4 Day Adventure...

I just finished a 4 day adventure touring around with my WR on the back of my truck. Camping for 3 nights and riding for 4 days and I was smelling RIPE, but I digress...

Let start out with the best picture I took (by myself, ask me how)...







Day one was in Kennedy meadows, north of Lake Isabella. One of the best riding areas I have ever seen for single track through the forest...







40 miles of twisitng single track and I didn't even touch the majority of the trails here...





Beautifully maintained, but beware, some of the "Blue Square" trails (intermediate) are actually REALLY tough in spots. Tough as in rocks on a narrow single track with dropoffs on the sides...



Some gorgeous meadows open up in the trails





One of those places where i could take a picture, there are parts like this where you just can't stop or lose focus for a second...





As the sun sets...





Heaven




More to come soon...

Man, that looks like a great place to ride! Thanks for the pics.

Looks like you had a blast! So uhh... how did you snap that pic?

I ride by myself 99% of the time, and to get action shots with a camera by yourself of yourself is impossible.

Unless you have a Casio EX-FH100. It's a 2 year old camera, but it has an amazing feature that no other camera has (that i've found), namely the ability to record 30 pictures in ONE second, ONLY when it sees movement. It's a feature called "Move-In Continuous Shot". So I set the camera up on a little folding tripod, set the target area, and then jump the bike in front of it. When I'm done, i go to the camera and there are now 30 shots of me flying through the air.

They don't make this camera anymore, and the new Casio High Speed cameras don't have the Move In CS feature. So, I bought two of these cameras since I wonder if any other camera will ever have this capability again???

Here's a link to the review for this camera, if you want one, I suggest getting one before they're all gone...

http://www.dpreview.com/products/casio/compacts/casio_exfh100/review

Ok, day 2 was at Lake Isabella (go on, ask me how I get action PANORAMA shots by myself)... :)



I'll post up Day 3 and 4 shots tomorrow. Sleepy time...

Ok, The next day I went up to Sequoia National Forest (north of the National Park) and found some amazing Jeep trails...





On Day 4 I headed over to Hollister State Vehicular Rec Area (SVRA), one of my favorites because it has MILES and MILES of ONE-WAY single track (but be aware, they close the really good parts for a couple of days after rain, so call ahead)...




I found this broken sprocket on the side of a trail. Felt sorry for the poor guy who it happened to...



So I took a rock and bashed it into the top of a fencepost, and called it "The End of the Ride"



It's art because I say so.

GusinCA wrote:

KTM?

Haha! Possibly. He would have needed a helicopter to get the bike out from where I found this part...

Someone once told me "Why would I ever want a Yamaha, it's wayyy too reliable. No adventure there"... :)

Looks like a fun ride. Thanks for sharing.

It was so much fun out there. The WR is the best bike for narrow, tight tiny twisty single track that is connected by street-legal-only roads and trails.

And since no one asked "Ok, so how do you make those amazing action-panorama pictures rising by yourself" I'll tell you. :)

I already explained how the camera can be set up to take a series of pictures by itself only when it sees movement.

What you do then is you take the same camera, put it in single shot mode, and take 2-3 more shots around the one it took of me (like a normal panorama shot) with 25-30% overlap in each shot.

Now, here comes the hard part.

You have to first resize the normal shots to match the size of the shot of you in the action frame. Panorama software insists on all the images being the same size.

Next, you on the bike isn't in the other shots you took. So, you have to copy and paste (using the clone stamp tool in Photoshop) yourself on the bike into the other shots that will make up the panorama. Sometimes this is only one extra picture (if you and the bike are on one side) but can be 2 or 3 if you are in the middle of the panorama.

Once you have 3-4 shots, some of which have you and the bike (or portions thereof) in them (the original action shot is one of these, obviously) then you can use the excellent Panorama Maker 4 software to stitch them together.

One last step is to crop, color adjust, fill in any gaps, etc, normal Photoshop finishing stuff.

Simple, right?

Great report! Good job with the pics, & very resourceful & ingenious ways of taking shots. Cool idea stitching an action shot in with other stills for a panorama.

Yeah, to me the only true way of showing what a place is like is an action panorama.
Just the bike sitting there is boring. Someone needs to be in the shot, and prefereably doing something to make it interesting, like in a magazine.
Even better is someone in the shot, doing something, while showing a wide field of view, like the eyes would see if they were there, showing how beautiful that place is to ride at that moment...
But it's also the hardest to capture...

Like this one...