Keith's Odyssey to Planet Fitness: Jasper 1 of ?

A writer once said that the way to write a story was to begin at the beginning, and keep on writing till you reach the end. Then stop doing that and start selling it. Edit only if required to do so.

That was then. Now, there is no one story. It's like everyone wants to build a franchise so as to sell more books or movies. Some of them go on and on, like trying to spread a small pat of butter over too much bread. (I hope at least some of you recognize the reference, and there's a hint later.) Or they tell the same story over and over again.

So as an aside, this is one of the reasons I don't go to movies much any more. Some examples? Star Wars. The first 3 movies were ok, if a bit wooden even by escapist movie standards. The series took a huge hit for me when Yoda pulled Luke's spaceship out of the swamp for him, rather than make him do it himself like any self respecting Zen master would do. And then the 4th movie came out. Gawd that was terrible. Nothing since has interested me.

Or the other star series, Star Trek. Again, by the standards of the time, the original series was groundbreaking, if nearly unwatchable today. The first movie put me to sleep, and I think I saw the other movies on video, but it's pretty hazy. Pretty sure the one with the whales was the last one I saw. I watched the first several of the Next Generation at a friend's place, and thought it was better, but not much better, and I was busy with other things to do. Then (and the order might be wrong), Deep Space Nine, and Voyager came along and maybe another one whose name escapes me, and I was still busy, and none of the clips I saw (with the exception of some Seven of Nine clips) were compelling. There's been a bunch of other shows and movies in that universe and some alternate time lines, if I understand correctly, but I've totally lost track. I'm typically not interested in reboots, or retconns, or remakes, or alternate timelines where you have to be a mega-fan to keep track, or whatever other variations are called now.

Then there's the whole comic book movie craze. Sheesh. I get it, comic books and Harry Potter and Twilight have their place. If that's what gets kids into reading, I'm all for it. But the source material is hardly the basis for a movie. Teenagers generally aren't interesting even at their best in-person selves, and watching them on screen in all their emoting angst-iness is actually painful.

Or Lord of the Rings? I read The Hobbit in one night during high school. The first in the trilogy was over two nights later that week. I finished The Two Towers late late early one school night, and seriously contemplated staying up to read the third book. That and the appendices were spread over two nights. I have periodically reread them, though not recently. I got the Silmarillion when it came out, and a couple of the next books, but I got lost in the mythology, and different versions of the stories.

I was pleased with the famous movies of the early 2000's. They took difficult source material, made some changes, and put 3 beautiful movies on screen. (Say it with me, a beginning, a middle, and an end, and an end, and an end... Maybe they did get a little carried away there.) There were some character changes I disagree with, and some liberties with the story, but I maintain that the changes are defensible in the whole book to movie adaptation process. And then they got all full of themselves and did a thing called The Hobbit, and dragged in a bunch of stuff from the appendices over far too much film time. It was a wet hot mess, if you had even a passing knowledge of the books. I tried watching it on the flight to New Zealand, and even with the lack of other things to do, I found other things to do that were more interesting. Then recently the Rings of Power appeared on Amazon. I watched the first episode in horror, and won't be back.

I've been contemplating how to tell the story of the Jasper trip. One the face of it Neil drove us to Jasper with some stops along the way. We went to various places for good photos, made many photos, and came home again. We had a good time, or at least I did. I think one of the people struggled a bit. Every road trip has someone that struggles with something.

As another aside, people and their cameras sometimes baffle me. Yes, cameras and lenses can be expensive to extremely expensive, depending on your standards. Yes, they are precision items and work best when not abused. But the point is they were made to take photos, to capture the light out in the world, with all that might entail. I've learned they are not so fragile they break with a cross look.

Most of the time a bit of dust on the lens is of no importance. There's a blog written by a camera rental place that documents a fly in a 70-200 lens, wherein the lens still functioned perfectly. In fact, they found it impossible to take a photo of the fly with the camera it was attached to, or see evidence of the fly. They had to do a special setup to take a photo of the fly. So I'm not going to sweat some dust on the lens, unless I'm aiming almost directly into the sun.

