You can find and download a copy of these photos at flickr: HERE.

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If you download any (or just enjoy this website) and are feeling generous, you can click the donate button in the sidebar to the right to help maintain this website.

Steve’s picture deserves to stand alone because, after hearing about Dan Lyons from my blog a few days ago, he cut and donated his hair to Locks for Love.

Steve cut his hair for Locks of Love.

I’m really enjoying my experience with the new lens. I’ve never had a telephoto zoom so I am learning where I need to position myself (usually pretty far away) to the subject to get the shots I’m looking for. It is pretty heavy but I also have a Manfrotto monopod that I’ll use for it on any wedding jobs, etc. to take the weight off of my arms.

The flight from yesterday was incredible. My best climb was at 6:30pm! Everyone launched after about 5pm. It’s crazy how late in the day it was. I was cruising at cloud base (6,000′) towards Chattanooga for several miles before I turned back and did some aerobatics. It was enough that I could hardly lift my head up when I landed, my neck was so tired from holding my head up during the aerobatics because of the G’s I was pulling. I did wingovers all the way down from about 4,500′.

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Film/Animation

1. I really enjoy Patrick Bovin’s work, this one is no different.

For some reason the embedded video isn’t working, here’s the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CVYOCMpJRY

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Inspirational

1. I was introduced to what I think is the most famous street graffiti artist recently. I really enjoy all his work: Banksy.

2. This is being reblogged from Francesco Mugnai’s blog. I really love seeing photos like this that you just want to keep staring at them.

DENIS DARZACQ

IVO MAYR

JULIA FULLERTON-BATTEN

LI WEI

LISSY ELLE

NAM

ROMAIN LAURENT

MISS ANIELA

TOBY BURROWS

MOHAMMED AMINE NASSERI, MAGDA KLUKOWSKI

So we decided to try for Mount Elbert which is the tallest mountain in Colorado at 14,433′. We spent the night close to the trailhead in the well established camping area of the San Isabel National Forest. We woke up early to start up the standard route, the Northeast Ridge.

It was beautiful hiking, up until we were postholing through snow near the treeline at 12,000′. It was really slow going through that area. Carson even resorted to ‘ninja rolling’ to get through the terrain, which means he looked like he was practicing the stop, drop, and roll. Punching through the snow with almost every step, up to your hip, was exhausting and felt like you were falling through a trap door every time because it happened so quickly.

The rest of the hike was gorgeous. We only saw two other people all day. On the way down I decided to try some glissading which you can see in the video was a ton of fun (and by my crazy laugh). I think it probably took about 9 hours of hiking roundtrip, including rests.

We also went and saw the Great Sand Dune National Park and we also headed over to Golden, CO and I got to check out the flying launch there, which is also named Lookout Mountain. Wish I had brought my gear for flying, next time I will. We also got to see JB Smoove in stand up in Denver, he’s probably most famous for THIS scene in a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode.

The crew with Elbert in the background

Follow the yellow br... I mean sign

Carson trying to get out of a posthole and Eric mocking him by walking away.

Just out of the treeline.

Carson.

Eric.

Summit.

Leaving the summit in our dust.

Shortly after this steeper section we started glissading

Watch your step.

BJ Herring climbing out.

Liftoff.

Great Sand Dunes National Park

I used the Rode VideoMic hooked up to the Zoom H4n for the audio – there will be some noise reduction to do as the HVAC system was on full humm during the interview. I also got a chance to use the Glidetrack. One thing I got burned on was the 12 minute limitation of the Canon 7D during the interview, I missed about a minute of Dr. Haskell talking. BUT, with doing the audio separate, I still captured the audio of it, even though the 7D video burned out after 12 minutes, another bonus to using separate audio with DSLRs!

Haskell and owl skeleton

Photo from Glidetrack's website, I have the longer version of this

We interviewed in the new (year old) Spencer Hall. It looks like a great place to have class and study – plenty of room and natural lighting.

Spencer Hall

I was happy with the images I got out of the 7D today, everything you see here are screen grabs from the video footage, except that picture of All Saints which is part of a timelapse. Stay tuned for the video, it should be up and viewable by the end of the month! And the other’s will follow in the next few months – Yea Sewanee’s Right!

The 'hero' shot of Haskell

Darwin's Garden - has a path that warps around it in proportion to the geological periods

Sewanee Seal

Morgan's Steep Sunset

All Saint's Chapel at sunset, this is part of a timelapse

What I mean is the fact I was on top of the hill and the road fell away from the image and gave me the ability to get the road and the sunset in the shot together, but also because it had been snowing, the road was wet which reflected the sunset. It goes back to the adage that the best camera is the one you have with you (I also didn’t go to this spot to take a photo, I just happened upon the situation). I didn’t have my Canon 7D so I used my iPhone and tweaked the photo in some Apps: TrueHDR, Cropulator, TiltShift Generator.

