Gnome bike tour / June 15, 2011 by Eric Dacus

The Salt Lake Arts Center has put on an event called Lawn Gnomes Eat Your Heart Out, and some friends biked along a route through Salt Lake on Sunday to have a look at some of the art. Some of it was pretty neat, some of it wasn’t at the address listed, and some of it, well, wasn’t that interesting. Great excuse to bike through the city.

Also great excuse to load up the medium format camera and burn two rolls learning to shoot film. I really liked the process. The Pentax 6x7 I’ve got borrowed is manual everything: focus, exposure, winding, etc. It does have a pentaprism meter which helps a lot. The sunny f/16 rule does work pretty well as does the Pocket Light Meter app for iDevices. There is a definite anticipation associated with dropping off your film and having to wait to see how it all turns out. Also interesting is only have 10 exposures per roll… makes you think much harder about when you’re going to fire the shutter.

/ June 15, 2011 by Eric Dacus

Off the Summit on Flickr.Not necessarily the steepest drop-in ever, but so satisfying to ski off a summit. — Off the Summit on Flickr.
Not necessarily the steepest drop-in ever, but so satisfying to ski off a summit.

Build your business around an idea / June 15, 2011 by Eric Dacus

People want to be part of ideas. Being part of a company who builds a successful product is cool… but being part of an idea is a lot more attractive. If you can build a business where both your employees and your customers think they’re part of an idea, you’ve created something special.

/ June 14, 2011 by Eric Dacus

Skiing the Pfeifferhorn / June 13, 2011 by Eric Dacus

With softer snow conditions and better info that the south aspect of the Pfeiff is an easy ski descent (no cliffs to dodge, no rappelling, etc), we had to go back and try after last weeks tour.

Views like this of the mountains here and the morning light are always worth the early starts.

The snow was much softer this time, so we didn’t need the crampons until we got onto the east ridge, which made getting there much faster and easier. Good conditions make all the difference.

Now that the crampons are on, this is where we were headed.

Summit! Great view of everything around.

It felt really good to top out and to know there was going to be good skiing on the way out. I used to count a tour as a “good one” when I didn’t telemark-face-plant, very rewarding to know that time and effort can pay off.

From here we had to skin back out of whatever drainage this was back into Red Pine and back to the car. We skied passed several hikers/snow-shoers on our way down, given the soft snow, we felt bad for them (sort of).

Mt St. Helens (Part II) / June 12, 2011 by Eric Dacus

Memorial Day, and we went back for more.

A better forecast, wands and a really strong desire to not have to drive the windy road (ever) again.

The clouds closed in, and we got to spend some more time in a complete white out. Who knew you could feel vertigo while skinning up hill?

Summit!

After sliding down the crusty snow for the first the several hundred or so feet, we got below the clouds and could see again.

Several thousand feet of fun turns.

Fantastic trip.

Lights / June 11, 2011 by Eric Dacus

via Hipstamatic

Just because.

Mt Hood / June 11, 2011 by Eric Dacus

Day 2 of the Memorial Day weekend skiing outside of Hood River.

We had a forecast for the next day that included 100% chance of 1-3” of snow and possible thunderstorms. So we didn’t get up super early, and didn’t bring all the mountaineering gear, figuring we’d at least get up past the Hood Meadows ski resort and get a few turns in on fresh snow. Why push it when the weather is going to be bad?

Blue skys and Mt Hood sitting in the sun. It did eventually snow, but, not till the afternoon.

By now the clouds had started moving in again, and the familiar whiteout conditions ensued. We decided to go back up for one more lap since it wasn’t too socked in yet.

Feeling like we got Hood-faked with the weather, we went in search of beer & pizza. Double Mountain brewery and pizzeria did not disappoint.

We were all pretty tired after two days of skiing this much in a row.

The Dirtbag Diaries / June 10, 2011 by Eric Dacus

Great podcast, and they seem to be picking up some good momentum recently. There’s an Intro to the Dirtbag Diaries that’s a good place to start if you haven’t been following along.

A few of the episodes that have stuck around in my head:

The Great White Book

Go West

A Successful Life
Felt so strongly about this one, I had to take photos and write about it.

/ June 9, 2011 by Eric Dacus

“It is cool, it is a proper engineering-orientated motor sport.”

—

"Every year the two manufacturers are raising their level,” said Wurz. “It gets into really high-end stuff now, the way they are doing their testing, their research, their wind tunnel.”

“In some respects we are at a higher level than in Formula One here, because we have no testing restrictions and we do an extraordinary amount of testing, which I am only used to doing in the crazy Formula One days from 2000 to 2005,”

Audi and Peugeot Square Off in Le Mans

Mt. St. Helens (part 1) / June 8, 2011 by Eric Dacus

Over a long Memorial weekend Carl, Zach, Rich, Mike and I went to Hood River, OR in search of ski descents off the volcanos there. We started with Mt. St. Helens. The first outing went like this:

Get in the car at 4am. Raining.

Drive to St Helens trailhead. Now 6am.

Still raining.

Start hiking (in the rain).

Once we got above about 4000’ it stopped raining and turned to wind and snow. Thankfully there were occasional windows of almost sunshine. We got to an arbitrary rock of a highpoint and due to the wind, whiteout and firm snow, we turned around at 6200’. We were then pleasantly surprised to get good turns starting around 5000’ and another window of sun to boot. Great fun.

Good learning experience (I took a lot out of my pack afterwards).

Lots of collective motivation to keep everyone moving, and to go try something the next day despite an awful forecast.

Think Tank Photo Retrospective 20 Review / June 8, 2011 by Eric Dacus

A new favorite camera bag.

Lots of very well thought out space, modular velcro dividers, comfy shoulder strap and its not black!

The quiet tabs really help being discrete.

Lots of space.

On a recent trip, it held a 15mm, 24mm, 35mm, 28-135mm, a 70-200mm and the 5d body (no lenses attached). In addition, an iPad fits perfectly in the back sleeve. All the chargers, card readers, cards and spare batteries fits nicely in the front pocket.

Most of the time I’ve got a flash, pocketwizards, two lenses and the 5d with a lens attached. This works out pretty easily, and less cluttered than carrying all the lenses listed above.

I have been using it more for walking around and events, and its great for this. I wouldn’t want to use it hanging off a rope for climbing shots because without a waist-belt it doesn’t seem as secure.

My only main complaint is that the whole thing can collapse around a heavy lens and make things a little difficult to change out lenses without having to open the bag a bit.

Think Tank Photo Retrospective 20