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When you vote, you will get entered into a drawing to win a $100 B&H Photo gift card.

You can just go to:
https://www.unifiedcolor.com/user/register?destination=utc_voting/vote/591
and fill out the form and click “create new account” and you will be done.

If you are only interested in voting for me – thank you!. The rest of this blog entry doesn’t matter to you and is just a bunch of historical text… the link above will vote for me immediately after you register so you don’t have to do anything else.

Background

A while ago I discovered the HDR Expose and 32 Float – both products from Unified Color that make it easy to get a natural look when you process HDR photos. As a promotion for their software, they ran a photo contest. There were three phases to the contest and each phase produced 15 winners (1 first prize winner and 4 honorable mention winners in 3 categories). Now all three phases are over and they are running a contest to pick the grand prize winner – based on public voting.

What’s in it for you?

Why should you care? Well, for starters – everyone who votes gets entered into another drawing to get win one of five $100 gift card from B&H Photo. (Which is very useful, they sell lots of stuff). Also, if you vote for my image and I end up winning, I’ll get to go on a really cool National Geographic photo expedition and take tons of photos that I’ll post on my blog or flickr account for you to look at and say “cool.” Plus… what’s the social revolution of the web all about if it’s not about coercing friends into voting on stuff for you in random contests?

On that page of thumbnails, I have four images in the running. Their thumbnails look like this:

Short version on how to vote: Click on the above image, and then find the thumbnail of the conference center image. Click on it, say 'neat' when you see it larger, and then click the 'Vote for this photo:' button. When you register for an account (in order to vote) you also get entered into the gift card drawing.

How to vote

Here’s the process on how to vote:

The voting page on Unified Color's site

When you click on thumbnail, the large “vote for this image” button appears and lets you click on it to vote for an image. You will have to register for an account there in order to vote – but it is pretty easy to do and once you vote you will also be entered into their drawing for a $100 gift card.

If you are SUPER LAZY

You can go to the Unified Color Voting Page and then paste the following into your address bar and hit enter:
javascript:$("div.utc-voting-image-preview").load("/utc_voting/image/preview/591");window.scroll(0,1000);
And then click the “Vote for this photo” button.

or you could try clicking here

What that does is the same thing that you do when you click on the thumbnail – but it saves you the two seconds it takes to find the thumbnail of my image. I would encourage you to still look at the other entries… and you still have to click the “vote” button.
It’s possible to link directly to the voting page for my image but that might violate the spirit of the competition too much so I would suggest taking the extra steps to avoid them thinking I’m trying to hack the planet or something.

Click to play the timelapse video of cleaning leaves. The 1080p version is much better quality than the others

I’ve been using the TC-80N3 clone I got for my birthday to take some timelapse shots of various things.

I’m going to take a shot a throwing together some of the timelapse scenes I have shot into a longer sequence about the change from fall to winter weather.

Here’s one clip that I think is Time Lapse of cleaning up fall leaves on YouTube .

This is one you really should view full screen and zoom in on different sections. Click on the “fullscreen” icon to the far right of the tool bar in the flash viewer to go fullscreen, click on the “+” button to zoom in. (you can also use your scroll wheel or keyboard to zoom in and out – the control and shift keys control the zoom)

About Scout Lookout

From Scout Lookout you have an amazing view of Zion Canyon and the Virgin River running through it.

The hike to Scout lookout is 1.9 miles with 1,000 feet of elevation gain. The hike has a few scenic stopping points, and a big chunk of the elevation gain takes places in the “Walters Wiggles” portion of the trail – a series of 21 switchbacks that were cut into the rock in 1926.

About this panorama

This is the highest resolution one that I have yet put up on the web. It’s stitched at around 300 megapixels, and if you are using the flash viewer for it you can zoom in quite far. As you pan around, you will see people starting the hike up to Angels Landing and grabbing onto a cable. The Angels Landing trail is closed for a little while (expected to re-open late October, 2010) while the cables and chains are being replaced with new ones, but even with new chains it will still be a tough hike with sheer drops. So in other words, don’t bring your kids up it.

