Spring Shooting in Boise, Idaho

I just returned from a business trip to Boise, Idaho and I packed my camera along for the trip. I sure was glad I did because, as I was eating dinner one of the nights, I noticed a nice storm rolling in that might allow for dramatic skies and great lighting during the sunset. I jumped in the car and headed to a spot I had “scouted” on Google Earth called Camel’s Back Park. I was looking for a good panoramic of the downtown area and this looked like it might hold promise.

As I pulled up and saw the hill within the park I got pretty excited. It would allow me an unobstructed view of downtown from a location that was not too close and not too far away, thus allowing for good panoramic-friendly focal lengths.

I hiked up the hill and spent the rest of the evening there shooting panos as the weather changed. I eventually got pounded with wind and rain but I stuck it out and was rewarded with some very dramatic skies over downtown Boise and a well-lit sunset. The most difficult thing with the outing was having to deal with the wind. The wind was strong enough to jostle my camera just enough that some of the shots had to be redone due to camera shake. I used a caribiner to attach my backpack to the underside of my tripod but that didn’t completely remove shake, which was occurring higher up the tripod as my camera was buffeted by wind.

I’m processing the photos now and am quite happy with how they turned out. I’ll be posting them within the next few days. No matter what, though, standing on a hill with a glorious landscape, dramatic skies, beautiful lighting, wind, rainbows and rain was very nice. It is always great to get out and shoot!