jarmanjj.1

Skis: Chronic

A Skier

Skiing: Do you want to learn to ski? Here's an overview of what you'll need to learn to ski, along with step-by-step information on how to learn to ski.

How to Get On and Off a Chairlift
Most ski resorts have chairlifts to transport skiers up the mountain and riding the chairlift is one of the first things you'll need to learn to do. Here's what you need to know to get on, to ride, and to get off the chairlift. There's also information on riding a rope tow and gondola, which are also convenient ways to head up the slopes.

Learn to Snow Plow
The traditional learning stance for beginning skiers is called the snow plow position. You'll need to be able to snow plow to stop, so it's one of the first techniques you should learn.

Point Your Way Down the Slope
When you move up from the snow plow turn, you can learn to begin a more advanced way of turning your skis by pointing with your arm. Here's information on how to turn as you head down the ski slope.

How to Ski on a Crowded Trail
When ski resorts fill up, skiing on a crowded trail can be difficult and sometimes even dangerous! Especially when the trail gets narrow, it can be hard work to navigate through other skiers. Colliding with another skier can cause injury (and it hurts!), so skiing safely on crowded trails is necessary for everyone's safety.

How to Become an Advanced Skier
For many years the only classification system for skiers included Beginner, Intermediate and Expert skier. However, a more refined system of assessing skill levels has evolved that gives ski school staff a better way of grouping skiers of equal skills.

Glade Skiing
Skiing off the groomed trails has grown in popularity in the last 10 years. When shown on resort trail maps these areas are commonly called glades and are usually marked as expert or Black Diamond terrain. These tips will help you s

Hobbies: I like turtles

Favorite Tricks: Jumping Slow Signs

Best Tricks: Pelvic Grab

Photography: What is Photography?
The more decades I do this, the more I realize everything in photography comes down to one word: vision.

Call it vision, imagination, or seeing; it all comes down to the same thing: the ability to envision a final result in your mind's eye, and then to make it so with your tools at hand.

It's never been about the gear. It's always been about seeing something, knowing how you want it to look, and making it so. Making it so is the easy part; seeing it in the first place is what makes a photographer. Powers of observation are everything. Snapping a camera is trivial.

Photography and painting are the same. Each renders imagination in tangible form. The difference is that painters can work completely from imagination, although most of us work from life as a starting point. Both can take lifetimes to master the tools to render imaginations exactly as we intend. With inkjet printing (giclÃ©e is the term stolen from painting), they are identical in that each of us is using tools to apply our imagination as physical colors to flat media, often canvas. (I still prefer darkroom, chemically processed media.)

The confusion is that photography is much easier for a layman to use and create what looks like a technically passable, sharp and well-exposed image. As most beginners discover instantly, simply having the best tools and technically sharp images doesn't get the glorious, passion-inspiring results they intended.

Painters and other artists often pick up any crappy camera and make excellent images fast because they know seeing, visualization, composition and lighting, and immediately apply basic adjustments to change brightness and to optimize colors.

Artists know they have to drive the camera and make strong changes to basic controls to get their look. Beginning photographers, like me for my first 15 years shooting, are usually afraid to do anything other than exactly what we thought were the rules. There are no rules other than to make your image as you want it. I often shoot at a deliberately "wrong" White Balance or violent exposure compensations.

Non-artists who want to be photographers often take much longer, if ever, to create decent images because they have been misled into worrying too much about trivial issues like noise and lens sharpness instead of the real issues of light, color, composition and gesture. Want to learn photography? Study painting.

Unskilled attempts at photography and painting are equally nasty; it's just that it's less obvious to laymen what's wrong with a bad photo.

Photographers and painters both work from our imaginations. Painters can be a little freer with their imaginations, but now with Photoshop, photographers also can render directly from our imaginations into tangible form.

Art collectors and photo contest promoters (but not artists) freak out if they can't define a work by its medium, but art is the message, not the medium.

Caveat

I not saying my photos are any good, or that any medium is any better than any other.

This article is to help folks understand what's going on out there and to go make great photos without worrying about what camera to use. Want a good camera? Easy: see my list of Recommended Cameras and have at it.

PLUG

I support my growing family through this website.

If you find this as helpful as a book you might have had to buy or a workshop you may have had to take, feel free to help me continue helping everyone.

If you've gotten your gear through one of my links or helped otherwise, you're family. It's great people like you who allow me to keep adding to this site full-time. Thanks!

If you haven't helped yet, please do, and consider helping me with a gift of $5.00.

The biggest help is to use these links to Adorama, Amazon, B&H, Calumet, Ritz, J&R and eBay when you get your goodies. It costs you nothing and is a huge help to me. eBay is always a gamble, but all the other places have the best prices and service, which is why I've used them since before this website existed. I recommend them all personally.

The biggest help is to use these links to Adorama, Amazon, B&H, Calumet, Ritz and J&R when you get your goodies. It costs you nothing and is a huge help. These places have the best prices and service, which is why I've used them since before this website existed. I recommend them all personally.

Thanks for reading!