Things to look for

I didn’t notice it at the time, but if you pan up and zoom in, you can see a bird in the sky. (it’s pretty small even when you zoom all the way in so it’s hard to tell exactly what kind of bird it is – looks like a bird of prey of some sort). If you zoom down and follow the river around the Big Bend you can pan up and see the parking lot for the Weeping Rock trail. As you pan around a bit more you can see the Great White Throne. If you happen to have someone who knows the names of the different features in Zion better than I do – you can hear them point them out to you while you pan around too.

If you look by the toilets you’ll notice the black metal drums that are accumulating waiting to be taken away via helicopter. The hike down from this point lasts only about an hour, so the bathrooms are great for anyone who can’t hold it for an hour… and for everyone else they stink up the area on hot days and motivate you to go explore other areas of the park.

That big pile of bags contain my canyoneering gear and hold my camera stuff while I’m doing a canyon. If I’m doing a wet canyon, I’ll have dry bags for everything – and if I’m doing a wet and cold canyon I’ll have all that stuff plus a drysuit and very sore shoulders.

I thought about blurring out the part where some dork named “Lee” scratched his name into the rock, but I left it in there so we can all look at it and say “What kind of a loser scratches their name into a rock?”. Seriously – don’t ever do that. If you ever see someone do that, get them to stop.

The links!

Flash version

If clicking on the image at the top of the article doesn’t work, or you don’t feel like scrolling back up there, you can view the full 360 panorama of the view from Scout Lookout in Zion National Park

iPad / iPod Version

You can use a special HTML5/CSS 3D viewer of the iPad-friendly panorama of the view from Scout Lookout in Zion National Park

Android Version

If you are on android, you can use the normal full flash link (as long as you have installed the Flash player on your Android phone) – and if you are side-by-side with an iPhone user you can rub in the fact that yours will zoom in farther since it will dynamically load images as it zooms whereas the HTML5/CSS3D viewer cannot.

About this Y

From most places in the Provo / Orem area, if you look to the east you will see a large “Y” halfway up the mountain. This block letter, originally planned to be the center of the a three-letter “B Y U”, has remained on the hill since 1906. The 30-minute (or 45-minutes if you take breaks) hike to the “Y” has long been a rite of passage for young BYU students.

There’s something about looking out to a distant peak or spot high on a hill and first saying to yourself “I want to go up there” and then later saying to yourself “I’ve been up there.” whenever you see it. Just as you can see the Y from almost anywhere in Provo or the surrounding areas, from the Y you can see just about everywhere in Provo and the surrounding areas.

(If you are interested in a more thorough history of the Y at BYU, I recommend the Wikipedia entry and its related links as a starting point.)

About this shot:

I knew the Y was lit for homecoming, and the hike is a short one and compatible with my family schedule (i.e. I could leave once the kids are in bed and not feel guilty stranding my wife with the kids, and I’d only be robbing myself of sleep). We met in the parking lot of the law library and drove up to the base of the hike.

After gearing up, we started our brisk hike to the top. Carrying a backpack full of camera gear, my tripod, panohead.. etc., we were able to reach the 10th switchback and the trail leading to the base of the Y in about 30 minutes. We passed a couple of groups of young BYU students, but they were busy flirting in large groups so they didn’t seem to mind.

My plan was to shoot the panorama from the middle of the bottom serif of the Y to give something interesting to look at as you pan around. Even though it was a day or two after a new moon and there was hardly any moonlight – there was plenty of light in every direction – about three or four EV more light than I had when I was standing on top of Nebo. I bracketed each shot with 3 exposures to blend together and get more shadow and hilight detail – and merged them all together. It took about 30 minutes to shoot the whole sphere.

That was long enough for several groups to come and go.

Things to look for

If you look to the right of Chris’s shoulder you can see a couple of blurry faces making out, which makes me happy because the Y is also somewhat of a quintessential makeout spot for young college kids – although many of them aren’t ambitious enough to leave the parking lot. (Fair note, the Y isn’t known as a makeout spot – “Squaw Peak” has the honor of being the notorious overlook / makeout spot in the area – so this is probably where people go to make out but not feel so stereotypical in the process).

