Over the past couple of weeks, knowing that this trip was coming up, I spent quite a few hours researching how to take good snow sports pictures, as well as going through various Flickr galleries and finding pictures with available Exif data. Exif data is information that most newer digital cameras (including my cameraphone, oddly enough) embed in the picture file. It contains various information about the camera’s settings when the picture was taken – what type of camera and lens were used, the shutter speed, aperture, focal length, what program (if any) was used to edit the image, and some other stuff. On Flickr, you have the option to make the Exif data publicly viewable, and it actually kind of irritates me when people don’t – for me, looking at other people’s Exif data has been a great way to learn how to set up pictures. I guess the photographers must be worried about some sort of artistic infringement, but I still really don’t get it. Anyway, to see it on Flickr, go to a picture’s page, and on the lower right side of the picture, under “additional information”, you should see something that looks like this:

EXIF data on Flickr.

Click on where it says “More properties”, and that link will take you to the picture’s Exif data.  I always keep mine publicly viewable – click here to see an example.

As I was looking at Exif data for the pictures, I noticed a lot were taken with a wide-angle lens. Since I wanted to try one out anyway, I went ahead and rented one. I’ll post a full review of the lens in another week, after the rental period is up, but in short, I ended up using my 70-200 telephoto a heck of a lot more (and I think those pictures came out a heck of a lot better.) If I’d been a bit bolder, I might have stuck to my wide-angle lens and just gotten closer to the action, but I almost got run over once just when I was crouching on the sidelines (a woman lost control and careened off-trail and down the slope I was lying on – she was fine but it took a couple years off of my life!) so I wasn’t about to get out there in the middle of things and let people go around me.

Overall though, I had an absolutely fantastic time – I think I had more fun taking pictures than I actually did skiing (especially after my unfortunate collision with the mountain!) and I’m really really glad I had the chance to do that. I never thought I’d take my camera out in the snow, but overall it survived (I had it and the lenses almost completely wrapped in plastic bags while I used them) and I had a ridiculous amount of fun and learned a lot. :-)

Ok, here are some pictures, and click here to get to the gallery with the rest of them.

Wide-angle lens shot. I love the sun in this one.

.

I love the rays of the sun in this one, as well as the fact that this is one of the few where I managed to catch someone against just blue sky.

.

I love this because it gives an idea of just how far these people were jumping. This was a HUGE jump. This wasn't even the whole thing! I also love the sense of depth perception, which is one thing I like about the wide-angle lens.

.

This person did nail their landing (there's more pictures of this jump in the gallery.) Crazy.

.

There's something I like about this one. I can't put my finger on it though. The sense of depth? The look on the guy's face? Or maybe it's his shirt...

.

Click on this picture to see the large version--you can see the mountain reflected in his goggles!

.

Did I mention that it was an absolutely gorgeous day? Because it really really was! On a side note, if I hadn't fallen, I wouldn't have seen the potential for this shot. So maybe some good came from my pain. :-)

.

I love that he's sticking his tongue out in concentration.

.

A skiier, a snowboarder, and someone who's apparently along for the ride. Weird.

.

I'm soooo debating photoshopping out the entire ski lift in this one... I don't like doing stuff like that, but it bugs me on a fundamental level.

.

I find this one amusing because it looks like he's about to land on the dude below. For what it's worth, he wasn't anywhere near close to that guy.

.

Well, I didn’t get in as much skiing as I’d planned… In fact, I really didn’t ski a whole lot. Part of it is that I was really tired yesterday (was out late on Friday) and I’m pretty out of skiing shape, and I also kinda sorta was going too fast and did a cartwheeling faceplant downhill into the mountain on my third run, which left me quite bruised and sore (and I’m still hurting today. Whoops.) But mostly, I was having a heck of an awesome time taking pictures of skiiers and snowboarders.

Tomorrow’s post will be with pictures that I took of other people, but for Laura today, here’s some of the pictures of her son. Click here for a gallery of all the pictures.

View from the top of the mountain

.

Remember how I said there weren't many people here? There's NO ONE on this lift!

.

Fresh tracks through powder

.

And people ask me why I don't want to snowboard--why would I want to spend half the day sitting in the snow? :-)

.

As always, here are a few selected pictures. The first three are of my team (which is dark green, except for Katie, who for some reason wore a blue shirt instead. This is easy to do–I showed up in my kickball shirt two weeks ago. Whoops.)

Rundown

.

Air Steve

.

Hail Mary shot--he was the last man standing, and was attempting to make a basket in order to bring the whole team back in. For what it's worth, he does have two legs.

.

Oof!

.

Someone's gonna get it.

.

[Click here to see a gallery of all the dodgeball pictures]