Steve Cole Photography

Halloween is the last day that Wells Creek Road is accessible beyond Nooksack Falls until the following July 1st. I had to head into Bellingham to purchase my Mount Baker season pass so I decided to head up Wells Creek one last time this season. Fall color has been making a bit of an appearance in the lowlands so I was a little hopeful that I might see some of that up in the mountains.

Most leaves have dropped so the remaining leaves that were in fall color didn’t quite have the same impact or appeal. I continued onward back to Wells Creek Falls. My last visit was on a very rainy day in July. Battling both the rain and downspray from the falls, the photography was tough going. Today, however, was dry and the creek was running just a tad lower making the crossing a little easier.

I hiked back to my original vantage point and then continued around the corner into the waterfall’s surrounding bowl. Getting closer did provide the best view of the falls but also brought me even closer to the downspray. These conditions require some patience and thinking in order to obtain a good photo. Here’s my procedure:

• • Before beginning, make sure you have some items handy: several microfiber cloths (for lens cleaning & drying), a hand towel, and perhaps a clear ziploc type bag. In addition, I find it helpful if the tripod ball head has 360 degree markings on it.
• • The first step is to determine exposure. To save myself some lens cleaning, I put the ziploc bag over my lens and then tried some test exposures. At this point, I just want to get into the ball park and I’m not worried about focus. Once I know what the exposure should be, I switch my camera mode to Manual and dial in the proper f-stop and shutter speed.
• • Now it’s time for focus. Basically, the lens will get wet with spray so be quick with determining your focus point and focusing. Once you have focus, either stay away from the focus button (I disable shutter button focus lock on my camera) or switch to manual focus.
• • Since the lens is getting spray on it, you might as well as determine your composition. Once I had my composition set, I noted where the tic mark on the ball head was located (one notch before 315, etc..).
• • Next, I swung the camera around so that the lens was not directly in the spray. I put the lens hood on and then drape my hand towel over the camera. This helps further shield the lens as I wipe it dry and let the rest of the moisture evaporate.
• • Now that the front of the lens is dry and clear, I cover the front with the hand towel (the lens hood keeps the towel from slapping against the front of the lens) and then rotate the camera back around. Since I noted which tick mark the camera was at when I composed the shot, I know exactly where to point it WITHOUT exposing the lens to the spray.
• • I set my camera to a 2 second timer so all that’s left is to click the shutter and then remove the towel a split second before the shutter opens. It takes a little time to get into the rhythm of things but it definitely helps you get the best photo with the least amount of annoying water droplets!

My first vantage point was so close that I knew I needed a short shutter speed. I normally like to shoot at ISO 100 but that would have been far too long of a shutter speed (creating too many water droplets). For this shot, I increased my ISO to 400 which brought my shutter speed down to 0.3 seconds:

After a taking a few variations to make sure I got the shot, I moved back to my original vantage point from back in July to take some more shots. Despite being further downstream, I still collected water drops on the lens so I repeated the process I described. I experimented with both landscape and portrait versions:

The afternoon was getting long so I packed up and headed back to my truck. I wanted to get a better look at the slopes of Barometer Ridge since they were flocked with fresh snow. A mile or so beyond the bridge over Sholes Creek is an open roadside with a nice view of Barometer Ridge. The sun was out and clouds were drifting upwards from the valley floor…

The summit of Mount Baker was almost- but not quite visible. I enjoyed the stillness and the surroundings but soon it was time to head home. I tried stopping by a waterfall on the way out but found it unsafe all by myself. Not a ton of photos but a good outing with my new Pentax K-5.

Which reminds me…..I’ll be out of town for the next week. I’m headed to attend the Banff Mountain Festival where one of my photos will be on display! I’ll be spending a couple of days in the Banff area so I’m hoping for some good photos!