Fire on the Mountain

Holly and I have been up at her parents house in Brigham City this weekend. While watching the end of a football game Saturday night a lightening storm started. Cool those are always fun... until the mountain side catches on fire less than a mile from the house!! It started small but the wind picked up and it started to move fast, but at least it was going away from the house. Seeing this as a great photo opportunity I grabbed my camera and started to follow it. I got within about 100 yards from the fire and was able to get some decent shots. I found the exposures difficult to nail considering the conditions. The wind soon changed directions and the fire wanted my spot so I decided it was probably a good time to run down the hill and back to the house. On the way towards the barricade (I guess by getting to the fire by going along the canal I had gotten in an area I wasn't supposed to be...ooops) a newspaper editor was trying to take pictures. She asked if they could use some of mine so we'll see, I may get some pictures published from this whole affair. In the end Holly's parents house is safe and the fire was finally controlled and put out.

Update: Ok, so after getting these home and looking at them on a better monitor I realized that unfortunately they weren't as good as I'd hoped. I think the slower shutter speeds combined with the longer focal lengths (and probably the whole situation) caused for blurrier photos than I would've liked. Oh well, I'll know to bring a tripod next time.

The view from across the street behind the neighbor's house.


Up with the firefighters where they are setting up their fire line.


Taken just before the wind shifted and I had to run outta there.

Google is so Cool...

During a search I saw google's new header and it reminded me of the cycling that I've been doing lately. A while ago I blogged about riding my bike to work. Since then, I upgraded bikes (I'll post pictures soon) and have been riding fairly consistenly. It's a fun way to exercise and I'm suprised how fast you can get going on a bike (so far my high is 40.7 mph)

To give a quick update on life, Holly and I got everything moved to Vegas and are adjusting to everything except the heat. I'll post pictures of the apartment, area and life in general as soon as I get a chance to take them.

The Daily Plate

Have you guys seen this website, www.thedailyplate.com? Before I found it I had been using an excel spreadsheet to track calories on my own. This site does it all for you and best of all it's FREE!! After you create an account it will keep a calender that you can update with foods you eat and activities you do throughout the day. It's a great resource for looking up the nutritional information in foods at restaurants. If you can't find something you can add the item and it's nutritional contents. You'll have to check it out and if you join look me up and add me as a friend. My profile name is Fastenta.

Weekend at the Movies

This weekend I had to make a trade. In order to go see the Dark Knight with Holly and her Mom, I had to go see Momma Mia the next day. It's a good thing the Dark Knight was AMAZING because Momma Mia was horrible. I would only recommend it to those who are heavily sedated or if you love choreographed dancing and singing to ABBA songs. (I didn't fall into either of those categories).

Back to the good part of the trade, the Dark Knight has got to be one of the best movies of the year.
I thought it would be tough to top Ironman but it easily surpassed it. Heath Ledger did an awesome job (I was worried when they cast him...Brokeback Batman???) and gave a very good psycopathic spin on the Joker. All of Batman's gadgets were up to par and I thought the movie was well written and very well directed.

There's already rumors for a third. If they consulted me I'd have them bring in the Penguin and the Riddler for the villians. I'm thinking they should get Johnny Depp (he was rumored for the Joker's role but after Ledger's performance I think they made the right choice) to be the Riddler but I've had a hard time coming up with a good Penguin. Most actors who fit into the "short and fat" category are comedians making them a hard sell for a serious villian. Nevertheless, I think a deranged and dark Jason Alexander could be a good fit if it's not too much of a stretch. I'm sure whoever they get and whatever they decide to do it'll be on par with the first two and make for another awesome movie.

San Francisco Pictures (I know they're old)

These are some images I found on my hard drive tonight that I hadn't yet developed. I must've been in a black and white mood with some tints thrown in. These were all taken in San Francisco back in March with my E-500 and processed using Adobe Lightroom.

Logan Car Show

Over the 4th of July weekend Holly and I went with her family to go to a Logan Car show. There were lots of cool cars. Below are some of the pictures I was able to grab among the crowd.

A Few More from Seattle...

It's taking me forever to get through these.

Brigham City Heritage Arts Festival

These are a few of the shots I took when visiting Brigham City last Saturday. They had this arts festival where people displayed their vintage cars and sold locally created art.

Skoda

In case you haven't seen this yet. It takes baking a cake to a whole new level.

A Few More From WA...

I'm getting around to working on more of my photos from my Washington trip. I'm also experimenting a little with some different types of post processing.