As you pan around, you can see the entire BYU campus. My car is actually in this shot, but it’s don’t have the supercomputer necessary to stitch the panorama at a resolution large enough for you to zoom in that far – and even if I did it’d be hard to see. The dark spots you see in some of the light trails is a strange artifact of how one of the programs I used handled the differences with moving lights between exposures, but I didn’t want to spend the hours necessary to clean it up.

A couple of guys were also sitting right behind us enjoying watching what we were doing

The links!

Flash version

If the above link doesn’t work, you can view the full 360 panorama of the view from the Y lit at night

iPad / iPod Version

You can use a special HTML5/CSS 3D viewer of the iPad-friendly panorama of the view from BYU Y at night

Android Version

If you are on android, you can use the normal full flash link (as long as you have installed the Flash player on your Android phone) – and if you are side-by-side with an iPhone user you can rub in the fact that yours will zoom in farther since it will dynamically load images as it zooms whereas the HTML5/CSS3D viewer cannot.

Backstory to this shot:

When we realized we couldn’t get to the summit by sunset, we got what we could

If you have read my other post – you already know that we summited Mount Nebo around 11:00PM – about four hours after we had wanted to. This was due in part by getting a start two hours later than we expected and having the hike last a mile longer than we expected, and also because of how much slower we were able to move on the rough terrain by headlamp than we would have by sunlight.

After we had hiked for about an hour the sky started to fade into an orange color and the light started to hit the side of the mountains. That, combined with the first signs of color in the leaves that are starting to change made this a nice spot for a 360 panorama – even though it wasn’t quite the shot we were thinking of when we started out.

The links!

Flash version

If the above link doesn’t work, you can view the full 360 panorama of the view from the hike up Mount Nebo

iPad / iPod Version

You can use a special HTML5/CSS 3D viewer of the iPad-friendly panorama of the view from the hike up Mount Nebo

Android Version

If you are on android, you can use the normal full flash link (as long as you have installed the Flash player on your Android phone) – and if you are side-by-side with an iPhone user you can rub in the fact that yours will zoom in farther since it will dynamically load images as it zooms whereas the HTML5/CSS3D viewer cannot.

While I was in Zion National Park last month, I took several panoramas that I haven’t had time to stitch or post yet. This is one of them. In addition to being the first panorama posted with the updated viewer (it should load much faster than they have previously), this is also the first one that I’m publishing the link for the iPad / iPod version of the panorama viewer.

Backstory to this shot:

One last trip for the 2010 canyoneering season

Chris Raver asked me if I wanted to go do one last canyon in Zion along with a few other guys at the beginning of September. I agreed, and we started the game of trying to pick what to do. We decided on Behunin canyon over The Subway since we’ve done the Subway nigh unto a billion times, and it would be hard to top the conditions we experienced when we did it in May of this year (high flowing water = fun in The Subway if you are prepared and have experience… kind of like I imagine an extra-angry bull is extra fun for a rodeo pro, but would be lethal to a normal guy like me).

Always wanting to stretch the trips out to get the most canyons in that we can in the time we are down there (one trip we were down in Zion for 36 hours and of those hours – all but two of them when we weren’t sleeping were spent canyoneering… we’re pretty efficient and will often bang out more than one in a day). Our favorite nightcap canyon is Keyhole canyon – which we will hit up right as the sun is setting and complete with headlamps and drysuits. This canyon takes only about an hour or two, but it’s a blast at night. Unfortunately, keyhole was out because of construction.

Another fun one to do on the night before or morning after a big trip is Pine Creek. It’s a short canyon – only 3 or so hours long (but much longer if you have a big group) – but it was also closed because of construction. So was Spry canyon, and a number of other good short options.

The plan to do Mystery canyon

Chris suggested that he would go down and sit up all night at the permit window to secure a Mystery canyon permit – and that sounded like a great idea. He drove down Thursday afternoon and sat in the window at the backcountry desk for about 12 hours before it opened (this was labor day weekend). He was the second one in line and he was able to snag the six available Mystery Canyon permits for our group (good work Chris!).

Hmm… No Mystery Canyon

So fast forward to Friday night as we are all sitting around the table at an overpriced eatery in Springdale, UT discussing our plans for the next day. I just talked to my wife who is pregnant and having bad morning sickness, and she said something to the effect of “I would prefer if you would come back early, but do what you want.” When I bring up the fact I’m going to have to bail, suddenly a lot of other people start having excuses as well… and it turns out nobody is really feeling up to Mystery anymore and we all decide to bail. At that point, we probably could have called the backcountry desk to turn in the permit to let someone else go, but our minds were more focused on sleep.

So what does that long backstory have to do with this shot?

Excellent book with lots of photo spots in Utah listed.

“At Sunrise, this is the most beautiful panorama in Zion.”

So, how can you argue with that? Now – he says “panorama” and then shows a clip of basically a 25-degree field-of-view of just the Towers of the Virgin, so perhaps we use the word to mean different things…. but just like I can’t pass up taking a panorama at any place called “panorama point”, I also couldn’t argue with a guy with a name that is spelt like matress and beyond my ability to pronounce.

Now that I’ve got this sunrise panorama out of the way, I’m sure some time that I’m down there I can find one that is more stunning – although I will admit I do like this one. Especially now that I can look at it without feeling my legs aching from hiking the day before.

What you see in the Panorama

From left to right when you first load it, you see the West Temple, the Sundial, the Temple of the Virgin, and the Altar of Sacrifice (the Altar of Sacrifice is easy to see – it has the flat top and the red streak coming down it). As you pan around you see other named stuff, like the Watchman, and the Human History Museum. Some guy in a Ben & Jerry’s shirt was admiring my work while I was there too

The links!

Flash version

If the above link doesn’t work, you can view the full 360 panorama of the Towers of the Virgin at Sunrise in Zion National Park

iPad / iPod Version

You can use a special HTML5/CSS 3D viewer of the iPad-friendly panorama of the Towers of the Virgin in Zion National Park

Android Version

If you are on android, you can use the normal full flash link (as long as you have installed the Flash player on your Android phone) – and if you are side-by-side with an iPhone user you can rub in the fact that yours will zoom in farther since it will dynamically load images as it zooms whereas the HTML5/CSS3D viewer cannot.

As long as it’s not of a commercial nature (as in… I’m not going to go shoot panoramas of the newly renovated suites at your hotel for you to put on your website… at least not for free) – I’ll put it on my list. (Although if you DO have a commercial project you want me to shoot for hire, drop me a line in the comments and ask me to email you and we can discuss it.)

Places I would consider cool:

• Abandoned buildings that you can get access too without trespassing
• Secret lairs of super villains
• Professional baseball stadiums field access (and maybe dugouts and bullpen area too if it has a cool view)
• Industrial places. (If you work somewhere that resembles the place that the Terminator is melted down in T2, that’d be cool)
• Cool buildings. If you know of a cool building and can get special access to places that have good views… that’d be good
• Roof tops of high rises
• Secret government installations (Yeah, I know that one isn’t going to happen… but it would be cool if it could!)
• Junkyards – especially at dusk or sunrise
• Caves (I’d bring my own lighting, obviously)
• Sports stadiums (anyone have a hook up at the Delta Center Energy Solutions Arena?)
• Big Cathedrals (I know there is a cool one in Salt Lake, but I don’t feel comfortable just walking in there and saying “Hello, Father… mind if I set up my tripod here for a bit?”)
• Inside of LDS Temples before they are dedicated (I’m definitely jealous of those official photographers who get to do it)

Of course, there are lots of things that aren’t on that list that would be cool. I actually work and have kids I play with a lot, so I’m not planning on going crazy – so it’s not a super urgent request (I still have a number of places I want to shoot that I know of, but they are of the type that anyone can shoot… but the stuff you might be able to get me access to might be a lot cooler than stuff I can get on my own). It’s a lot easier for me if I can go in somewhere with someone who knows the people before I set up my tripod and start shooting – it’s a bit awkward to explain what the heck I’m doing to a total stranger.

