Photographic meanderings

Mountain Pride, or Penstimon, in sunset light on Sentinel Dome.

This bank of fragrant azaleas can be found at the west end of the El Capitan meadow. The fragrance is wonderful, a mix of oleander and honeysuckles. It’s especially wonderful after a rainfall!

My new Tamron 18-270 mm lens arrived yesterday, and so I headed out on 120 to try it out. The Vibration control works up to a point, and is very useful. What delights me is the zoom capability; it’s like shooting with my Olympus C765 again!

This was shot at the west end of the El Capitan meadow, a pullout on the right.

Be sure to click through to see the larger size of this. Shot from just below Sentinel Dome on June 4th, 2009. I stitched this image from two shots.

I spent the morning on the El Cap bridge with Tom Evans of ElCapReport.com. He’s a congenial soul, dealing deftly with “tourons” while sharing images and shop-talk with me. I suffered serious lens-lust over his 800mm Canon lens, fitted with an adapter to his Sony camera body. I also was impressed with his sand-bag ballast, draped over the camera. It was a ziplock bag filled with sand! Gotta love that DYI photographer mentality.

Tom easily greeted climbers, got names of people on the wall, shared information on the teams on route. He seems to be someone the climbers check in with after their climbs.

One set of climbers obliged him by posing for the “hero shot”, in bare feet:

Congrats on a safe and successful climb to Ben (in green) and Travis (in white).

Thanks to Tom for the shop-talk, the poster, and a grand view of the graceful and elegant Nipple.

Greg tells of a sprint around the lake to get this shot before the light was gone. Good job, Greg, and thank you for allowing blogging.

Moonrise over El Capitan, December 24th, 2007

This shot isn’t very good technically, to be honest. But I still love it because it looks like Half Dome is holding a conversation with the little tree on the right.

Trees reflected on the Merced River, framed in ice.