Every Picture Tells a Story

Most of my images are static, not dynamic. The difference between an image of a mountain and one from a football game. But sometimes you get lucky and can combine the two.

The happy camper on the right was playing ball with Freddy. Tossing it in the water. Hoping he would bring it back to her. He usually did.

Her mom and younger brother and sister came by on a paddle boat just as Freddy was jumping up on the dock.

Their waving dissolved into laughter as Freddy ran up and did a big wet shake next to her while she tried to duck the deluge.

Yep. You can't script this stuff. Freddy doesn't do second takes.

But what he does do is keep an eye on the boaters to make sure they are safe.

He got a little nervous with the kids hanging of the side of a paddle boat.

Or it could have been the fact that his ball was right next to them.

Either way he was always appreciated.

With the usually calm water next to the campground, the reflections are cool. The slight bow wave in the first photo below resulted in a fun house mirror effect on a pair of hands.

I have seen some fish caught off the point. Bass, catfish, even a pike. But dogfish are rare. It takes the right bait and the right presentation and retrieval. They will pop up from the deep water and swim on the surface, charging your offering. Squeaky balls seem to work best.

It was another great week. The RV section was mostly full, the cabins stuffed with fun families, and the tenters were enjoying one of the nicest tent areas I have seen.

Back to the RV sites. I have shown photos of the cabins and tent area in recent blogs but not examples of the three types of sites we offer for the hard sided crowd.

A back in 30 amp with water only will cost you $35 per night.

Adding a sewer connection bumps the price to $44.

There are several 50 amp full hook up sites as well. They run $52.

Depending on how much of our free firewood you burn, you can effectively knock 10 to 20 bucks off the actual cost per night. Add in the free boats and wifi, well, it's a very fair price.

Plus don't forget we offer a free camp portrait as well. Done by yours truly. Just ask at the office or look for Freddy walking around around the campground dragging his owner and give us a holler.

And if you are by yourself, Freddy will be happy to pose with you.

Or if your boyfriend shows up, he will graciously leave.

He is a good dog.

Camp Coeur d'Alene is a destination campground and with our store and pool opening soon, there is no reason to leave during your stay.

But if you want to go for a drive, well, we got it covered. When you turn in to our campground, you just left the Lake Coeur d'Alene Scenic Byway.

We are located next to the second orange dot on the right. This sign is just across from the camp entrance.

The fourth dot from the right is Beauty Bay, just a few miles from here, and there is a neat road that follows Beauty Creek. There are several places where you can pull off for a secluded picnic.

I plan on doing some more exploring locally to see what I can find.

Freddy has been waiting patiently for me to finish writing this post.

He wants to go swimming and play ball. At his favorite spot.

So here are two last pics followed by the latest photo tip.

One week from today is the fourth of July. Coeur d'Alene is putting on the biggest fireworks show in the area just shy of 10 pm.

Photographing Fireworks

Fireworks are simple and fun to to capture on your camera. The best part is just being there and having a good time. But if you want to bring those memories home with you, here is how I do it.

A tripod is a must unless you can remain perfectly still for two seconds. And no, you can’t. Get comfortable on your blanket or chair and set up the camera on the tripod right in front of you so it is easily reached. Set it to manual and dial in a shutter speed of two seconds at F/14 and ISO 100. Set the focus to infinity.

Next you need to frame the shot. Loosen the head on your tripod so the camera can rotate freely. Watch where the first few fireworks explode and set the zoom and camera angle and then clamp everything down. Leave yourself some room around the edges of the frame because the finales usually involve multiple launches and you don’t want to cut them out of the picture.

Now the fun part. Timing. You will eventually get into a rhythm. You will hear the thump of the launch followed a few seconds later by the burst. You have a two second window for the explosion once you press the shutter button. You will be saying “Nailed that one” or “#%&@”.

Here are two examples from Crescent Bar, Washington on July 4, 2012.

There you have it. Easy as pie. Should be some nice reflections on the lake as well.

Regard...

Hang on a sec. Freddy is tugging on my sleeve

"What?"

"Post that picture of me that I like.You know, the one with the ball and the bright thing behind me."

"The sun?"

"Yeah, that one."

"Fine."

