morning on the Columbia

morning-on-the-columbia2

Went for a long drive into the Gorge yesterday with Dan, one of my buddies from onOne. The weather had been beautiful here in Oregon over the previous few days, and we had hoped it might hold. There was no agenda; we were just out for a day of shooting, and I thought we might get some decent shots of Mount Adams or Mount St. Helens in all their snow-topped glory. Unfortunately, the beginnings of a classic winter Pacific Northwest storm front moved in, and we were socked in most of the day with crappy skies.

Regardless of the weather though, there’s always plenty to shoot in the Gorge. I was also looking to test the off-road capabilities of my latest camera accessory, which we were able to do, although the mythical Trout Lake was nowhere to be found on the roads we traveled. (A lot of my summer motorcycle roads a currently snowmobile trails, so there wasn’t a lot of off-road opportunity either…)

It was a good day; we drove about 250 miles along both the Washington and Oregon sides of the river, and I got to explore a few new places that will get the ‘revisit’ tag. We shot quite a bit, but true to form, the things I liked the most were the first ones I took, early in the day, before the clouds blew in completely. I owe this shot to Dan, who saw something in the channel as we were driving in this area. I parked to let him hike down for his shot (under the railraod trestle in the distance), and then clambered up over the railroad embankment to steal a few shots of the Columbia. The river was magically calm as daylight arrived; by noon, the usual Gorge choppiness had returned. I’m not completely satisfied with anything I shot yesterday, but this is one take in the right direction. I’ll head back here on a day with the promise of a better sunrise.

where is this?

dusk along the Columbia

dusk-on-the-columbia

There was no “super moon” for +Brian Matiash and I last night on the Columbia, just the gorgeous blue of dusk after a long day wandering from Portland to Hood River and back. I’ve just started going through my shots from the day, but I see quite a few things that seem to have worked.

This photo was from the end of our day. Brian and I could have just kept heading home, but we knew that there were some shots left. He bitched quite loudly–as he is wont to do ;)–about the barge coming up the river, ruining his long exposure. I, who have long wished that I could ride one of these barge tugs up the river, just laughed. I am kind of surprised that I was able to capture it with such detail in so little light, but I like the result. And yes, it was that blue…

(Shot with the trusty Canon 24-105 f/4L, at 1/25th of a second, f/4.5, 1250 ISO.)

[where is this?]

sauvie fog {3}

sauvie-channel

I keep coming back to the set of images shot along the Columbia River, off of Sauvie Island, in January. They have been represented here on the blog twice so far: in Sauvie Island Fog and Sauvie Fog {alt}. They sit in the ‘working pix’ area of my library, and I regularly play with different versions from that day, trying to find the best representation of what I felt out there.

I like the vertical representation of the first image (Sauvie Island Fog) I posted, and I wish I hadn’t posted the {alt} version. I’m not sure that the version posted here is better than that first one, but I have returned to this one enough that I was compelled to work on it. There really isn’t a lot of image processing; it was mostly dust spotting, which was a result of grabbing the older camera and not paying attention to the sensor beforehand. I did look at a panoramic-style crop across the middle of the photo, but it felt extreme, and I tossed it.

What’s interesting when I look at the group of images in my library, there’s a tranquility in nearly all of them that was present on the day I was there. This one, which doesn’t have the (lovely) detail or color from the grasses along the riverbank, does have a more timeless quality and feel to me, and one that I like.

The next step will be to print them, and see which ones hold up better there. My gut tells me that it will be this one, but I never know until I get to the print.

dalton point

dalton-point

I went back to Dalton Point last night. Unfortunately, by the time I got there, the interesting cloud formations had dissipated, and the horizon got pretty hazy.

Luckily, there was a very nice moonset as well, so I set the camera and tripod up, and worked through a number of different shots and setups. This one is a composite HDR image (done in Photoshop) of three images after the sun went down. I have a couple of other ones I’m working on, but I like this one best (at least for now).