The other photo journal

2011-05-29 23:45:47.000 – Ryan Knapp,  Staff Meteorologist

One for my archive: Lenticulars this afternoon.

If you know me, then you know I like to take pictures. But I don’t consider myself a photographer nor am I one of those people that always have a camera glued to my face and live my life behind the lens shooting everything I see. Instead, I consider myself the world’s luckiest amateur photographer who works and lives at the right place at the right time. And to ensure I capture those right place/right time moments, I always have my camera in my coat pocket up here so when the summit clears, a cloud forms, the cat does something silly, a coworker looks weird, the fox shows up, or the weather goes on a rampage, I can quickly whip out my camera and shoot away. Sometimes my images are rubbish and are quickly deleted but most of the time it’s just the opposite and I find myself debating what to keep since a good scene or topic can lead to a gigabyte or more of photos in less than 30 minutes. The summit, its life and its scenery make for great, easy subjects to shoot even for an amateur like myself.

But what’s even greater in this day and age is once I capture all the great things up here, technology provides me with the ability to share what I am capturing with family, friends, and/or perfect strangers. It’s a concept that is still a bit weird cause when I was kid, I always dreaded getting stuck looking at photo albums or having to sit through slideshows. But now and days, I find myself creating digital slideshows to share with people. And having worked here over five years, I have a lot of slideshows for people to view. And since I know people like to read our Observer Comments and view our Photo Journal to see what life is like up here, I thought I’d expand on those by sharing my archive with y’all. While I haven’t uploaded my entire catalog (it’s still a work in progress that takes time), over the past year, after each shift, I uploaded my weekly images online at my flickr page; a process that I continue to do every week I have off. So I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoy taking them.

Ryan Knapp,  Staff Meteorologist