Steve Cole

Winds of Change at Mount Hood

Jun 11

It was three hours until sunset and this is how things were shaping up. What to do? After finishing up my hike to Ramona Falls, this was my dilemma. Although the mountain was fairly socked in, you can see that there is a tall lenticular cloud structure building up behind it. I decided that, when sunset did come, the lenticular cloud was probably going to be highlight. Clearly from this vantage point, I wasn’t going to see much; i needed to move but where? On the first day of my trip, I drove the entire length of Lolo Pass Road to the actual pass and this gave me the knowledge of where I could photograph the mountain, and what to expect. From this simple action, I now knew that I should head to the last viewpoint nearest the pass. It situated me in a more northerly position instead of the northwesterly position that the photo above was taken at. As I drove to my destination, I passed another photographer who had staked his claim not far from where I was previously. I had to smile because I knew that my destination was going to be better suited for what was to come. Boy was I right! The next hour until sunrise was a photographing frenzy. I kept alternating shots between my Sigma 17-70mm lens and my Pentax DA 55-300. The colors from sunset definitely not the best I’ve ever seen but the cloud movement and dynamics certainly were. The wind currents kept changing the view in front of me, almost like shaking an Etch-A-Sketch. True to my hunch, the tall lenticular cloud behind Mount Hood acted like a magnet for any of the colors of sunset. Minute by minute, there was always something to photograph. Like many sunsets, this one just faded away without fanfare. I honestly didn’t expect much of a sunset but I was dead wrong. I’m just glad that I had done a little bit of homework to put me in the best possible position to take advantage of it!

Up, Down, and Around Mount Hood

Jun 10

During my recent trip down to Mount Hood and the Columbia River Gorge, I actually spent more time around Mount Hood than down along the Gorge. Here’s a compilation of photos from several of my Mount Hood related outings-

Tom Dick Harry Mountain Sunset
I climbed to the top of the mountain in hopes of a sunset at the end of the first day of my trip. I got a late start from the Mirror Lake trailhead but made good time up to the lake. Beyond the lake, I tried keeping the brisk pace but it was wearing me down. The trail was patchy snow for the first half but that snow was sitting on the trail like a huge humps. Just below the 6′ tall rock cairn, the trail was completely snow covered and the slog was on. More than once I thought about abandoning my effort but I kept at it. I ended up topping out about 20-25 minutes before sunset. There was no sunset to be had on Mount Hood but Mount Jefferson to the south was receiving some nice light and had a nice lenticular cloud on its lee side. I stayed until sunset was officially over and then headed down as quickly and safely as I could.

Ramona Falls
My first visit to this waterfall. This area of Mount Hood fascinates me because it seems like it is located in a rain shadow. The trees are a little more spaced with more pine. I arrived at the falls in the afternoon so I had a mix of sun and shade across the falls. To counter this (and to get the silky water effect), I used my 0.6 Graduated Neutral Density Filter. It still requires some extra Photoshop processing to come up with something presentable but it is possible. Abstracts like the ones shown here are probably the primary compositions but I did like my composition with the stump in the foreground and the falls in the background. Again, tricky lighting but still doable!

Highway 26 Corridor
This year’s trip was a little later than my previous trips and one of the benefits of this was seeing some Pacific Rhododendron in bloom. These photos are from a stretch of Highway 26 just east of the town of Rhododendron. It was late in the afternoon so I even had a little bit of dappled sunlight through the forest.

Old Salmon River Trail
This trail is described as having the most accessible old growth forest in Oregon. Located just a few quick minutes off of Highway 26 near Welches, the trail runs along the Salmon River for several miles and frankly surpassed any expectations I had. My visit was about 90 minutes before sunset and it was a huge mistake! Next year, I’ll devote an entire day to exploring the Salmon River. The forest is so lush and diverse that there’s a lot to take in and observe. Until then, enjoy these photos..

