Monroe

Auroras!

Jun 30

Sometime in the early 2000s, I witnessed the Aurora Borealis for the first time from my house in Everett. It was nothing like the photos you see from Alaska or Norway but no less fascinating. Over the last few years, I’ve paid closer attention to the watches and notices that come out when the aurora activity is strong enough to be seen from Washington with the hopes of photographing them. Far too often, clouds and our typical northwest weather have prevented me from seeing or photographing them. Last night, forecasts for auroras were favorable but it wasn’t until I saw a photo tweeted by the National Weather Service Seattle of the auroras over Seattle that I got off my butt and out the door to look for them. A photo from a friend in the area only hastened my departure.

I selected a spot just west of Monroe near Frylands because of its expansive view towards the north and northwest. Not a bad choice for a spot close to home! Some low fog started creeping in from the east which added a bit of interest to the foreground.

This was my first real opportunity to photograph and process photos of auroras. From what I’ve been able to piece together, processing of aurora photos isn’t much different than processing for other night or astro-photographs- it all boils down to personal preference. My personal preference is that my night skies still look dark. To accomplish this, I choose a white balance temperature that’s on the cold side. The photos in this post all use a temperature of 3500k and that’s been my personal preference for a while now. Why even bring all this up? Well, I wanted to explain why my photos of the auroras look different than any of the others that are floating around from this event. For example, my friend’s photos show lots of purple in addition to the typical greens. Piecing it all together, I suspect that he was using a warmer white balance such as the Cloudy or Shade preset. As an example. here’s a side by side comparison of one of my photos using my preferred white balance (3500k) on the left and Daylight (5500k) on the right:

I don’t recall seeing any purples last night so that’s an example of why I lean towards a cooler white balance for my night shots. Today’s cameras are very sensitive and can capture features (especially at night) that our eyes can’t see. That being said, it is about personal preference. This just happens to be mine. 🙂

April Leftovers

Apr 29

I built up a little backlog during the month of April so here’s a quick hit series of photos.
Big Four Mountain

Skykomish River Valley near Sultan

Sunset from Monroe

Mount Baker Ski Area Vicinity

I also made this timelapse from my lofty perch above the Skykomish River valley:

Sunday Sunset

Jul 10

I spent Friday and Saturday night’s out with my girlfriend chasing sunset in the Cascades. In both cases, the sunset’s came up short and meekly went away. It should come as NO surprise that Sunday evening, while sitting at the computer working on something, my girlfriend came up to me and asked, “Steve, do you have your camera? Come quick!..”

Sure enough, I get to the back porch to see an enormous radii of god rays and layers upon layers of puffy clouds. Ah yes- the sunset I wanted came a day late. Monroe gets some fantastic sunset light but (honestly) doesn’t have much going for it for foreground compositions. The best thing I could do was walk over to the ball fields behind Frank Wagner Elementary and maximize the sky in my photos. Enjoy!..

Waterworld..

Jan 12

As widely reported, vast portions of Western Washington experienced record and near record level flooding during the past week. This marks the third major flood event in as many years. All rivers have crested and begun to recede back into their banks which now afford the opportunity to check out the flooding.

Here are some photos up and down the Snohomish & Snoqualmie River valleys. First up, a solitary tree surrounded by the temporary lake:

Further up Old Snohomish-Monroe Road is the road closure just south of French Creek:

Further south and directly alongside the Snohomish River, a log deposited by the high flows lies on Shorts School Road..

Once you know what to look for, it’s easy to get an idea of how high the flood waters were. Indications such as mud on trees and debris that gets deposited unnaturally are clear signs:

Further up valley and just north of the town of Duvall, waters from the Snoqualmie River have filled the side fields up creating vast seas. Currently there’s 4 feet of water in this field:

The mile-wide valley could not be crossed in Duvall due to flood damage to the road so I doubled around the north side to go look at High Bridge Road. This photo shows Crescent Lake Road as it descends into the flood waters. The line of debris across the road in the middle of the photo indicates the level of flood waters:

Finally, a view across the Snoqualmie River valley from high atop High Bridge Road: