Crabtree Falls

Charlotte Vanverdeghem is visiting us from France this week and next. Next week we'll be at the O RO Ranch (expect photos when we return!) but for now, we're hanging out at home and doing stuff in the area. Yesterday, we braved the near 100º temperatures and hiked Crabtree Falls. Here's a photo of the lower portion of the falls. I'd taken my tripod in the car so I could shoot the falls with the neutral density, but some wiseguy told me there wasn't any water. And I believed him, since it was and had been so hot. This is handheld at 1/10 second; still has nice motion blur, even without the multi-second exposures possible with the ND and tripod. No good for pixel peeping, but plenty good at lower resolutions.


Here's another picture of the lower falls, with Charlotte in the foreground. Another handheld 1/10 second exposure - Charlotte held nice and still for me.


At one of our breaks, I caught her taking a picture. She was on top of a rock and I was below her shooting up. Despite the angle, it looks natural, and the angle generated fantastic fore- and background blur. No Photoshopping here - this is straight from the lens (with minor color correction).


It was hot, but there was a decent breeze near the water, which the trail followed pretty closely. So in spite of the heat, we pressed on and made it to the top. There, we had lunch and enjoyed the view before heading back. It was hazy, which was too bad, but the view from the summit was still impressive.


Tracy, however, refused to smile when I took a picture of her and Charlotte.

iPhone 4 Camera

Got an iPhone 4 last week - wonderful device. The antenna problem referenced around on the 'Net is real, which is a shame; I expect Apple will recall to fix it. Nevertheless, it's truly worth seeing if you've not seen it yet.


Tracy and I went for a walk this evening. It was sprinkling, which was okay, as it's been really hot lately. On the way home, though, the rain stopped and clouds broke up. There was a gorgeous rainbow framed by the pale orange of the sunset on the clouds to the East. All I had was my iPhone 4 on hand, but I got some very respectable pictures.


These are with no post-processing at all. The brightest part of the rainbow blew out in orange and red, which was a pity, but still, the lighter bits came out well.


The biggest problem I ran into shooting these was the lack of exposure control. Or, more precisely, the lack of an exposure lock. I'm so used to being able to tell my 5D to meter here and take the picture there; the iPhone doesn't give you that. So the framing wasn't quite what I wanted.

But I have to agree with whomever first said that the best camera is the one you have with you. I'd have never gotten the rainbow nor these gorgeous pictures of the layered clouds bottom-lit by the sun: by the time we got to our street, the colors had already all faded.

Bike Updates

We got my bike back together yesterday; here's a picture I took this afternoon of it all put together. No pictures of me on it at the moment - I'll need to get Tracy to take some tomorrow.


I rode to work today, which was fun and a little terrifying at the same time. It's a lot like learning to drive a car again. Or, even better, like learning to drive a manual when you've been driving for a bit but only automatics. There's a lot of trying to make sure you're doing the right thing at the same time as being safe.

Tracy went to Goochland today to pick up her aunt's bike to borrow for a bit until her dad's bike is fixed. So now we both have bikes! Here's Tracy sitting on the bike before she rode it up and down our street a handful of times.


Then we drove over to Barron together, paused there ('cause we'd gotten separated), and then drove along Hydraulic to Four Seasons and back home again. So basically around a short-ish loop. It was fun and enough for Tracy for this evening. We hope to do Free Union Road early Saturday morning (so there won't be many people out and we can go nice and slow).