The LDS Conference Center

I visited Jason after he was done for the day and he stuck around for a while so I could shoot this set of images. All of the lighting people have left for the day, so the lights you see here are just the default work lights. Although I think these lights look just fine, as you pan around you can see how many lights they have that they can work with and it’s easy to imagine what someone with talent could do to make this place look even more amazing.

About the panorama

While you view the panorama of the LDS Conference Center you can click on the amazon MP3 link at the bottom to hear some songs of the Tabernacle Choir singing – I’m not a huge fan of music on web pages, but this is one place I will make an exception since it fits the mood of the building.

About some of the sound equipment

Some of the microphones that are hanging down are used only to generate sound for use in-house. There are a number of thin microphones hanging down that are used to create reverb and make the sound feel more natural to people sitting in different sections of the Conference Center. Though other groups sing on this stage, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is by far the most frequent group performing here. One feature of the stage you will notice is that on the walls there are several large white speakers. These speakers are set up to help the choir hear each other – on the women’s side of the stage, the speakers play a mix of the men’s side and vice versa. By pumping sound out to the choir like this, it replicates the same experience that the choir has naturally signing under the parabolic dome in the nearby Tabernacle.

Some other things to look for

If you are familiar with lighting equipment, you will notice a couple of softboxes in the seating section set up around a chair. If you aren’t familiar with lighting, you will notice a couple of big trapezoid (which are the softboxes). This is where Lloyd Newell recites the Spoken Word portion of Music and the Spoken Word. I’m not sure why the scaffolding is set up there, and there is a cherry-picker out in the back too that is used for cleaning.

Touring the building

The several small groups of people you see in the background are part of guided tours that the church provides for free. If you are ever in Salt Lake City, it would be worth your while to take the tour of this building and several of the nearby buildings. In fact, if you just have a hour-or-two layover at the Salt Lake City Airport – you can even get picked up and taken on some tours and then brought back in time for your flight. (And yes, it is truly free – it’s sponsored by the Church and the Chamber of Commerce, the airlines, and a few other groups)

Count the microphones – win a prize!

It’s also impressive how many microphones there are. If you count them all up and post a guess for how many microphones you think there are on the stage (and hanging over the stage) of the Conference Center, I’ll get Jason to judge and in a week or two the person who is closest will get a personal comment posted from me congratulating them. You can also try to guess how many microphones are in use when they record an episode of Music and the Spoken Word here (which would include any mics on instruments, etc). The person closest with that guess will also win a virtual high-five.

Added bonus: See what Amazon thinks you need to buy today

I don’t want to brag about my wealth, but I’ve made $3 this year from people buying stuff from Amazon. It’s quite exciting. The recommendations in the box below are NOT something that I picked out – but something Amazon picks based on what they think you should buy (or rather, what they think you might be likely to buy). So don’t complain to me if you see something funny going on down there…

Climbing with kids in Maple Corridor

Friday I went to Maple Canyon with Rhett and Steve Boynton and his family. In the afternoon we climbed in the Maple Corridor, and I took a panorama of Maple Corridor in Maple Canyon is pretty cool because of it’s rather unique geology. The entire thing is hundreds of vertical feet of conglomerate – which is more easily described as “big cobblestone cliffs”. Climbing on it feels like you are climbing on a never-ending antique chimney. It’s also unique because it has areas where an extremely easy climb will be only a few hundred feet away from an extremely difficult climb.

The kids had fun, in particular because the most fascinating stick in the known universe was apparently found there. Both Rhett and Porter (the other boy in the picture) were infatuated with this one stick, and no other stick would satisfy them. Eventually Porter relented and let play with it for most of the time there, but in exchange Porter got permanent custody rights when we left.

