Vegas, Grand Canyon & Hoover Dam

In February, we took a trip to Las Vegas for an academic conference, and we crammed as much fun and sights as we could into a few days. Vandra has been to Vegas many times, but it was my first, so we did the usual tourist-ey stuff - the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam and the big casinos.

This is my favorite shot from the whole trip, even more than my Grand Canyon pictures. It's The Bellagio Casino's Fountains of Bellagio, and it's the highlight of the Vegas strip at night.

The longer I take pictures, the more I know that sometimes getting a great shot is luck. You do your best with the settings, compose, and mentally cross your fingers. That's what I did for this shot. I was kicking myself for leaving my Canon EOS 5D in our hotel room when I saw the Bellagio lit up at night. All I had was my HP Photosmart R967 slipped into my pocket.

So, I set the camera on a ledge, turned off the flash, and used the Night Scenery option. This is the result.

I know that sometimes I over think photos. Who knows? If I had my 5D with me, I may have muffed the shot (but I'd like to think not!), or over thought some settings. I almost always shoot in manual mode - I like telling the camera what to do, not the other way around. After this shot, I began to trust my HP a little more, and I wasn't sure if that was going to happen. I don't like using those preset modes on point-and-shoots, but the HP came through beautifully with this shot.

HP Photosmart R967, Night Landscape Mode, ISO Speed 400.

We were walking around Hoover Dam taking pictures, and I took this one at the monument to the workers who built the dam. On the ground at the monument are the states the dam provides with water from the dam's reservoir, Lake Mead.

As we looked down at the states, Vandra realized this was a perfect photo op - she was born in Colorado, and she moved to California when she was eight or nine (I might be in trouble for not remembering!). This is one of my favorite candids of her.

The picture above and the two below were taken with my EOS 5D, a wonky Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 lens that gave me fits the whole trip, and a Tiffen circular polarizer lens, all at 100 ISO. Otherwise, I didn't record the exposure information (if you haven't been able to tell already, I need to get better at that).

The photo above of Lake Mead was taken from the top of Hoover Dam at about 3:30, so the sun was just right.

The white "bathtub ring" that's visible on the rocks surrounding the lake is the high water mark from 1983, when excessive snow melt flooded the Colorado River Canyon.

This is the view from the other side of the dam, looking down on the power station. The pictures don't do the view justice - from 726 feet up, it really is an amazing site.

This was the biggest treat of all - seeing the Grand Canyon. I'd always dreamed of seeing it in person. Like the Hoover Dam, only more so, the pictures don't begin to illustrate what a wonder the canyon really is.

We got up at 5:30 in the morning to take the sunrise bus tour of the south rim of the canyon, and I'll always be glad that we did. Besides the magnificent view, I'll always remember two things about our bus tour - it was very cold (about 15 degrees Fahrenheit), and we were the only two people on the bus. The driver and his trainee were great guys who chatted with us the whole time. We really did feel like we got a personal tour.

We arrived at the look-out point along the south rim about 20 minutes before the sun came over the horizon, so I had a chance to snap the canyon in all its glory, from just before sun up to about half an hour after the sun rose. Just amazing.

I took these shots on my EOS 5D on top of a Bogen-Manfrotto 3021B Pro tripod with a 322RC2 Horizontal Grip Action Ball Head. I mention that mouthful because it was my first time really testing out the tripod and head, and it is an excellent set-up. Once you have a ball-head and a quick release plate for your tripod, you'll never go back. What's more, Manfrottos are made to last - I'm quite certain I'll have mine for decades.

It's becoming a running gag that I take an Oilers jersey with me wherever we go, so I can get my picture taken wearing it in all sorts of places. So far, I've done the Grand Canyon, and with our wedding party in Mexico. I hope to have dozens and dozens more when we travel to all of the different places we want to see over our lifetimes.

Next stop for the Oilers jersey - Seattle and Vancouver. We leave in 31 days.

Last year's Stanley Cup Finals pictures

I thought I'd share some pictures from the best few weeks of my life as a sports fan - my two trips to the Stanley Cup Finals last June.

It was always a dream of mine to see in person my favorite hockey team, the Edmonton Oilers, in the Stanley Cup Finals. It has been a while - before last June, it had been 16 years since they made it all the way to hockey's biggest series.

Anyway, they did it, and so did I. Not one trip, but two, to see them play the Carolina Hurricanes for all the marbles in the hockey world - the Stanley Cup.

But, it got better - I got to see my Oilers play in a Game 7 - the winner was walking away with the Stanley Cup. Unfortunately, the boys came up short, but it was wild ride - lightning in a bottle.