I digress. Part of the van experience is people with sharp eyes spying something interesting up ahead, and cry out for the van to stop. (I almost never see it, and have come to realize I would make a terrible hunter gatherer.) We pile out after it does so, though I'm moderately famous for anticipating that stage of the process once. That something interesting is likely to be transient, so the idea is to get out, and get the first photos, then tweak settings if necessary and take some more. That all ought to happen within a few seconds.

Except some people have this obsession with lens caps, putting them back on after every photo opportunity. One person would get back in the van, put the lens cap on, take off the lens hood and reverse it back onto the lens so as to store it in a bag, then put the camera in a different bag. Then when the next opportunity happens, they have to think about which lens to use, get all set up, get out of the van, and by then the opportunity is typically lost.

Part of getting good photos is being ready for the opportunity. That means having the camera beside you in the van, typically with a long lens on, no lens cap, with settings suitable for the light outside. That way all that needs to be done is focus, and click. Then sometimes the opportunity is gone. The bird flies away, the bear lumbers into the woods, the train zooms by, or whatever. We get back into the van and carry on. I remember one trip where there were 3 cameras and a pile of lenses between me and my seat buddy.

1. So there we were, on the way to Jasper. Each person typically takes along most of their camera gear, depending on the focus of the expedition. Plus clothes and other necessary stuff for several days on the road. Plus the van itself has supplies to make the trip better. Snacks and water. First aid stuff.

2. The panorama view at the first stop. At least we didn't have to worry about the view disappearing on us.

3. In many cases the bird flies away. This raven was probably waiting to see if we would give it some food in exchange for posing, but we didn't. Other people did, though.

4. Of all the beautiful waterfalls we saw on the trip, this is one of them.

5. This mountain sort of appeared and mostly disappeared on us as we waited. It took some strong Lightroom processing to get even this much to show up.

6. Three views near Medicine Lake. First the typical tourist, there I was and this is what I saw, photo. Of which there are a bunch this trip, with me trying to see if I was going to remember a long ago trip to Jasper. As a spoiler, I didn't. For all intents and purposes, this was my first trip to Jasper.

7. From almost exactly the same place, the view in the other direction. I'm also moderately famous on these trips for looking in the other direction in reference to whatever we stopped for. Usually that's because I've already got my photo of that, or I'm not interested in that thing, and I'm looking for other photos while people work on the first thing. I was particularly liking the light on the logs constrasting with the grass and dead trees from a forest fire.

8. And again, from almost exactly the same place, in another direction.

9. Yes, we saw a moose and calf across the pond.

10. The purpose of the trip was dark skies and astro photography. This is from the bridge at Pyramid lake in the middle of the night. Normally my night photography is alone. It's quiet and once the camera is running I have some peaceful thinking time. Ambient light isn't a problem, since airplanes and passing cars can add some interest to a time lapse. Like the red light in this, we think it was a boat. Other times I want to deliberately create a bit of light.

But this was a crowded bridge, with people walking past us all the time. I was worried about the bridge moving and ruining our photos. At least nobody kicked the tripods, though I was standing so they'd have to kick me first, and then someone would be learning to swim in the dark. I didn't dare set up the second tripod and camera pointing in the other direction.There were lots of lights from the parking lot ruining photos. Lots of "turn your lights off!" shouting, along with some swear words occasionally.

11. This was about as good as the Northern Lights got for us, between parking lot lighting.

12. This is what the parking lot light show looked like all too often.

13. Although, to be fair, sometimes the extra light makes for a good photo. The whole when life hands you lemons, make lemonade thing and all.

14. Of all the reflections at Border pond, this is just the first.

15. The star in the get out and get your photo before it moves. This was moving full speed along tracks beside the pullout. It's only a few yards away, and I've got the 70-200 lens. Out the door, focus and click while moving to clear the door. If the window wasn't so reflective, I'd have been able to tell whether the driver shaved that morning.

16. Of course there's mountains near Jasper, and you're expecting at least one mountain photo, yes?

There's lots more, stay tuned. Maligne canyon and lake, top of the tramway, more mountains, night photos, waterfalls, and probably some driftwood are coming your way.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Driftwood (Jasper)

Peony. At least I think this is a kind of peony.

Flower

Yukon

One of the disadvantages of being so far north is that we were right underneath some of the curtains, while the people further south got a great light show.