Just keep thinking about places and if you know of a place let me know. I’ll probably eventually round out a whole Temple Square series – since I think there are some interesting places there. If you have any requests of places in the Temple Square area you would like to see let me know and I’ll ask my friend with a “pretty please” attached and maybe you will be lucky if he lets me take one there. (The tunnels under Temple Square? [they sound more interesting than they look] The parking garage? [I'm joking about the parking garage] the audio control room of the tabernacle? the light control booth of the Conference Center? the conference center lit up for the christmas concert?).

In other words… I’m definitely open to suggestions of cool places to take panoramas – especially if you can get me into them and they are things not normally seen by people.

Spherical Panorama of the Tabernacle on Temple Square

While I was in the area last week, I also managed to take this Spherical Panorama of the Tabernacle on Temple Square. The postion I am taking it from is also the angle where Lloyd Newell delivers the “Spoken Word” portion of Music and the Spoken Word

In 2007 the ensign published a several-page article about the Tabernacle (but the PDF version is much better; it has pictures.)

Click on the image to view the LDS Conference Center - Front of House spherical panorama

I’ll write up more detail soon, but I wanted to get these images posted while The October 2010 General Conference was still in session.

Click on the image to view a spherical panorama from the LDS Conference Center pulpit

About a month or so ago, I visited my friend Jason at his work and shot a spherical panorama of the LDS Conference Center from the point of view of the conductor. That time, I visited in the evening and the lighting people were all gone – so I shot it with just the “work lights” on. As good as it may have looked then, it deserved a second visit when the lights were on.

This Thursday, I went back up and visited Jason again during the “blackout time” (a time period when the technical people can make sure things are set up and prepared for General Conference without any tour groups, etc coming in). I’ll write a more detailed post eventually, but I wanted to get this image up quickly so I’ll write more later.

If you are interested in learning more general information, my earlier post about the LDS Conference Center has some background information on it.

Panorama of Mount Nebo at Midnight

This trip was about as last-minute as you can get. We decided to hike to the north peak of Mount Nebo Friday afternoon, and left my house around 4:30 PM and headed towards the Nebo Loop in Payson – planning to stop for food along the way.

It turns out, there is only really one place to get fast food on the road from Spanish Fork to Payson, and once we realized that we had passed it we backtracked to it. It’s a Burger King that is attached to a Chevron station. We place or orders, buy some gatorade and misc stuff, and then head back into the car to head to the trailhead.

Chris drives a TDI Jetta, and he takes great pleasure in getting as many miles out of each drop of diesel that he can. I guess part of getting high mileage must involve keeping your tank really low, because after twenty minutes of driving up the hills on the Nebo Loop, his car informs us we have a range of only 5 miles left. A few more turns later and it’s at 0 miles of range left. The tough part about driving a diesel car is that even if you have the lungs and the hose and the lack of morals that would allow you to siphon gas from someone – you are going to have a hard time finding another vehicle in the middle of the wilderness that takes diesel. Chances are if you find one, it’s pulling a hunting trailer and has a 4:1 gun-to-person ratio… so we decide to turn back and get some diesel in his car. Man… If ONLY we were just at a gas station…

We end up starting our hike about 90 minutes later than we had wanted to, but decided to keep going anyway since the people’s GPS tracks we saw showed it only being 4.5 miles to the summit and we tend to hike at least 2.5 or 3 miles per hour – so we could still make it up there by dusk or shortly afterwards…

I recorded my GPS track of the same route that guy we were following used.

Here’s his track, which shows the route we took but lies about how long it is:

On the west face of the ridge, the wind was blowing strong and was bitterly cold. The moment you crossed over to the east face of the ridge the wind was completely gone. As luck would have it, much of the route is on the west face of the ridge (perhaps because people tend to hike early this in the day, so being in the shade in the summer would be nice, but I’m not convinced that the person who put the trail up originally thought things out much since it has a lot of spots where you go down a few hundred feet only to immediately climb back up that same amount).

