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| Messages 1 - 43 of total 43 in this topic |
scottpedition
climber
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Topic Author's Original Post - Feb 14, 2010 - 09:16pm PT
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Snow is melting, the sun is shining, and wildlife is stirring all around the valley.
We started last night with hints of fire in Horsetail Falls and Valentine's red on Sentinel Rock.
I let my sweetheart sleep in this morning while I headed over for few bolt ladder laps on the LeConte boulder. Yowzers; winter has been cruel, and snowboarding with the kids did little to keep those legs in shape. Time to start working some one-legged squats or something.
After lunch, focused switched to Valentine's Day proper, cruising 'round the valley with my sweetie. A little over 19 years ago, we spent a week here, snowed in, on our honeymoon. Today, we ended up at the bridge, and hiked from there up Old Big Oak Flat road.
We even passed a familiar looking van along the way...
Scott
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enjoimx
Big Wall climber
SLO Cal
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Feb 14, 2010 - 09:21pm PT
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Beautiful pictures. Lucky guy.
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Captain...or Skully
Social climber
شقوق واس
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Feb 14, 2010 - 09:27pm PT
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Indeed. Makin' me jones for the place, as if I wasn't already.
'Gracias.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Feb 14, 2010 - 09:30pm PT
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Thanks Scott, some nice photos too!
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ryankelly
Trad climber
sonora
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Feb 15, 2010 - 12:44am PT
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Lovely photos. Was a perfect day in the Valley!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 15, 2010 - 01:25am PT
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I just got back! I'll post some photos too...
...the van was awesome with it's new wheels/tires... probably scared a bunch of drivers passing them on the way out.
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scottpedition
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 15, 2010 - 02:44am PT
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Yeah, it sure is nice having clear, dry roads. Sounds like those new tires made it that much
better.
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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Feb 15, 2010 - 03:31am PT
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hey there scott... say, i had the same word come to mind:
lovely photos...
very nice stuff, thanks for the share...
:)
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scottpedition
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 15, 2010 - 11:37am PT
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Great photos Ed. Is that first one from up towards the spires? And the second near Manure Pile? There were 40+ people hanging out taking photos along Southside the night before.
You caught a wonderful view of Horsetail Fall. By late afternoon, I was thinking it wasn't going to light up due to the incoming cloud cover. Glad to see that I was wrong.
Thanks all for the nice comments; it looks like another wonderful day today. It's great when we get a burst of spring weather in what otherwise seemed like the middle of winter.
Scott
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 15, 2010 - 11:56am PT
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The first photo was taken from the slopes east of the Spires, basically walking up from the Meadows Bridge, across South Side Dr. and finding the first creek bed. The snow's not too bad and you can basically walk on the ground once you get off the flats (though there are icy spots along the way 11S0269005, 4177567, 1296m).
I was with a crowd on the South Side Drive just on the bend of the Merced river (the one west of Yellow Pines, 11S0270055, 4178811) ... it wasn't that red because of the cloud cover,
but Photoshop is your friend....
I'll probably be back sometime this next week and then the following week. Requiring both the astronomical occurrence, the Sun setting with the proper altitude and azimuth with respect to El Capitan's Nose, and a red sunset, with the right atmospheric and meteorologic conditions, makes appreciating Galen's image all the more.
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Srbphoto
Trad climber
Kennewick wa
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Feb 15, 2010 - 11:58am PT
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I hate both of you!
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Mark Hudon
Trad climber
Hood River, OR
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Feb 15, 2010 - 12:01pm PT
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Yeah, you guys are pissing me off!
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Feb 15, 2010 - 12:09pm PT
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Nice photos, both of you!
Love the reflection one, Scott, and
your waterfall on the Captain is awesome, Ed!!!!
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Feb 15, 2010 - 12:10pm PT
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One of the more interesting El Cap photos I've seen for showing up the features right of the nose. Great shadows.
My skis still think it's their time of year so I won't be back in the valley for a few more weeks. Thanks for all the pics.
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Dirka
Trad climber
SF
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Feb 15, 2010 - 01:41pm PT
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Bump for pics!
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Carolyn C
Trad climber
the long, long trailer
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Feb 15, 2010 - 02:11pm PT
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As much time as I have spent there, I am still amazed at the beauty and magnificence of the place...like I am seeing it for the first time, and can't believe what I am seeing. Thanks for the photos.
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scottpedition
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 15, 2010 - 02:55pm PT
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Thanks for the background Ed; that's a great idea to apply the analysis you've done for Moon over Half Dome to Horsetail.
While we're busy pissing people off, here's a couple more with those morning shadows showing the relief. I have a couple of others I like even better than these two, but I haven't had a chance to pull them off the camera yet...
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 15, 2010 - 03:44pm PT
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I'll post an analysis of the "Rowell Fire Fall" shot at the end of Feb, after I do a few more shoots up there...
