunshine":
before:

and after:

i'm kind of captivated by it!  i'm sadly not sure what all steps i took - i saved it in jpg format (which deletes layer information, ie the things that tell you what you did to the picture) rather than photoshop's format (psd) so that i could post it on facebook.  clearly next time i need to save it in psd AND jpg just for good measure.  i think i used pioneer woman's boost, seventies, bring on the eyes, and sunshine ... maybe more, maybe less.

pre-use pack review

got my mountainsmith tour lumbar pack in the mail today, and having tried it on for a grand total of 10 minutes thus far - i like it!

since i hadn't looked at them in stores, i was unsure how big or small it was going to be (other than the fact that i knew it's only like 488 cubic inches, but it's hard to visualize what that really means).  it looks a little smaller than i had hoped, but once i put my camera and extra lens in there, it actually felt more spacious.  we just got scott a camelbak backpack a 100oz water reservoir and 1500 cu. in. of storage - ie, he'll have more than enough space to carry most of our food and whatnot on hikes, which he has typically been doing anyway.  in addition to my camera and extra lens (and i may end up finding it unnecessary to carry both lenses), i have compartments for two water bottles, a strap on front that i can hook my rain jacket or extra layer onto, and two big-ish pockets for things like cell phone, keys, bandaids, map/compass, and still have plenty of room inside for some snacks and other incidentals.  not to mention, if you've ever seen my purse you'll notice that i tend to fill whatever space i have available, and i really don't to be lugging around a massive, heavy pack.

scott asked if i'd like having the weight around my hips, and i think my answer is a resounding yes!  it honestly felt way more comfy to me than backpacks usually do.  granted my backpack to date has been the jansport i've used since high school - thus i've never used a properly sized backpack with the waist belt and chest strap and all that to really distribute the load - but i usually find hiking with a backpack draining and end up with really tense shoulders.  when i'm actually on a trail for a few hours above 10,000 feet, ask me again how i feel about the lumbar pack, but so far i think i'll like it.  as i was playing around with the tour, i noticed that adjusting the side compression straps distributes the weight more evenly against my back, which is handy.

we have a meeting on saturday morning, but afterward scott wants to head up to the mountains for a short-ish day hike ... as long as our plan pans out, i should be able to give you an action-shot and full review next week!  and hey, if i end up thinking it's too small and hating the experience, i can always sell it on craigslist for probably close to what i paid (since i got it for around half off online) and upgrade to the 854 cu. in. mountainsmith day pack.

bargain hunting

in case you're curious what i decided on scott's ipod situation, i opted for choice "d) none of the above": a newer shuffle for his birthday, procured (used) for about $20 off on ebay!  i decided on this largely because i'm curious what features the new nano will have - specifically, if they'll add a built-in app for the nike+ like they have with the touch and iphone 3gs.  if they do, great; if not, they'll still have dropped the price on the current 5th gen nano to close it out - either way, i can get scott a nano for christmas either at current price or (likely) lower, and if we want, we can sell the birthday shuffle on ebay.

bigger bargain, though: a hiking pack!  i've been in debates about this for a few months - constraints on my pack purchasing have included 1) the fact that i'm short and have a small-ish frame (ie, men's sized packs don't fit me well, and a good fit is kind of key for longer hikes), 2) i have a dslr i'd like to be able to take hiking - but i also want to be able to fit things like layers and water into my pack, and 3) i'm picky.  i'd been leaning toward a lumbar pack for ease of use with getting camera in/out and the fact that they allegedly work better for women since the weight is around your hips rather than your shoulders - center of gravity and all that.  anyway, in my recent infatuation with amazon.com and their wishlist feature, i've been stalking the mountainsmith lumbar packs for a while now, and today happened to notice that the price range on the recycled tour pack started at $34.37.  the only color they had for that price is the cobalt blue which may not have been my first pick, but hey, those packs normally retail for $70 (although amazon seems to have them for $58)!  for 40-50% off, i'll take not-my-first-color-pick.  plus, free shipping and free returns, so if i get it and hate the color or find it won't work for me, no biggie!

