I had this shot printed and made into a 18″ Fracture.

Overall, I’m extremely impressed with the quality of the Fracture. The print arrives in very handsome packaging and includes all the mounting materials to hang the print on a wall. The print itself is simple. The image is printed onto a sheet of glass which is then backed with a thin layer of foam core. Fracture claims that their method of printing provides “vibrant, rich, and glossy colors” behind a glass plate that is scratch and fade resistant.

The print that I definitely meets these claims and met my expectations. Color reproduction was accurate, although I feel that the print is a bit dark. It’s always recommended to bump up the brightness of an image before printing it, as most computer screens are backlit, and I think the extra layer of glass might require a extra bump in brightness.

The glass layers does seem to make the colors richer and more vibrant, however, and I could easily tell the difference when viewing the image on the wall. The print resolution was also excellent. I had some concerns that when viewed through the glass the image would end up being soft, but the details and lines of my print were just as sharp as the original file.

Given my experience with this test print, I would not hesitate to order a Fracture again and I’m hoping to offer it as a print option for ordering from this site.

It’s been an unnaturally warm, windy, and dry winter in southwest Montana. Pre-season, the weather guys couldn’t stop talking about how this “La Nina” winter was going to bring more banner snowfall, cold temps, and winter conditions to much of the northwestern part of the country. That prediction has failed miserably. Bridger Bowl has received 88″ of snow to date, and Big Sky isn’t much better at 127″. Snowpacks in the area are running at around 70-80% of their usual depths at this time of the year. To say that the area needs snow badly is an understatement.

Despite the lack of new snow and the continued failure of the weather forecasters to predict anything close to the correct forecast, the snow that we have received is skiing pretty well. I worked out of the Bowl at Big Sky on Sunday and, despite the 30-40mph wind gusts that rocked the lift station, the skiing was great. The Triple, Shedhorn, and Dakota all went on windhold for most of the day, leaving the 20+ skiers who happened to be uphill from the Tram at 10:45AM as the only ones able to access it for the rest of the day. Bowl and Summit patrols and those lucky 20 essentially had their own private 11,000′ mountain to ski for the day. The high winds were buffing out the snow constantly and moving it around so that each run was on smooth, grippy hero snow. Great stuff.

The forecast for the foreseeable future looks like more of the same, but as long as it doesn’t deteriorate, I’m more than happy with what we have on the mountain.

View 1.29.2012 Big Sky in a larger map

Bridger was eerily similar to the East Coast today. The snow on the lower mountain was very heavy and wind-affected. Anywhere that the wind was able to scour was scraped down to hardpack and was almost unskiable. I hiked up B-Route once to Sluice Box. It was a gorgeous bluebird day and the views from the top of the Ridge stretched from the Tobacco Roots to the Crazies and the Absarokas. The skiing improved the farther down I skied. The upper narrow part of the route was heavy, clumpy snow that rapidly lightened and became much more skiable. Well worth the 1st trip up the bootpack but not necessarily worth a return trip.

There’s a couple of inches of snow in the forecast for the area over the weekend which might do a lot to freshen up the snow. However, we still need big storms and lots of them.

View 1.27.2012 Bridger in a larger map

I drove up to Bridger Bowl this morning for my first day there this season. It snowed for a while overnight and Bridger was reporting 7″ this morning. Conditions were very soft, deep in places, and rocky in places. South Bowl was a minefield with good snow covering bare rocks. I only managed to ski one run before the power went out to all of Bridger Canyon. I was halfway up Pierre’s Knob and made it to the top on the diesel backup.

Patrol had no idea when power would be back so I raced up the Fingers bootpack ahead of the crowds for one run down the 3rd Finger. Only one person had been down before me and I took an alternate route through some tight trees and scored knee-to-waist deep powder down the entire chute. My legs were toast from a full patrol day at Big Sky the day before and the bootpack was jammed up so I headed home.

View 1.22.2012 Bridger in a larger map

Driving up Gallatin Canyon on my way to work this morning, I was despondent. at 6:30 AM the temperature was 42F and it was pouring rain. Very much par for the course for this winter. Last week a strong storm pounded Montana, delivering record snowfall in most of the major cities. Bozeman and the surrounding area recorded under an inch of snow.

Lone Peak, however, was operating under its own weather system. I turned onto the access road and immediately the rain turned to snow and intensified. I crawled up the road at about 15 mph because it was snowing so heavily that I couldn’t see much more beyond my headlights. This pounding snow continued all day until about 1pm and then resumed at 2pm.

The Andesite complex was skiing extremely well all morning, with about 4-5″ inches of heavy powder on top of the groomed terrain from the night before. As the day went on the temperature dropped and the snow got lighter and fluffier and the skiing improved. I spent the afternoon at Shedhorn and the glades and trails were skiing incredibly, albeit with some areas of thin cover. All in all, an excellent sleeper powder day.

