After I resisted buying the sigma DP-1, because of it's speed issues and slow autofocus, I really hoped that the Olympus digital pen provides what I want.

It sounded perfect:

- interchangeable lenses
- comes with a 17mm lens F/2.8 (equals 35mm) (my preferred focal length)
- fits in a pocket
- clean iso 1600+

but like always it works with contrast based focus system which means I'm not going to buy it, since the focus system is to slow.

Why couldn't they use a phase detection system, everything else was perfect...

I will never get a smallish camera which fits into my pocket. I could just go out and buy a 40mm manual focus pan cake, and the D80 fit's in my jacket pocket. But I already got a 35mm F/2 lens I love and don't need another one.

while being on the roadtrip I also had the chance to snap some quick shots of friends and got some shots of me.

Nothing great, but some are nice.

Since we had not much time we only had a very brief visit to olympic mountain national park. This means we only looked at hurricane ridge and didn't make it to the actual rainforest.

Since it was also really hazy, there was not much what I could do picture wise, but got away with a couple of ok shots.

Long story short, I will go back there at a later point in time with a jeep.

the owl whisperer,

basically there was a school teacher who's part time job/hobby it is to keep track off all the owl's on this island and so we had the chance to see him work, since there were a couple of newborn owl in the backyard.

Baiscally these animals are hard to catch, keep fighting and won't shut up. They also have pretty sharp claws and beaks. So we had to 'rescue' him with band aid.

Sorry for the bad pictures, since I could not use a flash. I was limited to iso 3200 and F/2. I want a D700...

I'm an owl wrap, since I fight back and don't give up. Now where are my mice..

ready to be measured...

you are not supposed to ask a lady about her weight and putting me upside down is not cool...

you can find all the pictures in the Seattle galleria here

the night of saturday we spend at bainbrigde island, which was just gorgeous and beautiful. It finally gave me the chance to capture some macros and we were introduce to an owl whisperer.

day two was to drive to Seattle and to spend the night at bainbridge. And I immediately fell in love with Seattle.

• lunch at a park
• visit pikes market
• walking around a park
• visiting the museum for asian art -> not my art = boring
  
• taking the ferry to bainbridge

Portland was defiantly the most relaxing town of our road trip. Since we spend the complete 1.5 days with

• looking at head shops, no they don't sell hats as it turned out
• testing white Russians
  
• playing the worst game of pool in the history of portland
• looking at fancy art in the Portland art museum, my highlight was defiantly the 'tattoo - the art of Portland' Not because of the tattoos, just some of the photographs were stunning.
• being in one of the largest bookstores ever and promptly buying a book
  
• having good food in the morning and excellent coffee
• buying a tent at REI which we didn't end up using. I'm happy that I bought a cheap one, but will use it soon.
• attending a comedy show in the evening, which had some excellent parts
  

the last 5 days I spend with traveling again. This time we conquered another 2 states of the USA, which means I drove now over 33% of the west coast states.

We originally planned to stay a couple of days in Portland, but since I was not to impressed with the city we quickly made a complete road trip out of it and checked out Seattle and Olympic mountain national park

• thursday: redding,portland
• friday: portland
• saturday: seattle,bainbridge island
  
• sunday: olympic mountain national park (border to canada)
• montay: back to davis

in total we drove a bit over 2000 miles and fixie had no major issues, besides running her into a wall (my bumper is not happy) and taking a drift in the gravel, since a semi wanted to drive over me.
Lesson: do not be in the blind spot of a semi, it would had been his fault, but I doubt that a passat is stable enough to survive the impact of a 40+ ton truck

working the usa,

well the goal of the next couple of years is to travel all of the usa. This is my current state...


...layovers don't count...

if I would had the chance to start over with my whole photo equiqument I would now have a rough idea what to buy and what I want:

• D700
• Nikkor 85mm F/1.4 ( I want to buy this lens since 2 years now and can never convince my self to spend the 1300$ on it, maybe for my 28th birthday)
  
• 50mm F/1.8 (own it, 1.4 would be nice, but not really needed)
  
• 35mm F/2 (my most used lens on cropped sensors)
  
• 3 x SB-600 (got them)
  
• 1 x SB-900 (got it)
  

well I got most of the stuff, I just need

• D700
• 85mm F/1.4
  

and guess If I sell some of my stuff

• 70-200mm F/2.8 - 600$ (love the quality, hate the weight + AF)
  
• D200 + Grip 500 - 600$
• D80 + Grip 400 - 500$
• sigma 10-20 - 350$
  

I would be still 2000$ short. Guess I wait 2 more years till they announce the D700 successor and upgrade than. I'm just really missing the low light intensity and after playing with a D700 last night, well I can only say I'm impressed over and over again.

But hey you never know what live throws at you...

friday night:

clubbing in sac

saturday night:

surprise party at sara's
party in sac afterwards till 3am

sunday:

leave me alone, I wanna sleep...

so we are back in davis and I learned something new.

I seem to like camping and honestly after buying all this stuff I had no real choice. But yes it was a lot of fun.

lessons learned:

• my stomach can't handle only dried fruit, I need fresh stuff too
• contacts worked surprisingly well, but quite a hassle in the morning/midnight
• getting the brightest light I could find was an awesome idea. I actually could see something in the dark
• ebooks and rivers are a bad combination. Get a waterproof bag for it
• camera and rivers are a really bad combination, I found some great spots and couldn't get there with the camera, get a waterproof bag...
  