next up on my list is finding an inexpensive neoprene camera sleeve (i'm envisioning the dslr inside the neoprene camera sleeve, and then rigging up velcro to keep the sleeve in-place-but-removable inside the pack) and i'll be ready to go for our summer adventures!

i want sunshine

in honor of denver's second winter storm warning in a week (5-10 inch forecast this time), i am officially looking forward to summer!  we still haven't made any plans or reservations yet (but it is only march), but i am researching.  the three specific things that have me excited for warmth and sun:

1. my parents got me a subscription to outdoor photographer magazine*, and the april edition has a fabulous article about the national parks.  there are some beautiful pictures, and it reminded me of all the fun we had exploring our lovely state last summer (even though we didn't hit up any national parks).  and, it got me excited to play with my lovely new-to-me nikon d50 this summer.
2. today i was reading an article about the rockslide on i-70 up in the mountains, and it mentioned its proximity to the hanging lake exit, which reminded me that scott and i have wanted to go hike hanging lake for the last four and a half years, which reminded me that we want to get daypacks since both of us are still rocking the jansport college backpack, and then THAT reminded me that i need to figure out the daypack/dslr thing.  the daypack/dslr is slightly challenging only in that i want to have water and normal daypack stuff - layers, food - in my pack in addition to my dslr and maybe an extra lense, but a lot of packs i was initially seeing were these $200 monstrosities with spots for the huge pro-size camera bodies and like 5+ lenses, and that's just not my style.  so i've been shopping around online for packs, and i think i'm coming up with some good options, including getting a neoprene pouch for the camera and just putting that in a normal daypack.  anyway, back to why this gets me excited for summer - bike rides and hikes and camping will all be enjoyed much more with more appropriate gear ... plus i'll get to play with my lovely nikon d50!
3. daydreaming about where we'll go this year - i think i've mentioned before that we've talked about yellowstone, durango, and aspen among others.  i also want to go to the black canyon of the gunnison, and to the grand junction area, and and and ...  i think we've mostly nixed the long distance travel vacations for this year, which i'm fine with - i'm looking forward to road tripping around the region!

* - outdoor photographer also had a neat article in the march issue about shooting abstract bird pictures that looks like a lot of fun to play with.  (btw, parents, i got my first issue of op on my birthday, three days after i got your card mentioning it ... and then got my second issue a week later!)

how did i not know this?

scott's parents got us a nice digital camera a few years ago for christmas - i think i posted a few months ago that i realized that i can play with the aperature and shutter speeds and things like that.

fast forward to this morning, i was looking at flip video cameras because a tiny pocket sized camcorder sounded like a fun thing.  i was checking out the video resolution, then wondered what kind of resolution we have on our current digital camera (which also takes video!) - found our camera's manual online, and it turns out that we have 640 x 480, which is the same as the non-hd flips, thus, is probably not too shabby.  nix the flip from the christmas list.

as i continued to scroll through the online manual, though, i got to pages 108-109 and stopped short.  could it be ... ?  no ...  wait, but that picture  ...  i can get lenses for my point-and-shoot camera!  fuji sells a special lens adapter that fits around the existing lens, then it has special lenses that fit onto the adapter.  i think that they only have two lenses - a wide angle and a tele angle - but still, that's better than my current nothing!  i frantically googled around, and heaved a giant sigh of relief when i found that you can still buy the lenses and the adapter.  i've been itching for a nice dslr, and maybe someday will get one, but in the meantime, i've got a sweet point-and-shoot with lots of pseudo-slr capabilities.  i'll probably continue stalking the pioneer woman's site in hopes that she'll do a dslr giveaway again someday, though, not going to lie.