Columbia Gorge 2012

Jun 08

Mid to late May is the time for my annual trip south to the Columbia River Gorge and Mount Hood area. It’s usually a jam packed few days so this year I’m going to group some like minded outings together. This year my Gorge visits were limited to Oneonta Gorge and Elowah / Upper McChord Falls, both of which were first visits for me. I was very fortunate to have both locations all to myself!

…and on a much rainier day, here are some photos from the Elowah Falls area-

Delorme inReach Review

Jun 03

I think photographers are a solitary breed; perhaps it’s a conscious decision. There have been a few times when I’ve been out with someone taking photos and then wondered if my friend was getting bored while I did my thing. I don’t venture out solo as much as I have in the past but it’s not THAT uncommon for me to still do it. Solitude is a great experience but what if…..what if I fall and can’t continue? What if I’m just running later than I had intended? Will my girlfriend get so concerned that she contacts the authorities and initiates a search & rescue operation?..

These are questions that have been more and more on my mind. Granted, I haven’t really had any close calls but that’s no reason to be unprepared. Cell phones are very spotty in the mountains and just can’t be relied upon. In the last few years, a company named Spot LLC developed the Spot Satellite GPS Messenger, which is a satellite messaging and emergency communicator. Utilizing the Globalstar satellite network, it allows you to send predefined or custom messages (depending on the model) from just about anywhere in the world. If you find yourself in a situation that requires emergency assistance, the unit sends a message to the GEOS International Emergency Response Center and they will notify the appropriate emergency responders.

The SPOT device has been a huge success and their latest advancement was the SPOT Connect, a Bluetooth enabled device that, when paired with your smartphone, allows you to send custom messages to your predefined contacts. I was really thinking hard about this unit but I have read stories of users having problems pairing the device with iPhones (with I own) as well as the lack of any clear indicator that messages were sent successfully.

About six weeks ago, I stumbled across a new device called the Delorme inReach. Functionally, it works exactly like the SPOT Connect but on the Iridium Satellite network (a different network). It also has one major difference- the inReach device has the ability to send *AND* receive messages. If that wasn’t good enough, the physical unit still has the ability to function even if your smartphone dies. I knew that this was the unit I was looking for. There was just one problem- it only worked with Android smartphones or Delorme’s PN-60w GPS unit!

Three weeks after discovering the inReach, I read a rumor that the device had received FCC clearance for use with iOS devices and about 10 days after that, Delorme released a version that was compatible with iOS devices. I immediately ordered one when I heard this and had it in my hand a few days later. After a few outings with it (including a 4-day trip), I thought I’d pass along my initial impressions about the unit and its use.

You can learn more about its capabilities on Delorme’s website but, in a nutshell, here’s what you can do with the inReach device-

Send 3 (user) predefined messages via the physical unit or custom messages (up to 160 characters) using the iOS app connected via Bluetooth to designated contacts.
Post a status update to Facebook and/or Twitter
Send a distress call to the GEOS International Emergency Response Center
Share your location and progress to others via a web map called a Map Share

The inReach device for use with Smartphones retails for $250 but the app for the Smartphone (named Earthmate) is free. In addition to the initial cost of the device, a monthly subscription is required to use the device. Delorme offers several different tiered plans depending primarily on the number of monthly messages included. The full details are on their website but I decided on the middle tier plan which runs $25/month and includes 40 messages/month.

The first step towards activation is creating a new account online and this was pretty straightforward. After selecting a data plan, designating an emergency contact, and providing the serial number of your inReach device, you’re basically up and running. Through your online account, you also add “contacts” that are available for use when you’re out and about. I initially found this confusing since your phone’s address book is available when crafting a custom message in the Earthmate app. Here’s the difference- the three predefined messages (these are messages that are sent by pressing a specific physical button on the device) can ONLY be sent to contacts you have added to your account’s address book.

