Steve Cole | Steve Cole Photography

This past weekend I went back to the North Fork Skykomish River valley to see if any of the salmon have returned now that the river levels have come back up. The rivers were actually WAY up; so much so that I felt is was a little too exciting to go wading out into the high waters. I didn’t see any salmon but a part of the damaged road had finally succumbed to back-cutting by the water and isolated another stretch of former pavement. I’ve photographed this spot before since it’s a nice sheeting “waterfall” but now the water’s flow adds a nice sweeping motion to the foreground:

I wanted to get some longer exposures and smoother motion around the pavement so I utilized my graduated Neutral Density (GND) filters. I doubled up my 0.6x and 0.9x GNDs to get that effect. I positioned the 0.9x on the bottom since there was more whitewater and used the 0.6x to handle the far-ground in the frame. I was pretty happy with how things turned out. I also poked around Index on my way back to Monroe. The fall color is definitely on its way out but there’s always a few nice spots left-

Fall- Meet Winter

Oct 22

Fall is here! So is winter??

My little road trip to photograph fall color coincided with the first real storms we in the Pacific Northwest have encountered in over two months. Those storms came with the first snow for the mountains, too. Our plan was to head over to Leavenworth for their famous fall color and make a side trip or two on the we(s)t side of the pass. Our first stop was to check out the upper North Fork Skykomish River valley via Jack Pass. Fall color conditions up the Highway 2 corridor (as well as up the Beckler River valley) still have some room to improve this week but our lack of recent precipitation have done a number on our trees as well. Many vine maples crumpled and dropped their leaves before transforming into the oranges and reds they’re known for.

Saturday’s weather was supposed to be gray and stormy so perfect conditions for photographing the fall color. We expected to encounter snow going over Stevens Pass (at 4,000 feet) and based on the forecasts, I figured we’d get close to the snow level going over Jack Pass but be just underneath the snow level (Jack Pass tops out at 2,500 feet). As we approached the pass via the Beckler River Road, the trees were flocked with snow. So much for avoiding the snow until Stevens Pass! The snow remained more of a visual attraction and hadn’t really accumulated on the road. The snow disappeared fairly quickly as we descended the north side of Jack Pass.

Crossing the North Skykomish River, we could see that the north slopes of Bear Mountain were flocked with snow fairly close to the bottom of the valley (about 1,600 feet). We turned onto Forest Service Road 63 and drove the remaining four miles to its end. After crossing the bridge over Goblin Creek, the snow flocked trees returned. The fall color I had anticipated (hoped) for near the end of the road was largely done but there were sporadic examples of vine maple color with snow. Bonus!

The road ends at a large parking area for three different trailheads- Quartz Creek, West Cady Ridge, and North Fork Skykomish River Trail. There was a mobile home (!) parked in one part of the parking lot but we otherwise had the area to ourselves. We decided to check out the area around the Quartz Creek trailhead and found a gold mine of possibilities. We spent about an hour at different spots before getting on with our day. Before leaving the North Fork Skykomish, we stopped at a great talus field at the base of Excelsior Mountain’s north slopes.

A few years ago, I timed things right and the whole talus field was filled with orange color. This year, however, the color was largely over. Lucky for me, the cloudy conditions and snow flocked trees still presented some opportunities to take advantage of. In the back of my mind I kept thinking of the snow falling on Jack Pass so I didn’t want to spend a ton of time here. Traversing back over Jack Pass was uneventful. At the last minute, we made a quick stop were Johnson Creek flows into the Beckler River. The opposite bank (west bank) usually has a real nice grouping of vine maple and this year was no exception (though colors were just a wee bit beyond peak).

The day was quickly passing so it was time to head up and over the Stevens Pass. Conditions up there were snowy and windy but not really affecting travel. I had to pull over in the vicinity of the Stevens Pass Nordic Center because the upper slopes of Nason Ridge were a beautiful mix of snow, fall color, and green forest. After a few quick photos, the wind and snow from the pass caught up with us! The cloud of snow crept in and sucked the contrast out of the scene in front of me. That was enough so back in the truck and down the hill towards the blue sky and sunshine of the east slopes!

The stretch of Highway 2 in the vicinity of Nason Creek and the community of Merritt was awash in fall color. It was really quite amazing and the only regret from the day was that we did not stop to look for photo opportunities in this area. The day was getting shorter and our plans included Tumwater Canyon and Icicle Creek Canyon. The color in Tumwater Canyon wasn’t bad but the lighting sure was. The sun was directly above the ridges, creating lots of harsh transitions from sun to shade. I couldn’t find anything compelling to shoot so we continued on to Icicle Creek Canyon.

