Mountain Spring Well

What a great day. Those who loosely follow my blips know that I've enrolled with my daughter K in an abbreviated four week photo class geared for digital SLR amateurs. As a new client of our instructor, we were invited to attend a daylong excursion to some local photogenic spots for free form photography with Jonathan our instructor as an asset to help with questions and some equipment.

It turned out that the weather was looking pretty bad (some much needed rain and cloud cover), so only four of us bothered to show up. I was most certainly going to go, because a friend most graciously swapped a Sunday workday with me so I could go. K and I met two students from one of Jonathan's other classes who turned out to be great fun. The group size was perfect for us albeit not as lucrative as I'm sure Jonathan hoped. Regardless of the weather, shooting opportunities abounded. By the end of the day, I had over 300 exposures (I did bracket quite a bit), and K shot over 200 without bracketing. Since we both shoot Nikons (D70 for me, and D40 for K), we shared lenses and our sole tripod. Our most sought after lenses between the two of us were the 18-200mm VR zoom and a cheap albeit effective Quantary 50mm macro.

One of our favorite activities during the day was busting each other whenever we slipped and used the word "picture". Jonathan declares a moratorium in his presence the use of that word with regard to photography. A picture as he declares is what your grandmother takes with a disposable camera. In his class, they're photographs. To drive his point home, utterance of the "P" word costs his students 25 cents. K brought a pocket full of quarters in anticipation of slip ups and spent quite a few of them. She was kind enough to fund my deviations.

Since our last stop was in fairly close proximity to my house and it was a fun group, I offered my house as a forum to review our work of the day. My Mac mini is hooked up to the living room making for a great group viewing environment. Add beer, wine, coffee, cake, and our household of animals enamored with new friends, and a great day turned into a great evening.

I was never more proud than when we went through K's card of images. She has an artistic eye for composition I only dream of. Interestingly, she had a similar view through the lens as the next youngest in our group (at age 29). Between the gift of the D40 to K and encouraging and acknowledging her talent, I can see her evolving more confidence in her photographic ability such that she's now taking the plunge to be a blipper with the Calico handle. With inflated fatherly pride, I look forward to her entries.

My and K's entries for Sunday are a little late because we had so many images to go through. This blip is of a natural spring well at a defunct overgrown dude ranch in the mountains above Eagle River, Alaska. This spout runs incessantly (although I'd be interested to know what happens in the frozen winter). I saw it before we took our first shot of the day and knew it had to be one of my subjects. I shot it from a tripod with an f22 focal length to maximize depth of field and keep the well head sharp, and a shutter speed of 1/6 second to convey the dynamic flow of the stream.