This is an HDR panorama, but to get the kids faces not so blurry I took them from a single exposure and merged them in with the 32-bit merged exposure. I think in the future this might be how I approach moving subjects in hdr photos that don’t themselves have a large dynamic range (i.e. people or other things that are moving) – it worked well but still keeps the aspects of HDR that are good (such as the brighter rocks towards the top not being blown out or the shadows in the dark areas not having any detail)

Panorama from Panorama Point - Capitol Reef National Park

I couldn’t resist taking a 360×180 Panorama from Panorama Point in Capitol Reef National Park. I took two, one at sunset and another at sunrise. The sunset one I haven’t bothered stitching together because the sky in it is boring (no clouds that night) but this sunrise one I thought came out nice.

The panorama actually looks quite a bit cooler than I remember it being when I was there in person. Perhaps that’s because I spent less than 5 minutes there – and all 5 of those minutes consisted of running from my car up to the spot, setting up the tripod, and shooting 120 different shots (40 different angles, 3 exposures each bracketed 2 stops +/-), then taking down the tripod and running to the car. (We were in a hurry to get to the middle of nowhere to do angel cove canyon)

Angel Cove Canyon is a small slot canyon south of Hanksville in the middle of nowhere. Last Saturday the weather was looking rather sketchy most places, and we were already in Bicknell Utah after spending the day in Capitol Reef National Park with my wife’s family. Three of the people in our group were new to canyoneering and we were looking for a canyon that had at least a couple of rappels, was relatively close to where we already were, and had a relatively small catch basin to protect against the danger of a flash flood.

How to find the canyon

With the help of Dave Pimental’s excellent Minislot Guide to the Colorado Plateau website we decided that Angel Cove Canyon would be an excellent choice. Had the weather and time permitted, we might have also done the nearby Angel Slot canyon.

Related Posts

While in the canyon, I took several sets of 360×180 panoramas to try to help give a feel for what the canyon is like. The first one I took shows a panorama of a minor crossroads in Angel Cove Canyon. Later on down the canyon it narrows up and becomes quite pretty so I took another panorama of the narrow slot canyon part of Angel Cove Canyon and finally I took a panorama of the two-stage rappel sequence at the end of Angel Cove Canyon to try to give a feel for that part of the canyon. On our way out of the canyon, a thunderstorm moved in over us and I captured a single-row panorama of flash flooding causing waterfalls on Sandstone

Summary

My overall summary of the canyon is that it’s a fun short canyon that can be done by beginner canyoneers without too much difficulty.
More experienced canyoneers will enjoy the scenic sections and will appreciate the extremely short approach. It has no bolts, so if you aren’t comfortable rappelling off of a big pile of rocks you might want to go elsewhere. It’s narrow sections are photogenic and it is close by other canyons. It’s remote setting and lack of crowds is also appealing.

Early on in Angel Cove Canyon

The first part of Angel Cove Canyon is fairly wide with some occasional downclimbing. When we were there, there was a bunch of knotted rope left behind by an earlier party at each of the drops. I think it is more fun to do canyons where there isn’t a bunch of crap already there from the groups in front of you – part of the fun is figuring out how you want to get down the specific drops. When there are fixed ropes left sitting there it eliminates a lot of the thinking.

The particular area of this shot you can see part of our group going down one of the downclimbs while another part of our group hangs out in the shade of another finger of a canyon coming in from the north.

This is the last of my angel cove 360×180 panoramas. I have plenty more pictures I will post later, most likely on my flickr photostream.

A narrow section of Angel Cove Canyon

Another panorama from Angel Cove canyon – here is a panorama of a narrow section of Angel Cove Canyon. The lighting was pretty cool when I was in this section.

The tripod was set up pretty low when I took these. I set it up because I saw some cool shots from that lower angle. It wasn’t until I stitched this that I realized that a 360×180 taken from such a low perspective gives kind of a leprechaun’s-eye-view of the surroundings. In this case, I think it works out pretty well.

Panorama of the final rappels of Angel Cove

Here is a Panorama of Angel Cove’s Final Rappels. I did it this saturday with Chris Raver, his friend Brad, and my wife’s three younger brothers.

The final two rappels consist of back-to-back rappels off of natural anchors. (You can see the second pile of rocks that starts the second rappel if you look down a bit)

As you can see, the canyon opens up quite wide for these final two rappels. As you set up, you have a nice view of the other side of the Dirty Devil river. It’s in this general area that Butch Cassidy and other outlaws would hang out in the late 1800′s.