We reached the summit and took a few pictures of ourselves with the lights behind us, and then I set up and took a panorama. Normally, I shoot several exposures and blend them for an HDR panorama. In this case, there wasn’t a need for HDR. To avoid spending the entire night up there taking images for the panorama, I cranked up the ISO to 6400 and used 8 second exposures. I shot at F/8 at the hyperfocal distance of the lens because the depth of field is important for these things. The end result is the 360×180 Panorama of Mount Nebo at Midnight – lit by a nearly full moon.

It was extremely windy at the summit, and the wind was very cold – so by the time I was done shooting this I was having a hard time even moving my fingers. Some parts of the panorama are degraded because the wind shook the camera, but overall I think it gives a good impression of what it is like up there at night. It’s a nice view – better than the view durring the day in my opinion. Now… had I know that we wouldn’t be getting back to my house until 4:30 AM – I think we would have hiked something shorter instead.

I really need an Ultrawide Angle lens for this kind of thing. If anyone reading this feels like sending me around eight-hundred bucks, I’ll go buy an UWA lens and I’ll take as many 360×180 panoramas of your house that you want

On Friday, I went with a group to Zion National Park and descended Behunin Canyon. I’ve done this canyon a number of times before, but it’s been a while since the last time I have done it. The view right before the last rappel is quite stunning, and it is one of my favorite spots in the park. While standing on a ledge next to a 200-foot drop, I carefully shot this series of images to stitch together for a Panorama of Lady Mountain, Deertrap Mountain, and Mountain of the Sun from the end of Behunin Canyon.

At this spot, you will not encounter any large crowds – there is a limit of 20 people allowed to do the canyon on any given day (up to 14 people can reserve a permit ahead of time, and up to 6 can get a “walk on” permit as early as the day before the trip). There is a maximum group size of 6 people allowed in this canyon. On the day we did it, there was one other group of three people that we met up with, and based on the permit records only eight people went through the canyon that day.

To get to the point that this shot was taken requires a backcountry permit, around 6 to 8 hours of hiking, a lot of downclimbing, wading through water and eight rappels (this is right before the 9th – and final – rappel).

If you are interested in doing some of the technical canyons in Zion, I would highly recommend getting a copy of Tom Jone’s book Zion: Canyoneering. You can get much of the content online from Tom’s Utah Canyoneering website but a paper copy of the book is convenient and for many of the canyons contains updated or more in-depth information. Plus, Tom Jones is a good guy and maybe if enough of us buy his book he can finally afford that second headlight for his car

What you can see

The pink looking navajo sandstone mountain towering over you as the panorama loads is “Lady Mountain”. Apparently to some early pioneers it resembled a lady, hence the name. Note: The Lady Mountain hiking/climbing route is a technical hiking trail (involves two 5.6 climbing sections) – is only described on Tom’s website, but might make it in the next edition of his book. haven’t done it yet, but it’s on my list

As you look down canyon, if you zoom in you will be able to see the roof of the Zion Lodge. The original lodge was built in 1924 by a subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad – but burned down in 1966. The lodge was rebuilt quickly, but it wasn’t until 1990 that it was remodeled to feel rustic again. I’m not a Zion Mountain-name buff, so these names might be wrong – but looking to the left, the white-capped mountain topped with ponderosa pines is Deertrap Mountain, and then looking to the right you see The Mountain of the Sun, and behind it are the Twin Brothers.

The trail you see in the trees following the base of Lady Mountain is the Emerald Pools trail leading to the Middle Emerald Pools. If you zoom in far enough you can see a few people on the trail making their way up to the pools. On our way out of the canyon, we passed by the Middle and Lower emerald pools. I probably should have taken pictures of them – but we were all pretty hungry and anxious to make our way out of there.

I took several more panoramas that day, and as I get time I’ll process them and post them here in another post. I think this one is probably the most interesting of them – and this view was the main reason I wanted to do Behunin canyon again.

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)