675 miles and 500 photographs later

This has certainly been an exciting week. Last weekend Elliot's birthday party was a blast. The who BMC crowd was there and we drank some drinks, hit some pinata's, and had a merry old time. I got an allergy attack and was not feeling too well so I ended up going home a little early. I got fairly sick last week on Tuesday but other than that had a pretty good week. It was nice to kind of kick back and relax a little bit at work. This week I'm going to have to kick things into overdrive and get moving on a couple of things though.

Come Friday I had the day off and took off for Idaho to do a photography cruise down the St. Joe river with a photo club on my friend Tye's houseboat. It was a fairly uneventful drive over, but fun nevertheless. I had burned 6 new CD's on Thursday and that helped the trip go by fairly quickly. Once I cleared the mountains it was very bright, sunny, and yellow, and that helped my feel quite a bit better. I get some SADS from time to time, so spending a day in a warm car, surrounded by bright yellows and greens really helps. Once I got to Idaho Tye, Tish, Jan, Bill, and myself all got together and went to go have some dinner at a local bar/resturant called Shooters. We all got to share these giant 128oz drinks called 'Sinkers' with massively long straws. After a nice meal we all headed back to the boat to rest up for the day ahead.

Saturday morning we woke up in time to shoot the sunrise and then after a brief pause were off to go in search of great photo opportunities. We cruised down the lake while eating breakfast and headed for the mouth of the St. Joe river. We had a chief of the local Indian tribe along with us to give us information about the area, and we also had John with us, who is a professional photographer who is very well known in the industry for his wildlife work. The weather was somewhat overcast, but that helped bring out the colors even more. I would have preferred a but more light because when wildlife was spotted it was hard to keep the camera steady for the longer exposures while extremely zoomed because of the slow shutter speed.

We stopped mid morning at an adorable little park called Cherry Bend Park where there was some very interesting plants, as well as a great dock and roap swing. Had it been a warmer day I probably would have insisted on stopping to take a quick swim. We then headed on and stopped at St. Marie for lunch and to go shooting in an old train yard. It was filled with lots of cool textures and patterns, and I had a field day. I love the tight shots that are more abstract than anything else - zoo in on some interesting detail and expose it to the world. After a couple of hours we had to head back because some of the people had to be getting back to their homes or headed off to other engagements. On the way back we got some incredible wildlife shots - we saw 2 groups of deer and some raccoons. The second set of deer was amazingly docile and tame and stuck around for a good 3 minutes while we took pictures. I'm usually not drawn to wildlife photography, but I thought it was a very interesting experience to be that close to a large animal with a zoom lens and really be able to shoot it.

Once we got back to the dock to drop people off Tye and I headed back to the Marina to park the houseboat for the night. We wound up driving into Spokane to hit some bars before heading back to the houseboat to crash. I had a classic case of alcohol induced insomnia and did not get to sleep till after 4:00 in the morning. Upon waking at 9:00 the trip back was filled with a tired cranky me. It's a long 4 hour drive, and really pisses me off - but the fun times, and good pictures more than make up for it! Once I got back to Seattle I took care of some errands, then promptly fell asleep and a good 10 hours later was ready for my week!