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2 Days of Gorging – Part 2

The flipside of spending so long at Multnomah Creek was that it threw my schedule right out the window. I ended up having to pare back my very ambitious list of places to visit and made my way to one of the shorter trips on my list…

Little Zigzag Falls

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Full descripton of the area is here on the Portland Hikers website. The trailhead is interesting since it’s located at part of the original road up to Government Camp. There’s an interesting sign which shows an old photo taken from this location. The vegetation wasn’t as leafed out as along the Gorge so things were a bit barren..

Little Zigzag Falls
Little Zigzag Falls
Little Zigzag
Coltsfoot - Little Zigzag

Zigzag River

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Right around Milepost 46, the Zigzag River crosses underneath US Highway 26. The stretch of river downstream of the bridge seemed interesting so I stopped to explore compositions. Unfortunately for me, there was a cabin located alongside one of the banks so I had to exclude it from my compositions. I really enjoyed working with the bright streaks of sunlight on the surface of the churning river..

Zigzag River
Zigzag River
Zigzag River
Zigzag River
Zigzag River

Mount Hood sunset from White River – Take 2

With the day nearing its end, I returned once again to the White River Snowpark hoping for a nice sunset. Through the day, a nice array of clouds seemed to linger around the summit of Mount Hood but, as sunset drew close, they vaporized. The sunset turned out to be a carbon-copy of the previous night’s. Bummer…

Mount Hood sunset along the White River
Sunset along the White River

Siouxon Creek

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The following morning, I began my drive back to the Seattle area but included a sidetrip to Siouxon Creek, which I discovered through my reading of the Portland Hikers Trip Report forum. It’s located in the South Central portion of the Washington Cascades and has the distinction of having a paved road all the way to its remote trailhead. It turns out to be a relic of the former glory days of logging and one forest superintendent’s idea to promote more logging. The trail travels through maturing second growth forest alongside the creek and passes near a few waterfalls.

This was my first visit and so it was all new to me. The creek turned out to be much wider and more open that I had envisioned so photography in bright sunny conditions wasn’t going to be good. I ended up focusing my efforts on the forest itself since it was so magical. The understory is dominated by Oregon Oxalis (which was almost ready to bloom) and full of surprises. If you go, be prepared to encounter a variety of groups because the trail is open to hikers, mountain bikers, and horses..

Oregon Oxalis and Wood Fern - Siouxon Creek Trail
Forest Scene - Siouxon Creek Trail
Mossy Jack
Forest Scene - Siouxon Creek Trail
Forest Scene - Siouxon Creek Trail
Sometimes the results don’t meet the expectations placed beforehand, and this trip fell into that category. How one responds to these challenges can make or break the entire outing. I come away with more valuable experience shooting in extreme light conditions and I hope this will only help me out during my future outings. I know I’ll be back next year (if not sooner!)..

2 days of Gorging – Part 1

I’ve decided that a couple days in May down in the Columbia River Gorge area is a good thing and so I made plans to go down this past week. The actual date was a little earlier than I would have liked due to other committments. Originally, I started doing this in order to photograph the endless field of Arrowleaf Balsamroot that blooms atop Dog Mountain, I’ve since then chosen to expand my itinerary to include other parts of the Gorge as well as neighboring Mount Hood.

At the last minute, I had to alter my plans and drop the Dog Mountain hike due to some highway construction located at the trailhead. I substituted the hike to Indian Point on the Oregon side in its place. The weather was forecasted to be mostly cloudy with a slight chance of thunderstorms for the second half of my time down there but it remained sunny and clear the entire time (horrible conditions for photography!) And now the photos..

Indian Point:

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Not many photos from this first hike. A detailed description can be found on the Portland Hikers website. Overall, a wonderful forested hike to a prominent point overlooking the Gorge. Views north to Mount Adams, and east to Dog Mountain..

Oregon Grape branch nestled at the base of a Douglas Fir. Indian Point Loop Trail
Panorama from Indian Point. Mount Adams in the distant center.
Lone tree growing from the top of Indian Point

Mount Hood sunset from White River:


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First attempt had a small cloudcap over the summit but hardly any color due to the lack of clouds. I hiked about 2/3rds of a mile up the White River looking for a composition and settled on this location. Turns out some better spots were located much closer to the parking lot!..

Sunset on Mount Hood along the White River
Mount Hood cloudcap

Multnomah Creek:

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One of the highlights for me. Multnomah Creek feeds the very famous Multnomah Falls and the portion of the creek upstream of the famous falls contains some AMAZING scenery and a number of waterfalls. I spent nearly 5 hours here and only made it about 3/4 of a mile upstream of the main falls. A full description can be found on the Portland Hikers website. It’s worthy of an entire day!..

