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I realized I never posted this video that was made about a trip I took to Honduras last March. I joined the Lazos Education Fund for the trip to the small town  La Venta where the school, called Asociacion Nuevo Amanecer or ANA is based. 

It was a great trip and this video tells the story very well. Thanks again Greg for a great trip!

I shot this last night at the Gunnison Whitewater Park. As the sun went down the temperature dropped and eventually got close to -30F over night. I really liked how the ice floating in the eddys below the drop formed a vortex so I got out a ND filter to slow down the shutter speed, revealing the circular motion. 

So I'm trying to use the time I have and update my online presence. Do you like the new site format? 

Hopefully I can get through the next few weeks without going crazy or making my family crazy. Can't wait to get back out into the backcountry and ski area!

I was out taking photos of Whoville's Gunnison's annual Night if Lights celebration last Friday. It was a mild evening and it seemed like the whole town was there.

I got to use my new camera, a Pentax 645D from an office window overlooking the festivities and had a really fun evening. I think I also got a good photo. If you would like to purchase a print or use this photo commercially, please get in touch. If you just want to enjoy it here, then enjoy! I have a couple of prints of this coming in time for Christmas for local customers. 

First on Sunday we had that Super Full Blood Moon, the lunar eclipse. I always like to get some photos of an eclipse because I find them interesting. 

First shot was early in the evening and the eclipse. I drove up into the hills east of Gunnison to get the changing aspens in the foreground with Mt. Chipeta on the continental divide behind. The left side of the moon was starting to darken.

For totality I was back home again. Being up where I was for moonrise didn't matter much once it was dark so I figured I'd hang out with my family on the porch. This shot is a little cliche, but it was just irresistible to grab one with an old manual 300mm lens on a tele converter that doubles the magnification of the lens for an effective 600mm.  

Then on Thursday night we had thick gray clouds within 10 minutes of sunset but I could see a gap developing near the horizon. Hoping the sun would come through and light up all the clouds I went to a nearby location on Tomichi Creek. The hole did open up and the resulting sunset was one of the best I have ever seen. I'm glad I was able to anticipate it!

I have a big gallery of rider photos you can buy as prints or downloads posted here.

Riding bikes is fun!

This 11 year old, Kaden rode the entire thing in a very respectable time. Amazing!

Dave Wiens leads the breakaway that would become the podium up Kebler Pass. 

This is a composite of 12 photos over a 9 minute period. The lightning was almost constant for a while!

Here are a few images I've been happy with since that last June ski session. 

It's been stormy quite a bit. More than it's been clear which is unusual for a Gunnison Summer!

We had a nice 4th of July celebration. I went up on W (Tenderfoot) Mountain to get this shot of the fireworks, town, and the mountains to the North. 

The carnival came to the neighborhood with the rodeo.

So we went camping to escape the noise. 

We had a good shoot with the big kicker they built. The light and sky cooperated well and I got some photos I'm happy with. Thanks guys, let's do it again sometime!

We tried something I have been wanting to do for a while, with me shooting across a little valley to my wife and dog on some rocks. I feel like the photo came out pretty well but I also identified some things I could do better so I may try again next month. But we had fun and I think it's a fun image.

In the mean time here is one I thought came out pretty nicely. A big challenge is dynamic range. The dark foreground to the bright moon is a wide dynamic range that many cameras would struggle with. 

Pentax K-3, Pentax DA* 60-250/4

Full Growler (and Meowler) photos here

Half Growler photos here

To find your photos, use the search function (magnifying glass, upper right) and enter your bib number, a space and either FullGrowler2015 or HalfGrowler2015. Let me know if you have any trouble. Also keep in mind not all the photos are tagged so browse a little if some of the bigger scale scenics interest you. 

Thanks!

So the Half Growler Photos are available here.

Full Growler photos should be available tonight or tomorrow. Watch this spot for the link. Thanks!

-Matt

It's was like a mid-winter powder day! Great fun and we skied a new line, Independence Couloir which was fantastic. I carried my Pentax K-3 with my trusty ski lens, the weather resistant DA 18-135. Great combo for adventure!

We left at 4am to get skiing as early as possible. 

After a couple of miles we put the skis on our backs and booted up the first objective. 

Hard work!

The payoff was well worth it!

We skied another run on the flank of Handies after this. It was also fun but the flat light made skiing tough and photography less rewarding. 

An amazing day overall, especially considering it was May 9th!

I also had a chance to try out the new Merge to Panorama function in Lightroom 6 with a series of four photos I took on the way up Cinnamon Pass. Seems to work well and was very easy to do.

It's really nice to be able to stitch raw files right in Lightroom. Very convenient and the results look good to me!

I'm going to embark on a project to consolidate my online presence. I'm going to move my blog here and point my mattb.net domain name to this site. This will make it much easier to integrate the blog and photos, galleries, and sales here in one place.

-Matt