Whenever I talk about last year's Game 7, this is my refrain: I was there. The Oilers didn't win it, but they could have, and I was there to see it.

Someday, God willing, I will see my Oilers in the Stanley Cup Finals, and maybe I'll even see the game where they win it all. (These pictures are all from Game 7 - maybe I'll post some pictures from Game 2 soon - I took some very good tailgating photos.)

[Click on all pictures for larger images]

I left Philadelphia at about 1 a.m. to get to RBC Center in time to see the morning skate, which was free and open to the public. I missed this opportunity when I went down for game two, so I wasn't going to miss it again. I got there about an hour before the practice session - just enough time to get my camera ready, drink some Red Bull, and splash some cold water on my face. The image above is of Edmonton Oiler Head Coach Craig MacTavish - looking over the troops and pondering Game 7.

This is Oiler Center Shawn Horcoff practicing deflections vs. Goalie Jussi Markkanen.

This is one of my favorite pictures from well over 100 I took at both games of last year's Stanley Cup Finals. At left, with stick cocked, is Oilers Defenseman Steve Staios, practicing slapshots, as Oiler Assistant Coach Charlie Huddy (without helmet) feeds him perfect saucers from center ice. Huddy, a five-time Stanley Cup champ with the Oilers, knows a thing or two about winning.

Outside the arena before game-time, if I had just stepped off a rocket ship, I could have thought the game was being played in Canada. I found many, many Canadians (not even all of them Oilers fans) outside to drink beer and swap stories with. I was right at home in my Oiler sweater. The picture above is one of the better candids - a woman wrapped around a banner bragging about Edmonton's five Stanley Cups.

I loved these guys - another group among probably hundreds who drove a lot longer than my 12 hours to see their Oilers hopefully bring home the Cup. How can you not love these costumes and enthusiasm?

It's all over, and the Oilers came up short. I have to confess, the excitement inside the Hurricanes' barn was most definitely contagious. You would have to be comatose for it not to be. It's impossible for me to describe just how loud it was. The Hockey News reported that a decibel meter registered an unofficial reading of 134 decibels during the game, which makes that the loudest reading ever at an American sporting event. By the way, 134 decibels is the measurement generally accepted as the threshold of pain.

This is the greatest post-game tradition in all professional sports. The teams line up and shake hands. When is the last time you saw that at the Super Bowl, World Series or NBA Championship? You don't see it. I just missed the captains shaking hands, but they are clearly visible in this picture: Oilers Captain Jason Smith (with the "C" on his jersey) has just shaken hands with Hurricanes Captain Rod Brind'Amour.

These shots weren't easy to get for a number of reasons. I was sitting in the upper level, and I was shooting with a not-so-great lens - a Tamron 100-300 mm F4-5.6 hand held at ISO speed equivalents of 800 and 1600 on my Canon EOS 5D. Even at those settings, the quality of these pictures is marginal; good for a 4x6 print, maybe even a 5x7, but beyond that, the degradation would be too noticeable for a quality print that would be within my comfort zone. Holding the camera still enough in these conditions with the equipment I had was a challenge. Even though they aren't crisp, I'm still proud of these shots. Like the Oilers, I gave it my best shot. What I would have given for a 300 mm F2.8 Canon "L" series lens with image stabilization, though!

Not only does hockey have the coolest championship trophy, but it also has the coolest MVP trophy, too; here Hurricane Goalie Cam Ward lifts the Conn Smythe Trophy up high for all to see.

NHL handlers bring out Stanley for all to see. Sweet. At this point, I stopped being a disappointed Oilers fan, and I turned into a rabid hockey fan, and even more than that, an excited photographer trying to hold his camera still enough to get decent shots.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman with the mic and the prize.

Bettman congratulates Hurricane Captain Rod Brind'Amour before handing over the hard-earned trophy. The noise at this point was almost unbearable - I was waiting for the roof to blow off.

As captain, Brind'Amour received the honor of skating around the ice with the trophy first. Some hockey players wait 10-15 years to get the chance to do this - some never get the chance.

I snapped this shot outside the arena. It wasn't a whole lot of fun walking through throngs of jubilant Hurricanes fans in an Oilers jersey, but Edmonton put up one helluva fight. To their credit, Hurricanes fans were pretty cool after the game, many shaking hands and saying "good series." Of course, it's easy to be that nice when your team just won it all. I wonder how kind they would have been had the Oilers prevailed. Actually, based on my two trips there, they would have been pretty cool had Edmonton won - the friendly Canes fans there appreciate the game and what a Stanley Cup Championship means.