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Jingy
Social climber
Nowhere
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Feb 15, 2010 - 03:52pm PT
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beautiful photos..
Ed - Great horsetail shot there....
Appreciate that there are folks who have the time to get these photos..
Thanks both the OP and Ed for the horsetail shots.
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Feb 15, 2010 - 08:54pm PT
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Showshoed out to Dewey Pt on Sat Feb 13 for this pano.
Took this sunset pano at the Tunnel on the road to Badger Pass.
Sunday hiked out to Mirror Lake Meadow for this shot. Just as I put my camera & tripod away a large slab avalanche broke loose from the summit above the right end of the black water streaks. I didn't have a watch with me but it was probably around 3 pm. Anyone else see it? It was preceded by a loud rumble that sounded like rock fall by about 5 minutes.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 15, 2010 - 09:15pm PT
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nice images tradster!
the Half Dome image corrected for camera tilt:
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 15, 2010 - 09:25pm PT
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does anyone know what the heli evac was about? here it is leaving around 1630 yesterday
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Feb 15, 2010 - 09:37pm PT
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Ed: I'm curious how you corrected the image. My camera was on a tripod on a rough but more or less level gravel surface. I didn't adjust the legs of the tripod to try to level it. The camera was tilted upward and I was using an 18 mm wide angle lens. I see that the tree is vertical in the corrected image. Are you removing the distortion created by the wide angle lens or because I didn't have the camera horizontal or both?
I did a Google search and found this...
http://www.photos-of-the-year.com/articles/barrel-distortion/
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 15, 2010 - 09:44pm PT
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for camera tilt... in your image the trees are pointed in because the plane of the film is tilted off of vertical... in Photoshop you can select the entire image, go to Edit>Transform>Perspective and then pull a bottom corner in towards the center of the image... usually I watch the trees, and when they are parallel I've got most of the tilt out...
the barrel distortion can be taken out too, it depends on your lens but the lens parameter are probably known if it is a standard lens.... I didn't do that because I don't know what lens you're using...
here is one with my camera of the East Buttress of El Cap:
FujiFilm S5 Pro, Nikon 18-125 mm f/3.5-5.6, at 18 mm focal length, f10 aperture, 1/125 s exposure
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 15, 2010 - 11:42pm PT
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hey ryankelly, heard you up there on Direct, sounds like you were having fun!
It was absolutely perfect weather for being up there on Sunday, probably today too...
That is Cascade Creek...
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Buju
Trad climber
the range of light
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Feb 16, 2010 - 12:16am PT
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last saturday/sunday....climbed both silent line and the gold wall. 2 amazing climbs in AMAZING weather!
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C4/1971
Trad climber
Depends on the day...
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Feb 16, 2010 - 12:41am PT
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Nice images all!!!!
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ryankelly
Trad climber
sonora
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Feb 16, 2010 - 02:10am PT
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Nice photos from Gold Wall.
Ed...thanks for the info. Cascade Creek. I was admiring the Horsetail falls Sunday evening. Awesome to see pictures of it on here. Thanks for sharing.
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Fluoride
Trad climber
Hollywood, CA
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Feb 16, 2010 - 09:34am PT
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Great pics guys!! Thanks for sharing.
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drljefe
climber
Old Pueblo, AZ
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Feb 16, 2010 - 11:20am PT
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Thanks for all the killer shots....they're getting me amped for my trip there at the end of March.
Hope I score those kind of days.
Predictions from the locals?
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scottpedition
climber
One valley or the other
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 16, 2010 - 11:36am PT
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Loving all the stellar shots and knowing that everyone was enjoying the great weather! We saw cars at the woodyard and suspected someone was loving the Gold Wall -- it was a perfect weekend for it.
Dewey Pt was on our list as well, but by the time we got moving that direction, the road to Badger Pass was already closed. Seemed like the road conditions hotline didn't really know what to say "and Badger Pass Road is closed due to... um... uh... because it is FULL".
We saw the evac, but no idea what it was for. When we first saw it, seems like it was way back towards Curry Village, so I'm no sure where the pick up was.
Anyway, here's the last two pics I had...
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top step
Trad climber
Sunnyvale, CA
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Feb 16, 2010 - 01:46pm PT
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First trip of the year! Started out every morning with an amazing view:
Spent most of the time down at the Cookie in the what felt like 70 deg temps. Got really toasty in the corner next to Red Zinger. On Valentine's Day, headed up to Badger Pass for a trip to Dewy Point with no idea what we were getting ourselves in to. After 30 min of waiting for parking, we joined the hoards out on Glacier Point road. Did manage to find a little bit of solace on the ridge trail:
Enjoyed lunch on the point:
Back to the Cookie, hanging out near the river:
It was so warm I forgot what time of year it was and took a (partial) dip in the river! Refreshing/numbing.
