Spring Umpqua Recap
I recently returned from another busy trip down to the Umpqua region in Southern Oregon. Between last fall’s trip and now, I’ve been quite busy behind the scenes building my Umpqua LSOG Project website but there is still a lot of work to do heading out to visit the many sales scattered across the watershed. During my six days down south, I managed to visit near two dozen different timber sale units and virtually all of them were first time visits. I must confess that traditional photography has taken a little bit of a backseat during these field visits. I’m really pushing to expand my use of my Garmin Virb 360 degree camera and trying to ensure I have at least one video and one 360 degree photo from each sale unit that I visit. On this trip I also added yet another technology tool into my toolset- a drone.
I confess I have a love/hate relationship with drones. I hate the sound they make and the drone user community has lots of examples of drone pilots who disregard the rules of flying drones. In spite of the negativity, I can admit that they can be a very useful tool for capturing visuals that are otherwise impossible or very difficult to otherwise achieve. Cost and fear of turning a $1,000 drone into a paperweight kept me away for years but I finally decided the time was right. I chose the DJI Mavic Air because of its size, crash avoidance technology, higher data bit rate, and its more protected camera gimbal. A smaller drone does mean a smaller battery and, consequently, a shorter flight time. The drone community has also complained that the Mavic Air has a shorter flight range compared with the Mavic Pro but I can’t say that I felt hindered by its range during my time with it.
So my initial trip with the drone option was a success. It does open up a different realm of photo opportunities mostly because you are photographing looking down rather than up into the sky. Even a gray day will force you to bracket exposures or compromise exposure with a single photo. This was the situation with one of the photos I’ve shared below of a Pacific Madrone in Woodchuck Unit 1. The tree has a beautiful arching shape but, from the ground, a large expanse of sky is included in any composition. The top down perspective of this tree is not only unique but more easily captured in camera.
The drone’s elevated perspective also helps with simplifying the chaos of the ground. In many Pacific Northwest forests, you will have an understory canopy of Vine Maple. From the ground, the branches of Vine Maple run horizontally in all sorts of directions. It can create a busy scene and such was the case with Layng Creek Unit 5. From above, however, the leaves of the Vine Maple flatten out and create a beautiful carpet of leaves, completely obscuring what’s going on underneath. I do think that drone photographs can diminish the size of features, especially if there’s not something else in the photo like a person which help our minds with determine scale.
I wasn’t able to accomplish my biggest priority which was to visit a new logging road built through 400 year old stand of old-growth. The most direct access has been eliminated due to locked gates and no trespassing signs but there is a backroad route to visit the site via a 16 mile series of inner connected roads. I made it about 12 miles before the road became less traveled and I questioned my chances of continuing. I’ll try again this fall.