elbert in review

last weekend was our mt. elbert adventure - and it was pretty fabulous! scott was totally surprised by the rafting, we both really enjoyed it, and scott ended up being the only person to fall out of our raft ... in completely calm water, after we bumped up against a small rock. granted, he had taken his feet out of the footholds and wasn't really paying attention. i laughed. i did not, however, get any pictures - you obviously can't take your camera on the boat since you're getting soaked the entire time, and they do take pictures of your raft as you go through one of the rapids, but it was $20/picture, and it just wasn't worth it since we didn't know the other people on the raft. maybe if the whole raft is buddies and you can split the cost of one picture ... oh well, we have memories!

i ended up feeling a little bit sicky friday night/saturday morning, so we nixed getting up at 5am to leave on the hike of mt. elbert and attempt to summit. scott offered that we could do a light hike that day and try to summit elbert on sunday, but i was fine with just doing a hike on elbert rather than needing to summit. plus we had small group at 6pm on sunday back in denver and i really didn't want to go to group totally exhausted and covered in sweat. so we had a fun time hiking on elbert on saturday. pictures, of course:

1) hmm, thought that would be bigger. oh well - it's a profile of the elevation of our hike. i put a little red arrow to show how far/high we got ... about 2000 foot gain over 2.25 miles. and other 2.25 miles/2500 feet to go. we were both glad we nixed the summit plan.

2) we had a pretty sweet view even if we didn't make it to the top.

3) we got within view of south elbert, at least. i should have marked it on the profile shot, but it is the little peak (just over 14,000 feet) that then goes into the camelback before the summit. so you climb climb climb, little plateau, climb up to south elbert, then drop back down before climbing back up to the summit. yeah, we got stuck back in the climb climb climb stage.

after we recovered from the hike, scott built us a fire in the private little fire pit we had next to our cabin, that happened to be right on the black cloud creek. while he did that, i took pictures of the creek and the waterwheel and played with my camera settings. here, i was discovering aperture and film speed. (my camera's a little limited - aperture range is from f/2.8-8.0, and iso range is 100-800.)

4) iso 800, f/2.8

5) iso 100, f/8.0

i finally settled in to read next to the fire with scott, but i saw a plant and i just couldn't resist playing with my newfound aperture skills.

6) ooh! the top is f/8.0, the bottom is f/2.8. neato.

now that i knew how to do cool close-ups, i just had to do more.

7) this was scott's favorite picture of the weekend. i'm pretty sure i had my camera camped out on iso 400, f/2.8 at this point ... plus i was using the special "close-up" button.

8) and this was one of my favorites! you can see scott sitting by the fire back there.

then i sat back down for a while, but as it got darker and the fire got bigger, it was just too much to resist, so i grabbed the camera again.

9 & 10) another two of my favorites. having to choose a favorite picture is like having to choose a favorite child, i swear. i'm incapable of doing it.

anyway, so saturday was very well documented. sunday we decided to just take a little hike on a trail towards interlaken (a turn-of-the-century resort on the shores of twin lakes that's no longer running, but had some restoration work done a few years ago). we forgot to get directions to the trailhead from the binder in our cabin before checking out, so after driving back and forth for a while, we stopped at one of the two stores in twin lakes and got directions. the chick said that there's a road about a mile before the highway that leads to the dam - you turn in there, park, and the hike is along the colorado trail. okay, good. we drive back that way, see a little road that leads straight to the dam, and there's a little parking area right at the base of the dam and it looks like a footpath across it. we parked, i saw a sign off to the right noting the colorado trail, good. we start across, and quickly come to some no-trespassing signs. hmmm. well, this is where she told us to be, and oh look, there's a biker coming this way off the dam, it must be okay. so we went on our merry way. halfway across the dam, we see that maybe a 1/2 mile down the road, there's a road that turns in and leads to the other side of the dam, and that there's more parking over there ... oh well, we're already going this way, no biggie. ahem. as we approached the other side, i see a guy in a gray uniform climbing up the rocks at the side of the dam, looking at us. hmm. i glanced at scott and thought, "we're so busted." lo and behold - i guess the federal government takes its dams very seriously. so we got arrested and had to pay a $7000 fine.