On the way home, decided to check out Old Priest Cafe:
Awesome food to end an awesome weekend!
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scottpedition
climber
One valley or the other
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 16, 2010 - 02:27pm PT
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Hey Top Step, that looks like a great weekend. Thanks for sharing! Gotta love a long weekend where you have t-shirt and shorts climbing days bookending a cooler day hiking on the snowpack.
Ed: thanks for pointing out Edit->Transform->Perspective. I had been trying to use Filter->Distort->Lens Correction->Vertical Perspective, which was leaving thing short and fat, although with vertical lines.
Any idea what the difference is? I can't seem to get the same effect with Lens Correction, no matter how I fiddle with it (so I'll use Transform now).
Scott
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TLloyd-Davies
Trad climber
Santa Clara, ca
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Feb 16, 2010 - 02:42pm PT
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Weather was glorious this weekend, I took a friend of mine out who had never seen snow or the Valley this weekend. Weather was great enough to run around in light jackets (and tshirts in the sun) and still enough snow to play in if you looked.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 16, 2010 - 03:34pm PT
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The corrections for various optical effects is very interesting... and it matters just what you are trying to convey in your image, sometimes distortions help in the telling of your particular story.
Yosemite is also difficult in that the narrowness of the Valley, and the limited clear sight lines and the scale of the object all conspire to make things difficult... in particular, we have the prescriptions of Ansel Adams, but he was discouraged from getting too technical in his books, probably because the audience was perceived to be more "artistic" then "technical."
For my photography, which is mostly with a hand held 35 mm camera, detector plain tilt is by far and away the largest distortion. While Adams cautions the photog to have a level tripod, I'm not sure he emphasizes that this is to make the film plane vertical, as it would be in a view camera. In those cameras, you can tip the lens and keep the film vertical...
...tip lenses are also available for 35 mm cameras, mostly for architectural photography... but my guess is that digital manipulation of images is now sophisticated enough to make these corrections in software...
Lenses are designed to take out most of the really objectionable distortions. They are not perfect, and there are sophisticated models for doing this based on parameters characteristic of particular lenses. You can by software to do this, which basically has a library of commercially available lenses for making these corrections. This software also allows you to determine a correction for a lens not in the library, many of the lenses I use, primes, are not in these libraries.
The major issue here is for wide angle lens images which will make straight lines curved. This can be a distraction in images with very regular lines... but the effect is harder to discern in images with irregular edges... I don't usually correct for these, but most of my wide angle images are taken with the Nikkor 24 mm f2.4 lens which doesn't have a lot of distortion. Sometimes when the shots are close and inside a building some lens correction makes the image look better.
Maybe Peter Haan can talk about this too, he seems to have been seriously playing around with these corrections.
The "perspective" corrections are rotations in 3D... the lens "corrections" are higher order polynomials that take out the effects of the lens, which are primarily spherical expansions of the images around the lens axis.
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Feb 16, 2010 - 06:52pm PT
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Mike: glad someone else witnessed the avalanche off HD on Sunday. It was an awesome sight and sound. Where were you when it happened?
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The Alpine
Big Wall climber
Tampa, FL
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Feb 18, 2010 - 12:00pm PT
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Pics?
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Feb 18, 2010 - 02:32pm PT
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bump for HD avalanche pics
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Feb 18, 2010 - 02:37pm PT
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The "perspective" corrections are rotations in 3D... the lens "corrections" are higher order polynomials that take out the effects of the lens, which are primarily spherical expansions of the images around the lens axis.
Ed's completely correct on this but let me try to simplify.
Take a flat object and look straight at it. Now tilt it. The object is still flat but due to perspective (remember perspective in line drawings?) it will appear distorted. This is what you see when you look up at a tall object close by (such as a tall tree or a big wall). It's why someone further away looks shorter than up close. The top of the tree is much further away from your eyes than the base. It's why you can clearly see the haulbag at Stovelegs and can't see it at the top even with binoculars.
It's why tradster's trees are tilted towards each other (further away objects like the tops of the trees appear closer to each other)
Perspective is easily corrected in the image with basic image editing tool, because it's a linear function. That's why Ed was able to correct the image.
Perspective is different from lens distortion.
The most commonly seen lens distortion is "fisheye" when a "closeup" lens is used. You've seen the deliberate fisheye effect in many popular images where straight lines away from the center of the image appear to be curved. in some images the outside "straight" lines even make a circle.
This is entirely due to lens distortion, independent of (although can be combined with) perspective. Lens distortion is much harder to correct because it's non-linear.
OK, so I probably didn't make it any simpler or more obvious.
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Feb 18, 2010 - 05:26pm PT
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Awesome photos Mike...thanks for posting them. As mentioned above I was at Mirror Lake meadow when this happened and got a clear view of it but didn't get my camera out of my pack in time. Did you also hear what sounded like rockfall ~10 minutes before the avalanche?
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