• using only 2 lenses was a great idea, 35mm F/2 and 90mm F/2.8 worked very well, but I could had used something in the 20mm range like this
• buying the right equipment the first time was a really good idea, it was expensive but I will have it for years.
• bringing a reflector instead of flashes was a great idea
• putting water bottles in the sun for 2 hours => hot nearly boiling water
• waterfalls => much colder than rivers => store beer here...
• do not sleep on a slope...
• lots and lots of trouts in the river => bring fishing pole next time
• if you do rock climbing during the day => bring gloves to avoid burned hands...
  

whats next?

• portland/oregon coast in 2 weeks
  
• next year hawaii or yellowstone (once i got over my fear of wild animals eating me, like bears/pumas)
• Yosemite in September?
• Scotland in October?
  
• discovering which food is the right food
• bring more tea

conclusions?

Well this weekend was a bit expensive, since I had to buy all kinds of stuff, but it was a lot of fun and I wanted to get most of this stuff since a couple of years. At least now I have it and can take it on future trips.

I also managed to rent out my old apartment for the next month, not for the price I wanted. But 350$ are better than nothing.

camping...

well the plan for this weekend was to go camping, and ever endless tries to avoid It I caved in.

Means shopping time :(

Which made me realize yet again that it sucks to not fit the standard.

• sleeping mattress, normal person : 40 - 45$, gigantic tall people like me 85$
• flash light, people with good night vision: 15 - 25$, people who are more or less blind in the dark, 'sir yo should get the extra bright one', 55$
• super small lightweight pillow and sleeping bag 180$ (the one I borrowed did not fit in the car and was to big to be hiked in.)
  

Other stuff I had to buy

• a hat, 25$
• a folding knife, 55$ (after negotiating 16$). I'm not going anywhere without a knife! I watched enough MCGyver to know this...
  
• 2 x water canteens, 20$. After now people who went hiking with me know I freak out, if I have not enough water
• bug spray 15$ and they still will bite me...
• ultra portable pillow, 15$
• compression bag, 25$
  

another quest was to get food, which won't perish during the next 72 hours, while being outside in 40 degrees Celsius+ (104 something in weird American Fahrenheit) and gives me my needed 3000+ kilo calories to sustain me.

Short another 40$.

And I still forgot a lot of stuff, I know me...

video from our friends Jen & Abby after the houseparty/mini concert can be found here.

well our weekly gamenight turned out to be something special this week.
This time we got:

• fantastic food, like always
• a fun group of people, like always
• a new game
  

and,

here it comes,

live music from the touring band "Jen & Abby", which promptly let to an improved photo shoot, while they were performing for us, since they needed some pictures.

Now this put me into a challenging position, how the hell are I'm supposed to take pictures...

• awe full location, a cluttered living room is just plain bad
• not able to move anyone around, since I don't want to interrupt there beautiful music
• no subject/background seperation

well since the girls where young and had great skin, the solution was simple. Just drop a couple of spotlights on them and let the rest of the world go black. I also tried some high keys, but they did not work at all.

Note for later, I could had used a 85mm F/1.4 so badly...

So they are not my best work, but for the circumstances they turned out pretty well.

Saturday we decided to make a 'short' trip to pine lake nearby. The idea was to hike and swim abit.

But for some reason it turned out to be a 10mile+ hike, since we walked around the lake. Which has 10 miles shore and our side trips and shortcut's did not really help. So to judge how I felt the next day, we walked roughly 2500 miles. Which translates into 12 - 15 miles, after some careful consideration.

Anyway it was a beautiful day and I had the chance to take some pictures.

how to describe twain harte, I guess wikipedia gives it a try, but can't say much about it.

My best guess is to look at this picture to the left. I think it tells you all in a very simple story.

Basically it's a small very relaxed and down to earth community. Celebrating the American way of live. Beginning with the old trucks and proud flags to small American dinners with deer heads on the wall and a waitress running around with a classic coffee pot, serving gigantic amount of breakfast for decent prices.
Everything closes by 9.30-10.00 pm and skunks are running around at night, trying (successfully) to escape me an my camera...

after we arrived at twain hart and got the cabin ready, which included hunting down several kinds of different spiders.

Yes gigantic monstrous spiders, the kind which I hate! They decided to move in since the last time the cabin was used. Ok it's been a year, but still they are not supposed to be there.

Anyway we both ended up (Ashley and I, not the spiders and I) relaxing in the cabin and reading a bit.

so this weekend started a bit unexspected with somebody trying to prove he can park. Resulting in hitting my car in the most unfortunate way. Causing no damage what soever, besides a cracked license plate.

Couldn't he hit my rear bumper? I need a new rear bumper...

well last night was fun, we just ended up going for a concert in the park and playing uno with friends.

The concert was, well different. It was supposed to be latin music, so I expected something like Santana style and instead we got some very strange and unexciting acoustic guitar player singing English songs.

Well at least we had fun with friends.

The picture on the left was only taken, because the light was so pretty...