Shot on a beautiful–and surprisingly calm–evening along the Columbia River in Woodland, Washington. The glow is from the Tacoma/Seattle area, the next great metropolis, after Portland, to the north.
(I posted this on Instagram, but the small format really doesn’t do it justice.)
click to see it bigger
Went out into the Gorge yesterday with Duncan. As has been the case lately, we spent a good amount of the day dodging rain. That said, there’s a lot of green out there — spring will be here in full force any week now — and we found a few interesting places to shoot, both new and old.
This one is from an old standby: Cape Horn, on Route 14 in Washington. It’s a beautiful overlook, and we spent about 45 minutes hanging around, watching and waiting for something to happen.
In the end, there wasn’t a lot, but I did love the overwhelming amount of green floating up from the valley floor below.
Shot with the Sony RX1, blended from a three-exposure set with HDR Efex Pro, then finished in Perfect Effects 4.
I’ve been shooting this vista for a couple of years now, and have long wanted to get out there at sunrise. I’ve had this mental image of the sun kissing the tops of the trees in the orchard, creating a magical light that would provide a lovely contrast to the river and the sky.
I was also pretty sure it wouldn’t really be like that, and when I finally was able to get out there, it turned out the sun was coming from completely the wrong angle at this time of year. And, there wasn’t much of a sky. Or, at least an interesting sky.
Somehow, though, there was something there to shoot. It still might not be the right shot, but it didn’t turn out half bad in the end.
Sunset out at the Women’s Forum overlook out in the Gorge. It was about 30°, although thankfully there was no wind. (Same place as this photo, a few months back.)
Shot with the Sony RX1, a camera with which I continue to be amazed. Its compact form, gorgeous lens, and overall usability make it a great camera to walk around with. I sold an old late ’40s classic camera to get this, and I haven’t had any regrets at all about it — the RX1 goes with me everywhere right now, and it’s a joy to use. (Duncan has been working on a review; stay tuned.)
And yes, these things are everywhere…
Lee and I made our annual trek over to Sauvie Island today, to hike around a bit, soak up the fall atmosphere, and to grab the first pumpkins of autumn. We ended up, as we always do, at Kruger Farms, which is a lovely farm stand stocked with local veggies, pick your own flowers (like these sunflowers), a beer truck (Guided by Porches brewery), and good grub. (The farm stand is across the street from this inlet, which I photographed in January.)
The bad news was that it was too early for the corn maze, but I’ll take that over the crowds that will descend upon this poor island starting next week.
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.)
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.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time recently shooting in the rainy climes of Portland and the Gorge. I’ve always been ok with carrying my camera around in less-than-ideal weather conditions, but I wouldn’t say that I actively choose to set up and shoot in the rain.
I have quite a few images from treks (trudges?) with Matt Kloskowski, Brian Matiash and Vincent Versace. I’m finding more throwaway shots (i.e. they get deleted immediately) than I normally see, but there are also quite a few that are instructive, whether in terms of composition, exposure, or focus, in a way that I don’t always get when I’m out in good weather. For example, I don’t know if all the negative space in the upper-left corner of this photo dooms this image, but I do know that I like the line of trees fading into the mist, and I like the vibrance of the greens in the moss and the trees in the foreground. The fact that I’m stopping, looking for shots, and then trying to make sense of them is valuable instruction for my long-term growth as a photographer.
