Morzine Day 7: Tried Going Up
Posted by on Saturday, March 06, 2010
Yesterday, I tried going up on the mountain. There were two reasons: first off, I wanted to see how well the ankle would hold up; second, following a series of dull days it was blue skies all the way, and I thought that even if I don't move around too much I can still take some photos.
So in the morning I got a lift down to the chemists and picked up some athletic-tape. A long time ago, I used to tape up my ankle(s) when playing basketball. I decided I'd try to strap it up for support. I don't know whether that's a good idea for snowboarding? But I did it anyway. I took a quick look on YouTube for a guide, found one, and although it was hard taping my own ankle, I got it done.
I went up at lunch time with one of the chalet hosts, Steve, and we took a couple of runs to meet up with the others. Riding regular runs seemed ok, but I didn't put any aggressive toe turns on, none at all. The strapping within the boot also seemed ok. I didn't really notice it once I was going and my toes didn't go numb or anything like that. Bonus.
In terms of pain, the lifts were the worst. Getting off actually. Lining up on a full chair means a certain twisting of your leg; that hurt. Once, I was kinda squashed, didn't like the pain and almost ended up "staying on". LOL. The ankle ached sometimes on the chairs too.
So I spent a bunch of time taking some photos. My quick investigation into setting the exposure definitely worked. Most of the photos I took kept the detail in the bright areas, rather than being over-exposed. I took raws too. I've gotta say that the current version of the Windows picture viewer does a good job, mostly, of rendering the raws. I need to look into this more, later, and get something where I can adjust the images myself...
Anyhow, here are some of the photos I took:
Ciara's started to get more air this week, nice:
A few indys and the occasional mute too, although this isn't the best example:
Some dude with smooth style:
This was almost a really cool photo, but it happened right after the one above and I didn't have time to adjust the zoom. Sweet method on the hip:
Some dude on the rainbow rail:
So after having something to eat, we took a few runs before coming down. I got a little more confident with the ankle, but still held off anything hard on the toes, and played it safe around the less-flat terrain.
It felt good to be out on the hill, but I was worried that I was either setting myself back, or slightly less bad, holding up the recovery. We got dropped off in town for a few happy hour beers. Yum.
It came to taking the tape off before getting in the hot tub. I couldn't get hold of any pre-wrap, or at least couldn't communicate what I was after, so the tape was straight on to the skin. Ouch. Like an insight into having your legs waxed. Ciara was loving this; told me I was a wuss (or similar adjective). She was probably right - haha. I'm sure she enjoyed stepping in to rip the last bit off in one go :)
Labels: injuries and fitness, morzine trip 2010, nikon d60
Morzine Day 6: Still Resting
Posted by on Thursday, March 04, 2010
I'm still resting up, in the Chalet. Bummer. That's 3 days now. I think I'd be happy if I can shred all of next week, from Saturday or Sunday onwards, that would be cool. If it's later than that I'll probably end up grumpy :)
It's snowing though, which is good. I wouldn't say the place desperately needed it, but the top-up is welcomed. It would be nice if I could get back out there to some fresh, that would be cool.
My ankle is getting better each day: the swelling goes down a little, the range of movement increases and I can walk more comfortably on it. Now for example, I can stand on one leg (the bad one), and bend a little. Not much though; that's painful. The things that's troubling me is I simply don't know when to go up and give it a go. I'd be mad if I went too soon and set the whole thing back. Especially when I've potentially got a full week to look forward to.
So today is rest, and tomorrow probably too. Unless it's clear skies. In that case I'd like to go and maybe try to get a nice photo of Ciara. That would be fun.
I spent a little time yesterday extending my limited knowledge of the camera controls. I remember last year some of the mountain-shots I took for the guide were over-exposed, so I needed to figure out how to prevent that. It turns out exposure-compensation is easy.
The D60 also makes it easy to spot over (or under) exposure, which is good because simply looking at the image on the small screen isn't always enough. So if I take a quick photo in a given situation, I can adjust if necessary.
I'm also going to start capturing raws; last year I didn't and that was a mistake. I probably could have adjusted the images afterwards quite easily, had I the full data. It makes me wonder though whether one is better not adjusting the exposure at all, and only manipulating the histogram afterwards?
Labels: morzine trip 2010, nikon d60
Skating Is All...
Posted by on Friday, March 06, 2009
Wow, it's been quiet around here. To be honest, the only thing I've done standing sideways over the last couple of weeks is some skating. I did a couple of short, evening sessions last week, and I think I'll head out a little later tonight.
The last time I was at the skate park there was a small crew there; 4 good skaters and one of the guys had a nice bag of camera gear, video and still. I took some photos too. It was fairly late so I was literally in the dark, but seems as though they had a couple of remote flash guns, I had some chance of getting an image.
Here are some photos. The first two are mostly too dark, but the timing was ok. I included the second two to show how the lighting might have worked, and me fumbling with a slower shutter speed :)
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Oh, I bought some wax from the local skateboard shop too, because the rails get kinda sticky. I was using regular snowboard wax before, that worked just fine, but I've spent that waxing snowboards. The front-board is progressing.
I'd definitely like to buy some basic camera gear. A tripod for sure. I'm skating by myself at the moment, and with a tripod I could at least video some stuff. A better flash too. I'm gonna check if the d60 has a remote control... I wonder what it would be like trying to take a photo of myself? That probably wouldn't work out too well - although Mike Basich does a good enough job :)
Part of reason for these pages being dead lately is that I've had some laptop trouble. I'm sure my electronics are cursed. Last week the hard-disk became corrupt and I had to spend some time recovering the data and then wiping the whole lot. I nearly lost some important data - all my wsg photos from Morzine.
Up until now I've been backing my stuff up once a month - to a usb drive. The hard disk went a couple of days before the end of the month, which sucked. Still, I shouldn't have left all those photos and words to chance.
So, I've signed up with backblaze, for online backups. I'd like to say how good it is, but right now the initial backup is still running... it's taking ages, probably gonna end up being 2 - 3 weeks, and that's only about 75gb. Wireless, but still slow.
Labels: nikon d60, skateboarding
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