Photography

Green Lake

Nov 08

My first visit to Washington State was in the summer of 1992 and I spent a week with my best friend staying with his aunt and uncle. His uncle took us out on a few tourist type outings down to Mount Saint Helens and to Mount Rainier National Park. I was in awe of everything I saw but what left a lasting impression on me was a simple hike to Green Lake in the northwest corner of Mount Rainier National Park. I can’t explain it but the stillness and peace of the setting has always been something I’ve looked forward to. Now that I live here, the opportunity to visit Green Lake in a winter setting is really special to me.

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Back in 1992, accessing Green lake was pretty easy. The trailhead lies at the side of the road halfway between the Carbon River Park Entrance and the end of the road at Ipsuit Creek Campground. Flooding in the late 1990s changed all of this and sadly, the road can no longer be driven (and most likely will never be repaired). What used to be a 1.8 mile hike is now requires a 3 mile hike along the road just to reach the trailhead. The extra hike along the road makes this a long day but the flip side is that it allows you to enjoy the temperate old growth forest that would normally blur past you while driving the road.

On this particular outing, I expected rain and hoped for snow at the lake (both of which I got). I also enjoyed the entire day in solitude. At the lake, the weather was steady light rain with some brief sleet. After 2 1/2 hours of hiking in the rain, I was saturated and slightly chilled so I was not able to stay as long as I would have liked. After some quick pictures and lunch, I was headed back and trying to take photos of all the things I made a mental note of. I’ll have to make a return trip just to explore the forest along the road..

Buck Creek

Sep 21

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Weather once again forced a Plan B selection. During my recent trips along the Mountain Loop Highway, Buck Creek caught my eye so I made it my destination this weekend. Buck Creek is located just east of the Mount Dickerman trailhead and drains the east slopes of the mountain. It would be easy to miss if it was not for the one lane controlled bridge crossing. The creek has been eroding the downstream bridge abutments prompting Snohomish County to put in the protective measures. There is no trail here so this outing was a good old Cascade Bushwhack.

AFter gearing up, I headed upslope. After 50 yards, the creek actually has two paths to follow- the main channel which is on the left and a flood overflow channel on the right-hand side. I opted to follow the main channel. Water flow by this time of the year is substantially less than during the peak snowmelt months of early summer. What is striking is the width of water flow during significant rain events. Flood related debris carried downslope seems to cover an area 20 yards wide. This is DEFINITELY a place you do not want to be during flooding!

The creek is a steady series of cascading levels and pools along with several large logjams of flood debris. Progress upstream isn’t bad for roughly 1/3 of a mile but gets more challenging due to a large area of flood damage and slope failure. Given the time of day, I decided this would be the end of my exploration on this occasion so I headed back down. Interesting area and one that I’ll return to in the future..

Mount Rainier Sunset

Sep 14

I’ve been trying to attempt this trip for the last couple weeks but the weather hadn’t cooperated until this past weekend. The destination was Tolmie Peak and Eunice Lake, which are located just 2 miles north of Mowich Lake in the northwest corner of the park. I thought Eunice Lake would provide a nice foreground in contrast to the mountain during sunset and it was still relatively close to the trailhead (which would reduce the time and distance of hiking out in the dark).

90 minutes after starting, I found myself atop Tolmie Peak one hour before sunset. Two things immediately became apparent- tonight would not be a spectacular sunset and the better vantage for photography is WELL below the summit on the 1st switchback up from the lake. Rather than miss any of the sunset light, I opted to stay put at least until the best light had faded. There were no clouds to add interest but Rainier did receive some warm orange light during the peak of sunset.

After Rainier lost its direct light, I quickly packed my gear and flew down the trail back down to what I consider to be the better vantage point (at the lower switchback). I didn’t have much time so I quickly set up to snap one shot that included more of Eunice Lake and the mountain.

Once complete, I put on my headlamp and headed back to the trailhead. The trail to Eunice Lake is completely in forest and, once dark, is REALLY dark! I’d be lying if I didn’t admit some nervousness while hiking out alone. Every trail looks like an Edgar Allen Poe tree by the pale light of a headlamp! This day might not have been the best but there’s great potential for future visits..

Edmonds Art Show Approaching

Jun 15

As mentioned previously, I have two pieces that will be part of the Juried Art Show at the Edmonds Art Festival which is next weekend (June 19-21). I’m very happy with how the two framed pieces came together so stop by the festival if you’re in the area. It’s free!

