A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but is it worth a camera lens?
I decided to work on my Ridgefield addiction this past weekend by visiting new places instead. Friday after work, instead of heading home, I went up to nearby Tualatin Hills Nature Park.
Saturday I worked around the house, and Sunday I headed up towards Mount Hood to hike the trail to Mirror Lake and then the summit of Tom, Dick, and Harry Mountain. At the summit, I had a beautiful view of Mount Hood before me, a less clear view of Mount Jefferson way to the south, and could barely make out bits of Mount St. Helens to the north.
The light wasn’t that great for taking good scenic pictures, so instead I set up my tripod and started doing something I picked up on a few years ago while hiking in Yellowstone and the Tetons: taking goofy self-portraits of myself when I’m out on the trails.
I started off with a picture of me pretending to fall off the mountain, then a variety of other poses. One of my favorites was me standing majestically like the explorers of old, eyes gazing into the sun and out into the frontier, towering over the majestic mountain, the great mountain which is not nearly so great as myself.
It’ll be a great picture for the book jacket whenever I finally finish my novel.
Having had my fun, I took a few quick pictures of Mount Hood and decided to head back down to Mirror Lake, hopefully for some nice pictures at sunset. I turned around to grab a drink of water and to start packing up when a sudden strong gust of wind kicked up over the ridge. I heard the sickening sound behind me, the sound of my tripod falling over and smashing into the rocks.
My wide angle zoom was smashed to pieces, although the glass seems to have been spared. I had my favorite camera attached, the 20D, and fortunately it wasn’t completely destroyed. The onboard flash will never work again, but the rest of the camera seems to be working OK.
Unfortunately that left me with no lens for scenic pictures, however, no matter how beautiful the light got as I hiked back down the mountain. I had my telephoto lenses with me, but wildlife was no where to be seen, so pictures were pretty much over for the day apart from a quick picture of the massive trillium that were blooming all over the place.
I’m not sure what happens now, if I try to repair the lens, pick up a new version of the same thing, or go for something wider and maybe with image stabilization. But I’ll need to decide soon, as right now my widest lens starts at 100mm.