Driving back down the canyon at the end of the day, the snow at Big Sky turned to rain in the canyon and then back into a blizzard around the Lava Lake bridge. It’s still snowing heavy, wet flakes in town. Tomorrow should be just as good.

In a non-skiing related tone, I edited all the images in this post with the just-released public beta of Lightroom 4. Although I’m not fully switched over to it yet (and likely won’t switch until it’s officially released and I can import and convert my Lightroom 3 library), I’m pretty excited about the new beta. Adobe’s Tom Hogarty has a pretty good interview on the changes and new features here, but in my brief experience with it so far the newly tuned sliders seem much improved and the mapping function is pretty neat. I’m also excited about the inline video viewing and editing tools that this version provides.

On Boxing Day we hiked out to Long Point Light in Provincetown, MA. Long Point Light is located on the very tip of Cape Cod and guards the entrance to Provincetown Harbor. It is located in the Province Lands of the Cape Cod National Seashore. Parking for Long Point is available at Pilgrim’s First Landing Park (Click the link for a Google Map and Directions). I parked there for several hours up until and after sunset and didn’t have any trouble, but this was off-season so YMMV during the summer and possibly before sunrise.

Leading straight away from the parking area is a mile-long breakwater that cuts a huge section out of the hike. Some of the rocks are slightly unstable and might be slippery/covered in guano. Also, be sure to check a tide chart before hiking out as the breakwater can be underwater at high tide.

You can see Long Point Light for the entire walk along the breakwater and the route to the Light is very obvious. Just follow the shoreline. Depending on the tide, the hike can be kind of complicated. A channel cuts through the dunes about halfway out to the light and if you have to cut all the way around the channel the hike will be much longer and take way more time.

View Larger Map

We chose to splash across the shallow water and made out just fine and on the hike back the tide had gone out and there was no channel to deal with.

The lighthouse itself sits in the dunes. There’s a small hill just to the southwest of the lighthouse with a memorial cross and a small clearing.

The way the point curls around, the sun sets behind the dunes to the west somewhere near Wood End Light and rises to the east over the open ocean.

There’s a good view of Provincetown and on a super clear day I’d imagine it’d be possible to see Boston. There’s interesting aspects to shoot all around, including some old pilings from a pier. There is one annoying solar panel sitting next to the lighthouse which is kind of a pain, but I’d imagine that could easily be photoshopped out.

It’s a five-mile hike if you can walk straight along the shoreline and it took us two and a half hours roundtrip, not including shooting and setup. Hiking back in the dark along the breakwater was entertaining, too.

I was lucky enough to shoot both sunrise and sunset on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve sunrise I spent at Beavertail State Park. As I was driving home for Christmas Eve dinner along the beach in Falmouth, the sunrise started going off and I pulled off the road at the first place I could find. Bristol Beach is not usually a location that I would pick for a sunset shoot as there isn’t much interesting going on there, but I managed to find an old set of pilings and used the tele end of my 18-200 to frame Nobska Light behind the sun.

The cool thing about Beavertail is that the lighthouse is right at the top of the point that makes up the State Park, which means that it can be interesting for both sunrise and sunset.

I also used my new D200 with a borrowed 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 this morning and took some long tele shots looking out into Buzzards Bay. I really like the flexibility  that having a long telephoto lens (especially on a crop body) gives in terms of composition. Not many people use tele lenses for landscape photography but I try to always check out what the long focal length can give me in terms of unique perspectives.

The rest of my shots from the morning are in the gallery below.

January

I was home for Christmas vacation and went to a Bruins game before heading back to Montana.

February

I skied ALOT in February, including a backcountry trip to Mt. Blackmore in the northern Gallatin Range.

March

In March I took my first trip to Grand Teton National Park and met up with Scott Hotaling (Light of the Wild) for some skiing and early sunrises.

April

It snowed pretty much the entire month of April at Big Sky Resort and I skied more days than I ever have in a single month.

May

In May I drove cross-country from Montana to Massachusetts and saw this epic double rainbow as a huge thunderstorm was clearing in eastern South Dakota.

June

June was the first month I spent splitting my time at an apartment in Cambridge, MA. Living in “the city” was a great experience and I really enjoyed my time there. Plus, the Bruins won the Stanley Cup!

July

July was HOT. I spent time in York Beach, ME and Martha’s Vineyard.

August

In August I drove back to Montana from Massachusetts and stopped at Stonehenge in Nebraska.

September

I spent every weekend in September in Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park exploring and shooting wildlife and landscapes.

October

I spent the month of October shooting cyclocross races across Montana.

November

In November I finally met up with a group of photographers from NSOP to shoot the sunrise at Elephant Rock in Westport, MA.

December

Christmas! Spent the holidays visiting the Newport Mansions and spending time with family at home on Cape Cod.