Photographing Snow…

Mar 30

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.

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:

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.

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:

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:

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!

Scouting for photos in the age of Google Earth

Jan 03

In my last post, I shared some photos from the Horseshoe Bend Trail along the North Fork Nooksack River. Due to the late hour, I wasn’t able to take any photos of the horseshoe bend of the river. I was curious as to how far along the trail I had traveled and where the horseshoe bend was so I fired up Google Earth to investigate. As it turns out, I had been close to the bend but frankly it doesn’t appear to be photo friendly (and definately not what I had envisioned in my head).

As I looked over the area in Google Earth, I did notice a bend in the river that appeared to more closely match what I had hoped to see in person. This located wasn’t apparent to me while on the trail because it occurs on the south bank and away from the trail which is on the north bank of the river. Using the tools in Google Earth, I was able to determine a route and distance (~0.6 miles):

Seems easy, right? Well, almost. Google Earth also incorporates a terrain model so it gives you some idea of the ups & downs but the resolution may not enough for an area such as this. Furthermore, Google Earth can’t tell you anything about the obstacles you’ll experience in the area such as snow depths or downed timber. It may have only been 0.6 miles and 100-200 feet of up & down but in unconsolidated snow, it’s quite a workout to finally obtain these shots:

Along the way, there was this curious site (created by higher flood flows): a teeter-totter!

Getting back to Google Earth, there are some other things you can use it for with respect to photography. Consider this photo of Doubtful Lake taken from the Cascade Arm above Cascade Pass in the North Cascades:

Now compare that with the same basic view in Google Earth:

As you can see, you can actually get a sense of photo composition using Google Earth before visiting an area. It should be noted that this can have some limitations due to the way Google Earth functions. Elements that are closer to the viewer’s location are rendered with more detail than those elements which are located further from the viewpoint. This comes into play in some situations when there is a prominent feature that simply doesn’t show up due to simple distance. I can think of one situation where I replicated a photo I took of Venus & Spade Lakes below Mount Daniel and Mount Rainier (a pretty big feature) didn’t render in Google Earth because it was too far away from the viewpoint. Certainly not a deal killer but just be aware of it!

Now, in the latest versions of Google Earth, there is a new feature that can REALLY help photographers: the sunlight tool. After positioning your view, this tool will show you what the sunlight will look like across the landscape +/- 12 hours. It adds a new dialog in the upper right portion of the display. Simply drag the slider to adjust the time or just press play on the dialog.

If we consider the same Google Earth view of my Doubtful Lake photo, we can now simulate the conditions you’d expect at sunrise on New Years Day:

All in all, it’s a very powerful tool to help you find new locations..

12/20/2008: Deception Falls

Dec 21

I’ll begin my blog with a recap of a trip yesterday. For the better part of the last week, the whole Puget Sound has been firmly gripped in unusually cold weather intermixed with snowstorms. I just haven’t been able to get out to take photos the previous several weeks so I was itching to get out. Saturday’s forecast was for sunny skies, changing in the afternoon so I decided to make a go of it. I decided to go not too far so I headed out Highway 2 towards Stevens Pass.

My original plan was to stop at the Heybrook Ridge lookout trail followed by a stop further east at Deception Falls. I got a late start to the day but skies were clear and cold- 15 degrees on my way through Sultan. Around Gold Bar, the forecasted strong eastern winds made their appearance. The Heybrook lookout is located near the Snohomish / King County, just east of the turnoff for the town of Index. It offers a commanding view of the Skykomish River valley, Mount Index, and Baring Mountain.

As luck would have it, the parking area for the trailhead was covered with 2 feet of snow and not an option. I moved on to Plan B and out to Deception Falls. I’ve only visited the falls twice and those visits were during the last 2 months. Sadly, due to funding issues, the Forest Service seems to only open the parking lot during the peak part of the summer. Winter is no different and finding someplace close to park is even more of a challenge.

I settle on a small pullout about a half mile west of the falls and hiked along the busy highway. The parking lot and trails around the falls area had about 2 feet of powder so having the snowshoes with me was a great help. As I expected, the arrival of winter changed the entire dynamics of the falls. Here are the Upper Falls:

And the Lower Falls:

Downstream of the Lower Falls:

Ice build-up where the Tye River makes a 90 degree turn:

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Steve Cole Photography

Pacific Northwest Landscape / Nature Photography