My friend has spent a lot of time climbing up and down the valley but this was my first visit. The road travels some 18 miles up valley through spectacular scenery. The valley is deeply incised; relief between valley floor and adjoining ridges can range between 3-5,000 vertical feet! Displays of fall color are fairly constant throughout the valley although it is spaced out. At the upper end of the valley where the road turns back west, the southern valley slopes are littered with larch. In fact, some larch can be found in the vicinity of the Rock Island Campground along the road.

I was a bit overwhelmed by it all and found it hard to find anything to photograph. The same lighting issues from Tumwater Canyon carried over to Icicle Creek Canyon. The end result was a lot of looking but not much photographing. Time was also a factor because I still wanted to travel back over Stevens Pass while it was still light. That didn’t leave a whole lot of time. Hopefully I’ll be a little better prepared for future visits in the area. While my trip to the Leavenworth area didn’t yield much, my trip to the upper North Fork Skykomish River valley on a whim was something special. It ended up being the highlight of the day for both of us. I don’t know if the colors will last into next weekend so if you’re going to go check them out, it’s better to go sooner than later!

Seven Minute Sunrise

Oct 19

This goes to prove that you have to be able to work fast at sunrise and sunset. I was already a few minutes late arriving at my location. Ten minutes after arriving, it was faded and the fog rose up to greet me and block my view. Early bird gets the worm!…

Thorton Lakes

Oct 08

This past weekend I visited the Thorton Lakes region within the North Cascades National Park. I’ve never been there before but the promise of good views (including north towards the Southern Picket Range) was too intriguing. The great views don’t come without a price. The hike follows an old logging road for a few miles before bringing a steady uphill slog. Five miles and 2,500 vertical feet later, the ridge surrounding the Thorton Lakes basin is reached. From this point, a half mile and 500 foot descent takes you to the offical campground along the shores of Lower Thorton Lakes. The other option is a steep, climbers trail up towards the summit of Trappers Peak.

My primary interest was to stick around for sunset but I also wanted to get up Trappers Peak for those good views of the Thorton Lakes and the Southern Picket Range to the north. I was taking a little bit of a chance heading here because I didn’t have much intel about falls colors. I scoured older trip reports on NWHikers.net to get a sense of what might be possible but the results weren’t conclusive. Making matters worse, a recent trip report from Cascade Pass showed great fall color. My decision was to roll the dice and still head for Thorton Lakes.

The access road off of Highway 20 is fairly rough with several washboard sections but not impossible for passenger vehicles. The old road section turned trail is a nice warm up for the steady ascent to come. Once the trail turns away from the Thorton Creek valley, the trail suddenly becomes very quiet. Views out from the forest don’t really exist save for some fleeting glimpses across the valley at Big Devil Peak. After the trail crosses the Park Service boundary, it enters a small bowl below the ridge that surrounds the lakes. A hiker on their way down told us we had 20 minutes left until we reached the ridge. It didn’t seem believable but- it was.

I received my first disappointment upon reaching the trail junction between the path down to the lake and the path up to the peak. I expected the ridge to be much more open than it actually was. Instead of smaller subalpine trees, the ridge contains mostly larger trees with few unobstructed views down towards Lower Thorton Lake. If I was to get shots of the lake, they would have to be from the trail up towards Trappers Peak.

The next bit of disappointment was the lighting. The goal was to shoot sunset so we started our hike in the afternoon. By the time we gained the ridge, the sun had traversed far to the west. To photograph the west side of the basin, I had to point my camera into the sunlight and this adds a significant amount of haze to the photos. These two factors alone stopped me from trying to photograph the lake. With the late afternoon, I was beginning to realize that Trappers Peak would not be a reachable destination. Time and exertion would tap me out before I could get into a great position for photos.

There was still some time before the “magic hour” of light before sunset and that was enough to attempt to climb up to the intermediate knoll between the ridge and the summit. This led to my next disappointment of the day. While information on the internet states that there is a trail to the summit, it does elude to the fact that there are some “interesting” sections of the trail. The ascent up to the intermediate knoll is one such section. The crux of this section is where the trail ascends a 100 foot tall gully. Climbing the gully is generally class I-II but a specific move or two might be considered class III. I found it to be serious enough that I wasn’t as comfortable with the thought of down climbing this section after the sunset.

Sunset was still a little ways off which meant there was no reason not to hike “just a little further.” I really wanted to get my glimpse of the Southern Picket Range. After a few false benches, I turned a corner and got my glimpse. I got a few quick shots and then hurried back down to return to a spot further down the ridge for sunset. As we down climbed, I saw a side path which finally gave a relatively unencumbered view of Lower Thorton Lakes. Even though the sun had set enough to cast the entire basin in shade, getting a nice shot of the scene was still a challenge. Warm sunset light was really starting to show off on the rugged ridges back across the Skagit River to our south so I didn’t spend much time on the lakes. Another time, I suppose..

