bart

Here's a mug shot from the Green River caught by my friend Jay.

OK Peterjay, what's the deal... do you see in black and white? I've taken at least 2 dozen color photos of mine that I like and turned into black and white's and am not all that pleased with them. I'm basically totally confused at this point. Nice color contrast in color clearly does not mean good contrast in black and white. And I'm too much of a rookie to jump into the Adams zone zortex, I need something real. I'd like to find something outdoors that I really enjoy photographing that will come out nice in B&W. What can I start looking for? If all else fails, I'll just keep taking pictures until I like them. I guess that's the way I learned to fly fish... but it took years.

I've just recently read about wing burners and failed at locating a set at any of the local shops. I'll keep looking and buy one in person. bart

Nice Job Man! Clean and efficient. :headbang:

Chrisfish, All my photographs are digital, taken with a Canon Rebel EOS and the stock 18-55mm lense that came with it. I've been playing around with black and white's thanks to Peterjay (he's a real artist). I don't use photoshop to convert images, I use The Gimp. It's free, and for my purposes, everybit as good at photoshop. Here's a tutorial using The Gimp if you don't have photoshop: http://gimp.org/tutorials/Selective_Color/. Let's see some of your pictures! bart

If you to this site you will see many pictures, look for the one that says aquatic worms: http://www.bighornriverlodge.com/AquaticContent.html That's what I'm talking about. I tye mine with simple colored wire and a simple thread head. I bet some trout mistake mt fly for a worm while other trout mistake it for a nymph. The pattern has treated me well so I'd like to continue to improve it. It's a very simple fly. Maybe that's all that's need. bart

Does anyone have any good pictures of aquatic worms? or patterns that imitate them? I've been doing well on tail water fisheries with them and am confuesd as to why I can't find more info on them... maybe I'm not looking in the right places. Helpl me out! bart

So I just looked over my tying table to see what all things cost. The Digital SLR camera is the most expensive, but not really on the desk for tying per se (I've been playing around with depth of field on pictures of flies). Next is the table itself, and then my vice. After that necks, which are still under $30. So, for the most part, nothing on my table is more then $20. I'm sure many of you have already figured this out, but tying is one of those things that doesn't really cost a lot of money to get into, but ends up being a wierd type of collection. Overall I'm guessing there's about $2K on the table, but outside of those few pricey items I mentioned its all been purchase in $50 increments. I can't walk into a fly shop when I'm in tying mode without spending $50 (plus or minus $10). Like last weekend, all I wanted to buy was 3 spools of colored wire which should of cost a grand total of $5... $58 later I suddenly had another group of flies I wanted to tie for the upcoming bighorn trip. Gotta love it! bart

One other thing to think about. If you are going to be renting a car and using your car insurance check with your insurance company to see if they cover stolen goods from rental cars. One year over $5k of fishing gear was stolen in the keys when a rental got broken into... luckily the insurance company picked up the tab though.

I fly regularly (nearly 300K in the last 4 years) and have never had any issues bringing my fishing gear. My buddies even travel with their boats, ables ATC's and MasterCrafts. The luggage for me is just normal luggage, though my buddies all use abel, orvis, and fishpond. Fly rod tubes vary from 2 foot tubes for singlerods to large 4 1/2 foot long , 6 rod tubes that look more like luggage. I'll fly with a significant amount of tying gear that I put in a large suitcase all to itself. I always check everything nowadays... it's just easier, and nothing has ever been LOST, but some stuff has taken longer then it's supposed to. Just a bring a good book on the plane is my philosophy (heck, I read War and Peace in it's entirety on flights to and from DC). Now here are some horror stories that have happened to my buddies, NOT me. And then I'll tell you why I think this things happened afterwards... Last year my buddies flew from Philadelphia to Salt Lake and then drove to Dutch John, I drove with HomerDog and met them at the Flaming Gorge Lodge. They flew with ALL their gear, 2-3 rods per person with at least as many reels. Wading Equipment. Tying Equipment. Boats, and equipment. Plus clothing. For all that gear, it's a surprising small amount of luggage. A dry bag per person that holds their wading gear and boats, rod tubes, and a single piece of luggage per person for tying equipment and clothing. We do this at least a few times a year for different locations, so the process is pretty smooth. Something happened on last springs Green River trip though. DVDs were missing from luggage. Tying Equipment was routed through and a total mess. Hackles were taken out of their bags and not replaced properly. Hooks were all over the place. Feathers everywhere. A Gore-tex jacket missing and a pair of waders with a slice in them. WOW! Not a good start to a trip. But thankfully the fly shop at the lodge is well stocked with quality gear and VISA took care of the rest. Here's what I think happened. Most people don't travel with DynaKing vises finor reels, plus funny feathers and fuzz with fishing hooks... so the kind folks at TSA wanted a look. The gear was packed so tightly that they couldn't get it back in a convientient manner, so not all the gear made it. secondly, what did make it back was shoved and cramed... and ultimately the waders got sliced on something, maybe a pair of tying scissors... who knows. So why has none of this stuff happened to me? The only thing that I can think of is that my bags are never stuffed and all my tying gear is stored is travel ready plastic bins. Nice and Neat in their own luggage. My rods are always checked if they don't fit in my luggage. And if you really like your rod make sure it's a sturdy case. I travel with rifles on a regular basis too and if you look at my travel fly rod cases and travel rifle cases you'd be shocked at how destroyed they are. In short. I check ALL of my gear and keep my bags neat and orderly. TSA IS GOING TO GO THROUGH THEM, so make it easy for 'em. Just my two cents. bart

Let's see your fall black and whites! Here's a couple from this weekend (it snowed :-) I got the DOF all wrong on this one, but I liked the color:

When I started fly fishing, that also meant that I started tying too. First off I didn't know you could buy flies, and secondly tying flies was part of getting ready for the weekends trip, so it gave me something to do when I couldn't get to the streams. And of course tying got me into entomology which got me into learning about healthy water. I even did a a water quality research project for Stroud Water Research where me a buddy put trout eggs in little plastic mesh boxes in different places along different streams in PA and took water samples everyday until the eggs hatced... or didn't for 6 weeks. That taught me about the impact of we all have on the environment... and now I try to have to as little impact on the environment as possible. Fly fishing also got me into traveling to new streams with the same friends and has forged life long friendships with those guys. I like photography more and more each day (and work less and less as a consequence as it just gets in the way of me taking pictures of these incredible fall colors). I had to learn how to row a boat to float the western rivers, with a 100lbs dog on the back of my boat. I had to learn how to train a dog to fly fish, both wading and floating, with and without ducks flying overhead! But most important to me is those friendships... and fly fishing brings us all together a few times times each year. Sure, I read books, get 'em signed, take photo's, tie, kill/skin/tan hides, rod building, and teaching others whatever I can, and generally have a darned nice time doing it all, but the friends are the strangest place that fly fishing has taken me. Who knew? bart

Wow, what a help you all have been. Between tying for an upcoming Bighorn trip and learning more about photography, who has time for work? I've been looking for some B&W trout photos - does anyone have any? I also took the suggestion of getting a subscription to Outdoor Photographer. Seems quite nice. bart

Thanks guys. You've got me moving in the right direction. It's pretty humbling to enter a new hobby like photography. I use an open source image editor named The Gimp and found a good article on turning colors into B&W's. After reading it, I was able to improve my images without much effort. B&W sure is interesting. I'll read up on the Ansel Adams zone later tonight!

I just started playing with black and whites. Peter, got my wheels turning. I spent last week elk hunting here in Colorado and got some OK color digital photos of the fall colors. When I got back to my computer I used The Gimp to convert my color photos to black and white and quickly learned that my bright yellow aspen leaves which had a nice contrast to the dark gray clouds loose most of the contrast when you convert to black and white. So here's my question: What color combinations work well for high contrast black and whites? thanks bart