View back down over Multnomah Falls
Waterfall just upstream of the famous Multnomah Falls
Multnomah Creek
Multnomah Creek
Multnomah Creek
Middle Dutchman Falls - Multnomah Creek
Upper Dutchman Falls - Multnomah Creek
Ecola Falls - Multnomah Creek
False Solomon Seal - Multnomah Creek
Rock Patterns - Dutchman Tunnel
Rock Patterns - Dutchman Tunnel
Oregon Oxalis
Nature's cathedral ceiling - Multnomah Creek

More to come in Part two!…

Back from the Gorge

Bottom of the lower Multnomah Falls. A cliched shot to be sure but I think it's required under Oregon law..
I’ve returned from my 2 day trek down to the Columbia River Gorge and Mount Hood but have close to 400 photos to wade through. The weather did not go as forecasted so difficult lighting was present at every location I visited (i.e. sunny with no clouds!). I’ve gone through a fair amount of the photos but still have a ways to go. I should have a number of photos to share sometime this week!..

Photographing Snow…

Recently I had someone complement me on my snow photos and ask me about my processing. While I don’t consider myself any sort of expert on the matter, I decided to share my workflow techniques.

Virtually all my photos are shot using a tripod and the 2 second mirror lockup mode (which prevents vibration and increases sharpness). I also use a circular polarizer since I’m usually taking photos of flowing water and looking to portray the water with soft flow. In these snowy situations, I usually use either SHADE or CLOUDY for my white balance setting. I do seem to alternate between the two because sometimes the SHADE setting added some warmness to the scene that I didn’t like (or observe in real life).

Due to how camera meters are designed, they typically underexpose in snow conditions. Despite this fact, I intentionally try to underexpose. Why? Well, I’d rather have the ability to recover highlights from the RAW [image] file instead of being stuck with a scene that’s blown out and unrecoverable. When I’m out taking photos, I pay attention to the EV Bar on my camera. My usual goal is to take a picture where the indicator lies two ticks left of center on the EV Bar. For my photography, this usually results in a fairly quick post-processing of the RAW file.

My target is an EV meter two ticks left of center
Once back home, the majority of my post processing is handled by Pentax’s Photo Lab program [a RAW file editing program made by Silky Pix]. 99% of the time, all I do is verify my choice for a white balance setting and adjust the curve to brighten the image but still keep the detail. I don’t go too overboard here because Photoshop Elements has easier & quicker tools to help brighten just the dark areas. Here’s an example RAW image opened up in Photo Lab prior to any adjustments:

RAW file before any processing
In this situation, I decided to change the White Balance from SHADE to CLOUDY. The next step is adjusting the curve to correct the exposure. The two point curve adjustment shown here is very typical of my adjustment. The 1st adjustment point I add is located in the lower left corner of the graph area. This brings up the brightness most of the way without losing too much detail. The second adjustment point added is located in the upper right of the graph. When the point is moved down into this basic curve position, it reduces the contrast (i.e. “dulls” the overall image) a bit but also helps retain some of the detail found in the bright snow areas. If this point is dragged to the right, it will increase the “dulling” effect whereas movement to the left slightly increases the contrast.

Pre-processing curve on the left and post-processing curve on the right
I seem to be doing this less at the moment (probably because it is winter) but sometimes I move the extreme right-hand slider (triangle at extreme right end of X axis) back towards the left in order to brighten the images BEFORE adding curve points. If the image is REALLY dark, I’ll move it two divisions left (a slider value of 192) but mostly it will probably be just one division (value of 224). Conversely (and in this specific example), I’ve notched the lower slide up a few values to knock the brightness down just a tad. Here’s the post-processed version:

Post-processed version
This is basically all I do in Photo Lab so from here, I export the adjustments as a high quality JPEG. The very last step would be any applicable touch up work in Photoshop Elements. After fixing anything such as a specs of dust, I might brighten the darker areas using the Adjust Lighting->Shadow/Highlights Tool. Of course it depends on the photo but I never brighten the shadow areas by more than 25% (typically it might be closer to 10-15%).

Two weeks ago, I was out taking photos in the snow (recap here) and came across a situation where I did my normal processing on a couple photos but the finished images were still a bit too grey & dull. Someone suggested an alternate processing method which uses the Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) plugin for Photoshop Elements. It turns out to be a fairly simple adjustment and worked well. The adjustment uses the Exposure Slider. The default is zero (no change) but when I bumped the exposure up to 1.5 and the contrast slider up to 50%, I really liked the results:

Pentax Photo Lab (left) and Adobe Camera Raw (right) versions
Pentax Photo Lab (left) and Adobe Camera Raw (right) versions
In writing this blog, I came across the following article on Canon’s website that’s pretty informative about this topic.

Anyways, hope this information helps!

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