To the west, a few high clouds added some interest in the warm, orange light. To our south and the east, that light was more pinkish but with clear skies. The best displays were located to the east on the upper slopes in the vicinity of Paul Bunyan’s Stump and towards the southeast near Eldorado Peak and Klawatti Peak. The lack of any rain in the region has allowed for the development of some haze which really accentuates colors during sunsets. Even with this haze, we were able to clearly see Whitehorse Mountain and Three Fingers 36 miles to the southwest.

About a half hour after official sunset, the colors in the earth shadow subsided and it was time to hike out. I was not looking forward to this since I had some concerns about following the trail on the way back out in the dark. Below the ridge, the forest proper isn’t heavily vegetated so there were a few times when it was quite easy to make a turn off trail. Thankfully, we managed to make the descent back to the decommissioned road without any navigational incidents. We reached the trailhead a little bit more than 2 hours after leaving the ridge.

The day didn’t quite go as I expected but that seems to be my modis operandi. I’ll return at some point but for now, I think it’s time to hunt down some fall color..

Underwater tests

Oct 02

This past weekend I set out to test a few photographic ideas. One such idea I’ve been thinking about is photographing spawning salmon. I think I was partly inspired by some of the work that Seattle photographer Jon Cornforth has done in the past along these lines (link here and here). Now, I’m primarily a landscape photographer so when my thoughts stray into “specialty” areas of photography, I tend to think about how I can accomplish the same goal in a low frills manner. In the example photos taken by Jon, he’s using a $2,000 protective housing and placing his camera down in the water. I can’t possibly justify spending that much on a housing for something I’m going to do rarely.

So how else am I supposed to get these kind of pictures? Would you believe a $15 aquarium?

Well….that’s my bright idea, and that’s what I was trying out this past weekend. I started with a 10 gallon glass aquarium that I picked up at a local pet store for $15. The next thing I picked up was a photo bean bag like this one sold on Amazon for $28. A little steep price wise but I’ll probably be able to utilize this for other things in the future. Another piece to the puzzle is something I already had- a wireless remote for my shutter. The one I’m using is one of those Chinese specials you find on eBay (just search for “wireless remote”). Mine was $15 and it’s supposed to have an effective range of 100 feet which is PLENTY of distance for this endeavor.

So that’s the basic list of items I purchased for this. In terms of my camera, I used my 12-24mm wide angle at 12mm with a circular polarizer to help eliminate any reflections off of the aquarium’s glass. As for a location, I chose a side channel of the North Fork Skykomish River, up valley from the town of Index. The lack of any rain over the last 2 months has dropped the water levels quite a bit. This fact meant that there weren’t any spawning salmon to photograph right now. It did, however, provide some stable conditions for my experimentation.

The first thing I learned was that an aquarium without any weight in it will float. I grabbed a couple pieces of river rock which helped add some weight and finally allowed the aquarium to sink down into the water. It wasn’t too difficult to level the camera thanks to the bean bag and my flash hot shoe bubble level. Setting a focus is a different matter. Attempting to select a focus point & then autofocusing just doesn’t work. Before I head out to attempt this again, I’m going to experiment with close range focusing to give me a better idea of where focus should line up on my lenses indicators.

I fumbled around in the main part of the side channel, trying to compose a shot which was roughly 60% underwater / 40% above water. The scene underwater is naturally darker and sunlight reflecting off the forest’s canopy made for an extreme contrast. The best way to combat this would be to use a graduated ND filter. Unfortunately, space inside the aquarium was limited so fitting a filter holder for my 4×6 ND filters would have been tough (assuming I had one of the Z Pro sized filter holders which I don’t). Eventually I settled in to a backwater side channel to the side channel which I believe will have spawning fish when the river levels rise.

I was taking test shots and finally getting a handle on things when I realized that there were small salmon fry swimming around in front of me. For a while, I stood back and stared intently at the frys as they swam around. Every time one would happen to cross through my framed area, I would click my remote to take a picture. I knew I would have to freeze the motion of the frys so finding the right settings were a bit of a chore. I bumped my ISO up to 1600, my aperature to F7.1, and my shutter speed to about 1/20th of a second. My RAW files were a bit on the dark side but the huge dynamic range of my Pentax K-5 allowed me to brighten up my photos back home in Photoshop. I felt pretty good and finally packed it in after about a half hour of test shots.