He thinks he might have a career in advertising.

Regards,
Greg and Freddy and the wonderful staff at Camp Coeur d'Alene

A Fabulous Father's Day Weekend

Yep, Father's Day Weekend is about one guy. Dad. Letting him kick back for a day and bask in the glow of his family's love. Right?

Can you pick out the dad in the photo below?

He's the happy guy in the middle.

Everybody was raising their hands high for Dad!

But the weekend began ominously, weatherwise. Freddy and I walked up to our favorite viewpoint on Thursday night.

The clouds kept building.

We went back to our little trailer.

And listened to the thunder and lightning.

Friday was a little bit damp.

My theory on weather is simple. There is no such thing as bad weather when you are camping. You are simply wearing the wrong clothes. Just adapt. Like these folks did on Friday.

Saturday was perfect. We went for our morning walk and happy campers were already up and about.

 On a paddle boat at seven in the morning.

Walking back to our site we were assaulted by a bouquet of delicious breakfast smells. I think we both drooled a little bit. I know I did.

Dog Day Afternoon.

It started out small with just Freddy and Bailey.

Then another bunch came out to join in the fun.

The CCC (Canine Connection Company) spread the word and dogs started arriving from all over. One in a wash basin on top of a trailer pulled by a Harley.

One that Frreddy corraled on a walk.

And one in a boat.

A good time was had by all. The sun set.

 I had the pleasure of taking three more family camping portraits in the last few days.

This is one of the free amenities/perks that we offer here at Camp Coeur D'Alene.

Yep. In addition to free firewood, wifi, boats, etc. I will happily take a portrait of you and your family to capture a moment of your time spent here.

If you see me and the wonderpup walking around the campground, just say hi. We are also camped across from the upper bathroom. I put two pink flamingos in front to help you find us.

In my last two blog posts i have put up photo tips for the outdoors. This next one won't be as long but to me it is one of the most important. I wrote these a few years ago...plenty more to come. In fact, the next one will be about taking pics of fireworks.

Playing with your Aperture (Depth of Field)

Grabbing my camera and playing around with aperture settings is one of my favorite things to do after a long day at the office. Especially my office. I have no heating or air conditioning. There are always bug and rodent problems, sometimes even carnivores ramble through my workplace. No roof means I am at the mercy of the weather. Don't believe me? Here is proof.

The aperture setting on your camera controls the depth of field, also known as the plane of focus. In any photograph, only one point (a certain distance from your camera) is in perfect focus. The rest of the photo resides in circles of confusion. I love that term. What that means is everything else is out of focus. But that amount of unfocusness (is that a word?) varies depending on your camera's aperture setting. The smaller the F stop, meaning the higher the number, brings the level of "acceptable sharpness" into play. Ansel Adams, and to some extent Edward Weston, were members of the F/64 club. They would set the aperture to F/64 on their big view cameras and everything from just in front of the camera to infinity would be acceptably sharp.

But that is not where I am going with this photo tip. I am going the opposite direction. Call it bokeh, baby. Shooting with your lens wide open, (smallest F/ number) reduces the depth of field to inches or less.

Imagine if I had taken this photo at F/16 instead of F/3.5. Well, you will have to imagine because I didn't. The result would have been almost everything in focus and the flower would have blended into the background with almost no separation at all.

Bokeh also comes into play when shooting wide open. There is much debate about good bokeh and bad bokeh but it boils down to whether you can see the lens blades or not. Creamy bokeh will have nice round circles while nasty bokeh will show the blades.

Mine is in the middle for this lens as seen below.

You can see some edges but hey, so what? The point to all of these tips is step away from auto mode and take some neat photographs.

Here are two photos showing the dramatic difference in depth of field while shooting wide open.

I think those two would look good on the wall next to each other. That's what I am talking about. Photos that would look boring in auto mode can become interesting by setting your camera's aperture to wide open and just walking around the campground.

Here are two more.

The last one was taken at Ocean Beach State Park in Washington in May 2012. You can tell by the water drops. There was some rain during that trip...

So don't be a slave to the auto setting on your camera. Play with your aperture.

Regards,

Greg and Freddy and the wonderfull staff at Camp Coeur D'Alene