This is the image I talk about:

So I spent several days filming and had a great time. It was my first trip to that area and they gave me a nice tour. We spent some time in and around Sonoma and Napa wine country getting footage of vineyards, a winery, their office, and then headed up to Tahoe for some skiing.

I will be making 4 videos for them: one about who they are, one on how they’re environmentally conscious, one about the wine itself, and the one overall video of all these things.

While I was there I also visited the Youtube head office! I think I’m going to do a quick youtube video about my visit there. I also just became a ‘Youtube Partner’ which means I’m eligible to gain revenue from ads displayed on my videos. Some of the most popular people on youtube make a very good living just off those ads, but then again they usually have over a million subscribers – did I mention you should subscribe to me?

It wasn’t the most ideal time to film there since it wasn’t harvest time or anything, but I think we got some decent footage to work with. The 7D performed well, and I continue to be happy with that camera. It was crucial to have a neutral density filter with me on this trip and the one from Light Craft Workshop worked great. There were some tricky shots where I was pulling focus, panning the tripod head, and adjusting the ND filter ring all in one motion, very challenging, but fun.

Below are some images taken from my trip, enjoy! And stay tuned to see the videos I put together for them. They should be done if a few weeks. Also, you can follow their company on twitter here.

In the end, Nick chose 11 of the 20 photographs I sent him, but he might use the others individually later on. One image I have saved for a while is of Eric Donaldson diving the ramp at LMFP. I have saved this image just for the magazine’s photo gallery and didn’t even post it to my blog when I took because I wanted it to be fresh when people saw it. But . . . Nick didn’t choose this one to go in the gallery so I’m posting it here. I’m also posting a couple others that I like that weren’t in the gallery either.

When I took the picture of Eric I tried to time it just right, and I was frustrated I missed the moment. I cut off Eric diving the ramp. Then the image grew on me, and I’m glad I missed the “picture-perfect” moment for the one I took. I like how he’s just hanging there in the corner of the frame with hardly any one on the ramp knowing what is going on looking in every direction.

Eric diving the ramp. This is one of my favorite hang gliding pictures I've taken since I've started flying.

Eric below me, with Terry way below us - crossing over Nick-a-Jack Lake on a day when we flew from LMFP to Hensons, and Terry and I landed only a few thermals short of making it back to LMFP.

Break down area, fire-pit, and pavilion porch at LMFP. Don't whack or you'll have to kiss the cement goat all the dogs pee on.

Scott on his bag. I was surprised this wasn't included in the magazine since it was the only paragliding shot I had.

This update is to let you know about the 365 photoblog I’m starting tomorrow. It will show up on my tweets that are in the right sidebar as My Tweets, but will have a link to my Tumblr blog: http://lucasridley.tumblr.com/

I decided to do it over there, instead of here, so it wouldn’t bog this site down too much. I’ve already started with some pics over there, trying to get warmed up. It will be a mix of iPhone and Canon 7D pics.

The reason for this is just to use my camera every day, and try and continue to look at things differently every day and capture what I see. I imagine it is not going to be easy, and some pictures might be down right boring, but I hope it will inspire other ideas and work I’d like to do.

After going 0/7 in all the contests since I won HP, I think I’ll take a break from the video contests. I am going to try and think of a few small projects I would like to do, but in reality I think the contest bug will get me again and I’ll just end up doing more of them.

Here’s the ping-pong wrath of my brother-in-law from today’s game, I ended up winning though:

Ping pong to the head anyone?

A month or two ago, after a Treetopper’s board meeting and a quick sled run at Henson’s, I stopped in Chattanooga to take some timelapse photos while the sun was setting. The park scene is like condensed people watching, I like seeing different things each time I watch it.

The clouds and the night sky were recently shot in my front yard (thanks Eric W. for calling me to tell me about the cool clouds), and the parks in Chattanooga are Coolidge and Renaissance Park (where the hill is). That hill is pretty cool. Kids, and adults, go there and somehow cardboard manifests itself and people use it to sled down the hill – very fun to go see and try out for yourself.

When I went with a couple people we lined up a row of cardboard from the top to the bottom of the hill and slid down that instead of trying to use the cardboard as a sled, we used it as a slip n slide, without the water.

The music is by Cat Stevens, the song is “Father & Son.”

I hope to do more of these in the future.

See some Canon 7D shots I took this morning on a walk below all these videos that I thought people might find interesting:

Found this from Cross Country Magazine‘s facebook page. This guy is like a human Transformer:

Big film news is Fede Alvarez, who got a big movie deal from his awesome short film. Read the story HERE. This is the short that got him noticed:

It’s a similar story to what happened to the District 9 director, Neill Blomkamp, who’s short film that got him noticed by Peter Jackson scored him a big movie too. See his short here:

Cool websites I’ve found:

• DoLectures.com – sample lecture from a graphic artist here: http://www.dolectures.com/speakers/speakers-2009/geoff-mcfetridge
• Motionographer.com – very cool place to find little animated shorts and other film art
• Philip Bloom – very cool photographer to follow