Once I got home, I noticed some additional things I need to correct before I try this again. First, a thin layer of foam would be a good thing to have to protect the glass bottom from any weight you put into the aquarium (in my case, river rock). Second, I also need to pick up some black fabric to drape over my weighted bottom and the glass side of the aquarium behind the camera. In my shots with the small frys, you can just make out the reflection of my wireless remove in the upper right corner. In the above/below water shot, you can also see the reflection of a white-ish river rock. Whoops! Finally, I need to be a little more conscious about water drops on the outside of the aquarium glass. I didn’t pay attention to that and the end result looks like water drops on the lens. I’m encouraged by my initial tests and will hopefully have some more to share in the coming weeks when the salmon start returning!

To close off this post, I want to include a couple photos I was fortunate enough to take of a bobcat (Lynx rufus) I happened to stumble upon while hiking in the hills above Sultan earlier that same day. I turned the corner of this logging road and the bobcat was loping up the road 20 yards in front of me. I instantly froze but the cat sensed my presence fairly quickly. Instead of running off, it decided to sit down in the middle of the road and watch me. I quickly took an iPhone photo. It still sat there. While talking out loud to the bobcat, I slowly put down my backpack and fished out my camera and zoom lens (it never fails that you will ALWAYS have a wide angle mounted when you need a zoom and vice versa).

The bobcat laid down and seemed to take a quick cat nap (pun intended). I took more photos, trying to use my treking poles as a crude monopod. I moved up slowly a couple yards. The bobcat moved back a couple yards and sat down again. This time I extracted my tripod and set it up. By now the bobcat was losing interest in me and turned and continued to walk slowly up the road. I snapped a few more shots while it eventually stopped and sat down at a bend in the road. I tried to slowly get closer but the bobcat finally turned the corner and disappeared. A cool experience and a complete accident! This PDF will give you a nice primer about bobcats.

Yellowstone Part II

Sep 22

More photos from my Yellowstone trip-

Yellowstone National Park

Sep 20

The week of Labor Day marked my first ever trip to Yellowstone National Park. I’ve actually wanted to incorporate a little more wildlife experiences in my photography the last few years. Heck- if you’ve ever looked in my “fauna” gallery on my site, you know it’s pretty bare! Anyways, my girlfriend stopped through the park back in June and was all too eager to make a return trip. Away we went!

Unlike most of my blog posts where I typically write up a journal or narrative for my outings, this time I just wanna rattle off a list of random thoughts-

Trip Research / Prep!

There are a couple of traditional print books about photographing Yellowstone such as this and this. I have both, and they’re not too bad (but a bit light on wildlife). Prior to my trip, I came across an eBook put out by photographer Dean Sauskojus (website here) called “The Ultimate Photo Guide to Yellowstone National Park” (and you can access the eBook info page here). Dean’s photography is wonderful, and his locational write-ups seemed to be fairly spot-on. I found it handy to be able to refer to the PDF on my tablet while out in the park. Anyways, I would definitely recommend the eBook.

Another tidbit of advice I had been told prior to my trip which I found true was that the distances between points takes a lot longer to travel than you might think. You might want to estimate up to 1.5x the amount of time you think needed in order to get between places by the time you want. You hear about “bear / buffalo jams” but we didn’t experience anything severe during our stay. It could just be the tendency to gawk as you drive, or just being extra defensive to avoid being surprised by something on the road. Case in point, we were driving back to Tower Junction after sunset on our last night and seemingly out of thin air, a small herd of bison was partially in the road, including a young bison nursing off mama.

I’m here! Now what?

One thing I’ve learned to do over time is to scale back expectations of what you can accomplish during the course of a day. Every day I had a sunrise and sunset spot selected but only a very loose plan to connect the two together. Let your hunches and curiosity tell you when and where to stop. Tangentially related, get some bear spray for your safety and protection. It’s designed for use against an attacking bear but any large wild animal can suddenly turn aggressive towards you. This video shows a bunch of teen and pre-teen jack-asses who have a run in with a bison (I would hope most of you wouldn’t be that foolish, though!). At one of my stops near Grand Prismatic Spring, we passed a solitary bison laying down near the Fairy Falls trail. As it turned out, the bison had a wound in it’s side from a sparring match with another bison. A wounded animal can be a dangerous animal and the bear spray was a reassuring item to have.

If you do happen to stop someplace, be prepared to draw a crowd. I’d like to tell you that the crowd will be animals but more often than not, it will be your fellow tourists. They end up deciding that you MUST be seeing something! After all, why else would you have stopped?? I was photographing Soda Butte Creek and Barronette Peak from the highway bridge over the creek when a car stopped on the bridge behind me. I initially ignored them but then a voice asked, “you looking at an animal of the view??” I answered “the view” and they immediately drove off.