just kidding! the security guard was a total jerk at first, making really snide comments like, "oh, aren't you so glad you saved the gas money by not driving down to the entrance, but there's a $3500/person fine for trespassing on federal property," etc. it was a simple mistake! he took down the info on scott's driver's license and wrote down my name/dob since my license was back in the car, and said he'd turn over the info to the fbi to investigate us. and told us that if it was higher security, he'd have to call in backup and put us down on the ground and have us searched. oh, and we weren't allowed to walk back across the dam to our car - we had to walk the mile back down the road. and he wouldn't give us a ride. he was nice enough at the end - told us to enjoy our hike, etc. i hate getting in trouble, so it kind of freaked me out, and made me very mad at us for not taking the signs seriously and mad at the biker who didn't bother to mention that you'd get stopped at the other end of the dam for trespassing. (and mad at the security guard for being such a jerk to us at the beginning - seriously, you don't have to be mean to me to make it stick that i did something wrong. tell me and i'll feel really bad and won't do it again, i promise.) scott thinks it'll be fine, though - we didn't get a ticket, and according to scott, they won't just send you a bill for a $3500/person fine without arresting you or something first. we'll see. maybe i'll have a note on my permanent criminal record - "7/19/2009, walked across a dam wearing a backpack."

so, that was my weekend! whitewater rafting, hiking on a 14er, playing with my camera, and a brush with the law. whew. hopefully we can at least nix the brush with the law part on our trip to steamboat next weekend.

how is it july already?

thus begins our tv-free month. we talked about cancelling cable for the summer since nothing's on, which spiraled into the idea of just ditching tv for the month of july. last night scott helped a friend move and i went swimsuit shopping, but we got in an episode of the closer and one everybody loves raymond before turning it off. i'm excited for us. i don't think we've ever done a tv-free month - scott did a sports-free month a few years ago - so it'll be a learning/growing experience for sure. one of our goals for the summer was to start reading the bible more together, so i think this will help us get in the swing of things. plus we have yard work, sunshine to enjoy, a pool to go to, plenty of fun things to do in denver ... and two vacations this month. (we also need to figure out how to limit internet for the month too, since it would make no sense to turn off the tv but still be camped in front of our computers all month ... maybe just e-mail at home and that's it? tbd.)

the weekend with my parents was really fun! we finally drove the length of guanella pass, which was beautiful, went to the botanic gardens, took in a free jazz concert at city park, grilled out and enjoyed our new patio set, and played a few rounds of boggle and scrabble (i won them all, of course). i took plenty of great photos, which are currently sitting on my laptop at home (with the bluegrass fest pics) waiting for me to sift through them and get them posted. maybe i'll do that at work tomorrow since no one will be in the office ...

speaking of photos, my dad brought his dslr out and let me play with it a bit. i've been wanting a dslr for a while, but have never used one before, so he explained some of the iso and aperture settings to me - fascinating stuff, let me tell you. since things often make more sense to me if i can either write them down or see them in writing, i went over to check out the pioneer woman's photography blog to see what she had to say. lo and behold, there's an entire section dedicating to dumbing down cool manual settings. as i was looking at my dad's camera this weekend, i had sudden realization that my point-and-shoot camera has some of those very same manual settings! since i do not have $800 stashed away to drop on a dslr at the moment, my plan is to see what i fun things i can do with my current camera while saving my spare pennies and trying to soften scott up to the idea of buying me a super nice camera. obviously there are limitations to my point-and-shoot, such as not being able to switch lenses, but i can at least teach myself the basics in the meantime. i think i do need to upgrade my memory card, though, since i'm still using the 256mb card the camera came with. oh 2004.