Flash-floods feed the Dirt Devil

This weekend I visited Capitol Reef National Park with family for on Friday, and then on Saturday I went out to a remote area near Hanksville and did Angel Cove canyon with my wife’s younger brothers.

We picked the canyon with the chance of afternoon thunderstorms in mind because it is a relatively short canyon (some refer to it as a “Micro Slot”) taking only 3 to 6 hours and only having between 5 to 7 rappels in the canyon. As we exited the canyon it started to sprinkle on us, and as we neared the top of a slickrock dome the clouds opened up and it started to pour. From the moment it started raining heavily until the time we started to see trails of water was mere minutes, and it was between 10 to 20 minutes from when the rain started getting heavy to when we were able to see a number of drainages fill up and start flowing.

After watching the waterfalls for a minute or two, I could no longer resist the temptation to get out there and capture it as best I could. Working fast and in pretty bad conditions I set up and took a 20-image 260-degree single-row panorama of the area. Water spots and drops on my lens were unavoidable given the conditions (blowing heavy rain coming from every direction as the winds shifted around) – but I was able to have enough overlap between my images that I could get rid of all the waterspots in the final image.

If you are asking yourself “Gee, this is cool… but why not a 360×180?” allow me to let you ponder what happens when you try to shoot a camera at any angle greater than 0 degrees when it is raining… There simply was no way I could have shot one until after the storm had passed, and these waterfalls are as quick to disappear as they are to appear so I wanted to make sure I caught them. They did stick around for a little while and I could have gotten a slightly better shot after the rain let up – but after putting the weather resistance of the 7D to the test with the downpour I subjected it to, my camera had earned itself a bit of a break. (That, and condensation was starting to get to it so I pulled the battery to help prevent it from getting damaged)

The resolution of the final image is 19171 x 5356. If I were to print this out on 17-inch wide paper, it would be 5-feet long at full 300-dpi resolution. I stitched and retouched it at full resolution. If anyone reading this wants to buy a print that size, let me know and we can work something out. I know some places I can print them that big – but you’ll be on your own for framing it!

Click on the image to view the (large) panorama

I went to great lengths to stitch this one in a higher resolution than the Moroni Slopes panorama, only to find out after spending all that extra time to do it at a higher resolution that the flash player I’m using has a lower max resolution that I was working with. Oh well.

I recommend the higher resolution flash player, or the highest resolution QTVR image. You can zoom in on the images (more so on the higher resolution ones) to see more detail, or zoom out to see more of the scene.

You can also see the Panorama of storms over the San Rafael Swell I took from Moroni Slopes earlier that morning.

We were planning to do the Squeeze in the San Rafael Swell, but the weather didn’t cooperate. By the time we reached the base of Moroni Slopes, the storm clouds were already forming and moving around the sky. I captured a 360×180 panorama while we were there.

Moroni Slopes panorama

I took a Goblin Valley panorama that I have also posted.

Originally submitted at LIttle Tikes

Toys Made in the USA with US and Imported Parts.

The excitement never ends with this innovative, multi-station fun factory!

• Gears and gadgets,…

Sand&Water Fun Factory

Looks much cooler on the box

Pros: Sturdy

Cons: Boring, doesn’t work

Best Uses: Individual Play

Describe Yourself: Parent Of Two Or More Children

The sandbox looks pretty cool, but obviously nobody ever tested it out before deciding to sell it.

Even on day 1 the sprockets / spinny things / whatever never worked. Water and sand just pour over them and they never spin.

As a sandbox it isn’t horrible.

Oh, I almost forgot about the water part. Yeah, that sucks too. It leaks and we’ve basically been using ours as a sandbox on both sides for about a year or so now.

(legalese)

Make your picks, and think as little as possible please.

Every year on Black Friday “Santa” flies in and lands at the mall. Here he is on approach. (I posted a few more images of the helicopter on flikr, and will post more when I get a chance)

Ahhhh, cozy.