Now, sometimes where there’s smoke, there *IS* fire. A few times, we pulled over (into an accepted parking spot) when we came up on a scene with dozens of other people park and gawking at something. The first time in the Lamar Valley, it was the appearance of a black wolf; the second time was in the Hayden Valley and there were up to four wolves in a chess game with a herd of bison. I guess my moral of the story is to let small groups of people enjoy themselves, if you can.

When you are out driving around, be sure to have your camera immediately available. Getting stuck in a bear or bison jam may give you an opportunity to get a nice close shot that you might otherwise
miss. We were stopped in one brief traffic snarl and off to our right was a fox hopping and hunting some prey in the field. While we were stopped, my girlfriend was able to snap a couple shots of it. Another time, we were driving back down from the Beartooth Highway and we passed a fox, happily trotted up the road with a fresh meal in its mouth.

Some Closing Thoughts

I came home from Yellowstone with about 1,400 photographs. Most of these were rapid “bursts” in order to capture some sharp shots of wildlife. After reviewing them, I still have some work to do with my use of a “wildlife” lens like my Bigma (the Sigma 50-500mm lens). This week I came across a few sites which discuss what’s known as long lens technique (this, this, and this) and I’ll be working to incorporate these techniques before my next visit to Yellowstone.

Website Update (and some commentary)

Aug 26

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve updated my website by adding nearly 40 new photos taken during the first half of this year. You can view those photos in my New Photos gallery. Normally, that would be the extent of my “new photo” announcement. This time, however, I’d also like to mention that I’ve also completed a large project where I have re-processed nearly every photo that is on my website (that’s 300+ photos).

I created my website about four years ago and a lot has changed since then. My experience, both in the field and with Photoshop, has grown tremendously. I’ve largely been focused on the present and the future but, earlier this year, I realized that I could do a better job of processing my oldest photos based on my current knowledge and skill set.

And so it began. I’ve posted a few before and after comparisons on my Google Plus account but I’ll share a few examples of what I’m talking about. One of the common mistakes I made was using a display that wasn’t color-calibrated. Eventually all serious photographers realize this mistake and incorporate color calibration into their normal workflow. Your not aware of it at the time but it slaps you in the face once you realize it. Here we have a waterfall scene along Deception Creek:

It should be obvious that the original photo (on the left) has a HUGE green color cast to it. However, once corrected, the difference is striking. Here is another example from the wildflower meadows on Mazama Ridge in Mount Rainier National Park:

After the correction, the colors of the lupine really pop and it’s not due to an increase in the color saturation! Another type of correction, although less common in my collection, was for dynamic range. Now consider this photo of fall color in the Wells Creek drainage on the north side of Mount Baker:

The foreground was in shade but the upper ridge where the fall color was located was in full sunshine. When I originally processed this photo, my abilities at the time could only accommodate the shadows or the highlights but not both. At the time, not even an HDR process could produce a satisfactory result. Through what I have learned since then, I was able to blend two exposures from the original single RAW file and I’m very happy with the results. Now the clouds, bright fall color, and cliff faces are not overexposed *AND* there is sufficient detail in the shade of the foreground.

Some photos were originally color but, after some reflection, I felt would have more impact if converted to black and white. This photo of Hemispheres at the Mount Baker Ski Area is a prime example:
This process took quite a while and seemed like it would never end. In the end, however, I am quite happy with the results and feel that is was well worth the effort.

Mazama Ridge 2012

Aug 22

There’s not much for me to say about Mazama Ridge in Mount Rainier National Park that I haven’t said in previous years here and here. Last weekend I made the trip down to view the wildflowers which were probably beginning their peak week. Great time as always and I ran into a few fellow photographers I’ve interacted with online over the last couple years.

As I hiked out after sunset, the low clouds that persisted all day at lower elevations finally began creeping up the Stevens Creek valley towards Reflection Lakes saddle. I stopped for a couple quick photos on the ridge and at Faraway Rock-

Snoqualmie Nights

Jul 31

I was up in the vicinity of Snoqualmie Pass last night, hoping to do some photography with the coming full moon. Despite forecasts promising cloud cover percentages of 6-13%, the stark reality of weather was significantly worse. The other lesson learned is that the moon travels a far lower path in spring/summer than later in the year. Last night, this meant that the moon never rose above a ridge to the south of my location (or really broke through the mostly cloudy skies for that matter).

The upside of the conditions were the opportunities to photograph a mix of clear patches of star filled skies along with fast moving clouds. Lemonaide from lemons!