After setting up my account, I sent my girlfriend one of the predefined messages and within 2 minutes, her cell phone received the message. Successful on the first try- not bad! Bluetooth pairing with my iPhone 4S was a breeze (and continued to be with all future use as well). The next thing I wanted to test was the tracking (or breadcrumb) feature. I pressed the tracking button on the device (this can be turned on via the app as well) and then took a drive. I placed the inReach device on the dash of my car pressed up against the windshield and that seemed sufficient to log and report back my position at the interval I had selected (10 minutes).

Although the unit has been designed to operate without a smartphone, you’re going to want to use the smartphone app. Prior to developing the inReach product, Delorme was well known for its map atlas products. Thankfully, Delorme has decided to include 125k scale topographic maps available for download within the Earthmate App. The map tiles available for download include hydrography, contours, roads, cities, and hiking trails. I found this to be a great, unpublicized value.

I spent one more morning doing a test run with the device in my vehicle before putting it through its paces on my four-day trip down to Oregon’s Mount Hood and Columbia River Gorge area. During my trip, I used the device with tracking enabled for roughly 15 hours each day while I either hiked trails or drove from trailhead to trailhead. Most of my hikes were located under a forest canopy and the inReach device worked extremely well. The unit has an indicator light that indicates when it is busy sending/receiving messages. Oneonta Gorge (photo at the top of this post) along the Columbia River Gorge was the only location I visited where the inReach unit failed to transmit a location due to the terrain. Oneonta Gorge is a very narrow, slot canyon with a limited field of view so this isn’t that much of a surprise to me.

The device is primarily a communications tool but I really found the basemaps helpful enough to monitor my progress along the trail. In a perfect world, the basemaps would be of a better resolution (1:24k ideally) but there was enough information to locate myself, even without a paper map backup. Seeing as how Delorme is a U.S. company, I don’t know how well this would translate outside of the U.S. and Canada. The inReach device uses its own internal GPS for positional fixes (as of this writing the Android version uses the smart phone’s GPS unit. It will fall inline with iOS use after the June 2012 firmware update). Thankfully, the engineers at Delorme designed things so that other apps on your iOS device can utilize the GPS information from the inReach unit. So- although you can’t set a track and navigate to waypoints directly using Delorme’s setup, you CAN do this in a third party app like Gaia GPS. On my hike out from Ramona Falls, I set a new track using that app to record the last part of my hike. Once it’s recorded, you can export your track out as a GPX file or KML file like I’ve shown below.

LIKES-

Fairly reliable signal across varied terrain (forest, open areas, etc)
Easy to use
Good, free basemaps are included with the purchase (download via internet connection)
Visual indicators of what the unit is doing (current modes, messaging status, etc)
Can be used independently of your smart phone should it become inoperable
Long battery life (longer life coming in June 2012 via firmware update)
Map Share can be password protected
Can post to Twitter and Facebook, if desired
Predefined messages (messages sent using the unit’s physical buttons) do not count against your monthly message quota
Notifications of low battery strength on device and through the Earthmate app

DISLIKES-

Subscription Plans are a bit pricey ($9/25/50 a month)
No direct way to know how many of your monthly messages have been used
Difficult (perhaps not possible at all) to cancel sending a predefined message
Map downloads through Earthmate app is S-L-O-W
No way to delete old tracking information in your account; you can only “hide” it using a date range option
Map Share page doesn’t display well on mobile devices
Icons on the Map Share aren’t customizable and are a little confusing since they are too similar; I’d prefer the ability to use different colors to indicate different types of events/messages
Map Share URL isn’t very user friendly to share (alpha-numeric combination path)
No Ability to customize what information does or doesn’t appear in a tracking point callout

Battery life is estimated at 60 hours using the 10 minute interval of tracking using Lithium Ion batteries. I don’t know exactly how many hours of use I had with my first pair of batteries but I believe it was in the neighborhood of 40+ hours. The upcoming firmware update in June 2012 will increase the estimated battery life up to 120 hours.

