Jet Boat makes its way up the race course on the Salmon River

One of my favorite events each year is the Salmon River Jet Boat Race on the lower Salmon River at Riggings, Idaho. I shoot a lot at this event, but this is one of the events that I do communications for, so photography is on a secondary basis. Two days on a rescue boat, isn’t a bad way to spend a weekend, but it’s also a bit like work.

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Jet Boat on Salmon River

A car crosses the stage 15 finish line at the 2010 Idaho Rally

Very few people know that Idaho has a rally race, it’s somewhat new, but gaining in popularity. This was the first year that my schedule allowed me to work this event, but I hope I can make it again. For me this was another dual purpose event as the safety communications were provided by area ham radio operators (i.e. me). So much like my yearly trek to the Jet Boat races, I’m there primarily to handle communications. That dictates where I’m at and what I’m doing, safety and communications always comes first. But, it’s hard to talk on the radio when a loud car (or jet boat) goes by so usually communications and photography coexist nicely. For this event I was at the finish line for stage 15, the last of the mountain stages, only one stage remained at the fair grounds.
As for the radio communications side of things, this one was tough, the finish line was a dead area, the nearest spot I could get a radio signal out was a mile away. So I had to turn my truck radio into a repeater, park and walk the mile back up the creek to the finish. (So much for having my truck at the finish with the AC running waiting after we closed the road). I used my handheld through my truck repeater, through the main repeater and back down to the start line on the other side of the mountain — a bit of a pain, but it worked. One of the cars (a non competing rally car) was nice enough to give me a ride back to my truck afterwards.

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Idaho Rally

This weekend also happens to be a ham radio contest, the 7th area call district QSO Party (7QP). I only worked the contest for a couple of hours total, but had some good contacts. It was also a great chance to think about and plan for Field Day.

I had planned to work until I got a contact in every 7-land state; Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana. I thought I was done after making a contact into Wyoming which was a tough find, I even shut off the radio and power to get ready for bed. But I wanted to count states and contacts before so my wife and I read through the list, both realizing that I hadn’t made a contact with another Idaho station. It wasn’t going to be very easy either, most of the folks I had talked to told me I was the first Idaho station they heard. But I turned everything back on and searched 80 meters for a local. Eventually I heard KE7ADU from up in Boundary County (350 miles north). He was replying to stations calling CQ and working his way up the band, I went a few khz up the and started calling him, thankfully he found me and I got my own state. With Idaho on the log, it really was time for bed. As it is now. Keep reading for station/log info >>

I was running my Yaesu FT-897 (only 20w for most contacts) and LDG Z-11 ProII Tuner into homebrew G5RV-ish dipole at 50 feet. Power was via Battery on the camper and solar charge, though with the snow and rain, didn’t get much out of it.

All in all I worked 68 Contacts (some count twice) working 16 States and 2 Provinces, not bad for a couple hours of kinda sorta operating.

Post from: Zeb Palmer

7 QSO Party

Elk Cow and Calf in the Idaho Wilderness

The year is almost over. It’s not though. I love Christmas and usually do a fair amount of shooting in december, but around thanksgiving I start thinking about next year…. Becasue this year is almost over. Though it’s not over yet. Almost. Not quite. Will be shortly.

I’ve been looking at random photos in my “2009″ folder, as I look back through the year I’m happy to say I was able to do a lot of things I wanted to do, go places, shoot things. I’m happy to say that overall, my photos have gotten better. But it seems my todo list left for next year is longer rather than shorter. Next year, I believe, if I take off the months of February, April, May, July, August, September and  October… I may be able to shoot everything on my list, but something tells me that isn’t going to happen. Prioritization is in order. There are things, projects, that I want to try, new places I want to go, techniques that need tried and honed. It’s rather exciting really…

We’ve got a trip to Salmon at Christmas to see the family. Salmon is one of the most beautiful places in the world, so the camera is always handy, it’ll be a great no pressure photo trip and with that, 2009 will be over, done.

I’ve yet to plan anything major for 2010. Aside from a workshop myself and two friends, Johnny and David are organizing on January 16th, but beyond that it’s a blank page.

Speaking of blank pages, I am going to re-examine my website…  I’m asking it to do so much, that I end up not doing enough with it. I hope to roll out some structure changes around the first of the year that will make it easier for me to share my work as well as my tech and personal content without doing three separate websites. I’m constantly getting email and face to face comments (or even by proxy) about the photos I choose to post here and I realize I need to post more. So many of my photos I want to post just sit on my hard drive waiting for a blog post I can associate with them. I cant guarantee anything, but I’m gonna try my best to post the photos and let them speak for themselves without thinking I’ve got to comment everything. Though, google sure prefers I write about them

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Looking back…

Redfish Lake Moonscape (click image to see large)

I’ve said it more than once, I miss the darkroom. I’ve been wanting to pick up a new medium format camera and work black & white film again. I’d like to convert part of my studio into a darkroom and process the film myself, but considering my studio is really a bedroom and it’s already pulling double duty as my server/network room… It’s not gonna happen, though that didn’t stop me from looking around online at how much it cost me to get a medium format enlarger, or maybe a good medium format negative scanner. But putting a darkroom in my studio isn’t feasible. Hmm, the bathroom is pretty dark already… Though I doubt that’d receive a building permit from the wife.

I took this photo a couple weeks ago at Redfish lake, it was a test shot for a long exposure star trail photo. If you look REAL close, there is one star trail in this photo, but it was only a two or three minute test to get the mountains right and set a baseline for my exposure. Many of you have already seen my snow photos from this same trip, that storm popped over the mountains about 5 minutes after this was taken. Gotta love Idaho! The sun was over an hour past set, but twilight was back lighting the mountains, behind me a full moon was rising.  I knew my window between dark enough for stars and the moon coming up to ruin the shot was going to be very short. I was hoping for a twenty minute star trail shot between the two, but the clouds gathering on the other side of the mountain wouldn’t cooperate. By the time I got back to camp the snow had started. This photo was much of the inspiration for the now infamous tweet I posted about ‘being done with color.’ I realize this photo won’t impress everyone, you might not even like it. But for me, this photo came alive in post and I instantly fell in love with it, can’t wait to get a metallic print of it. Do leave a comment here or on flickr to let me know what you think.

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Moonscape: Redfish Lake

Jasper playing in the leaves

So today I made a post to twitter:

“apologies to my photo fans who like color. I’m tied of color, expect a month of black and white.”

Then I go out and take this photo…

I meant well, I really did. I love shooting black and white, there was a time that 99% of what I shot was black and white film, processed myself. These days I’m not sure I could tell a developer from a fixer, but still I miss the darkroom. In the past week or so it seems every photo I processed ended up black and white, or at least every photo I liked. After processing a photo which looked particularly good in black and white, to the point I instantly fell in love with it and want a canvas of it, I decided I was done with color… for a bit at least. I may post that photo next week, hopefully you’ll like it. Anyway, I publicly swore off color.

That is until we took Jasper on a walk on the greenbelt and stopped to play in the leaves. The sun was setting and one beam of light making it through the trees and hitting the ground below a beautiful sugar maple with deep red and orange leaves. Pulled out the 50 prime and got several great shots. I made mention of how great the colors looked with Jasper, and my wife mentioned that twitter post. You mean people actually read twitter? hmm. Maybe we’ll let this photo slide by. After all, does anything posted on twitter on the weekend actually count?

For the record, you will be seeing more black and white landscapes from me for the next few weeks. I have several I’d like to post.

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Swore off color

Snowy Beaver Pond

Sometimes I hate writing about my photos. But the photo alone counts for 1000 words right? So this post is really 1062 words instead of 62 words. Beaver pond near Stanley, Idaho. Taken a few weeks ago while I was camped up there for a planned long exposure star trail night shot. That really looks like great weather for star photography… Right?

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Beaver Pond in Snow

21 lomo

Jasper and I got the chance to spend some time in Stanley last weekend. I went up to take a chance on a planned photo. The weather did exactly what I expected it to, which meant I didn’t actually get the photo I wanted. I got the shot started but wasn’t able to complete it before the clouds rolled in. But, fresh snow is always good.

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Stanley road lomo

This one put on by Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance of Idaho. The contest “Reasons to Love Idaho”  requires to you trade your copyright for the chance of winning a Ipod.

“You must own the copyrights to any photos that you submit. Winners turn over copyright ownership of their winning photos to Farm Bureau Insurance Company.”    -FAQ

“Granting of Copyright and Acknowledgment of Right to Submit. A Contestant has the right to submit one or more photos for display in the Photo Gallery. By submitting a photo to the Photo Gallery, Contestant grants to FBM a perpetual non-exclusive, royalty-free and irrevocable right to place that photo in the Photo Gallery and to use, reproduce, copy, publish, display, distribute, adapt, modify or otherwise exploit that photo and to incorporate it in other works and to sell, license, or otherwise commercially utilize that photo.” -RULES

They could only make it worse by requiring you to sign up for a new account before they give you the ipod. I won’t give the contest the benifit of a link. If you want to read the rules yourself visit reasonstoloveidaho dot com.

No pro, or self respecting hobbyist will touch a contest like this, please share this info and ALWAYS READ CONTEST RULES. for more information, please check out my first post about bad photo contests.

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Reasons to Love Idaho – Farm Bureau’s rights grabbing photo contest

Sawtooth Lake (click image to see larger)

Been processing a few more photos from the Sawtooth Lake hike. This photo was actually from my second hike to the lake that week, when my Dad and I went up. I would really like to spend the night up there next year and do some predawn work around the lake; consider it added to the list.

Post from: Zeb Palmer

Sawtooth Lake Color Panorama