So there ya have it- the inReach device is a pretty solid device, worthy of the praise it has received from sources such as Backpacker Magazine. The positives are really positive and I believe the negatives can (and will) be worked out in the future. DeLorme has set up a discussion forum for the inReach and it even includes a suggestion forum where users can suggest new features or changes. My limited time spent there and on their blog has shown me that they do care and are receptive to feedback that their users provide. Case in point- the original inReach was only compatible with Android devices due to differences in Bluetooth protocols. Some folks who bought the unit just before the iOS compatibility announcement were dismayed that they couldn’t also use it with iOS devices. Delorme has agreed to upgrade their devices for a $50 fee. Sounds reasonable to me and a good move on their part! If there’s something I haven’t addressed here, leave a comment and I’ll try to answer!

[DISCLAIMER: I was not compensated in any way by Delorme or any other company/organization to write this review. The unit I tested was the unit I purchased for my own use]

Edmonds Arts Festival

May 16

This week I received some good news! I’m happy to announce that my photo shown here, “Brilliance at Boundary Bay” was selected to be part of the juried art show at this year’s Edmonds Arts Festival. The festival runs Father’s Day weekend (June 15-17th) in downtown Edmonds. The festival has close to 240 artist booths in addition to the juried art displays. It’s really a great time so come visit!

White Salmon

May 09

Five weekends in a row of sunshine? Amazing. Temperatures were flirting with 70 degrees but I still had winter somewhat on the brain. Due to our normally abundant snowpack, I wanted to scout out a “pseudo-winter” shot I’ve been visualizing for a while. It centers around the White Salmon Creek, which flows away from the sheer cliff face of Mount Shuksan’s northwest face. There’s a certain level of commitment to my vision so I really wanted to be sure of its possibilities before attempting it.

White Salmon Creek lies outside the Mount Baker Ski Area, and it’s that ski area that provides the best and most direct access. The ski lifts stopped running at the end of April so the best time to make an attempt is now. Winter snowpack is still close to maximum and the travel is much easier (White Salmon Creek has a reputation for Sitka Alder thickets which abuse anyone who dares travel through them).

It’s only 0.75 miles from the White Salmon Day Lodge to the base of Chair 8 and under bright, cloudless skies it was a pleasant 30 minute snowshoe hike. Much to my surprise, White Salmon Creek in the valley below me was buried under deep snows. Hmm. So much for my plans. On some level I was a bit relieved to see this. The sun was BAKING the snow and I know I would have had quite an ordeal to posthole back out of the valley.

It was still a fantastic day so I set up my tripod and scoped out Mount Shuksan. On my hike in, I was following a pair of skin tracks which continued on towards Shuksan. High above on the mountain’s slopes, I could see their skin track uphill and graceful figure-8 turns from their descent. I had come this far, lugging my snowboard, so it was time to make it worth my while. I double-backed to the base of Chair 8 and proceeded to hike up towards the top of Chair 8.

Since the ski area’s closure, the snow has continued to fall. In fact, enough snow has fallen to freshen up every slope within the ski area. Moguls, ruts, mounds…all gone. My visit also was the first in a quite a while to this part of the ski area. As I plodded along, I looked back at my progress and my snowshoe tracks were the only tracks in sight. For a few hours, the ski area was all mine.

The higher I progressed, the deeper the snow got. My trekking poles would easily sink into the snow at least a foot and my snowshoes were slogging through 4 inches of sun crafted corn. My goal was to reach the top of Chair 8 but time was running out for me on this day. I settled for a spot where Chair 5 spills out and joins Chair 8’s traffic. Not the top but still over a mile long descent and 1,000 vertical feet. A fabulous day in the mountains and another reminder of how blessed I am to live here!

Big Four Mountain

Apr 25

Spring means warmer temperatures. And warmer temperatures mean avalanches! This is what prompted me to make a trip up to Big Four Mountain this past weekend. Tucked in the heart of the North Central Cascade Mountain Range, the mountain features an impressive 4,000 foot vertical face on the mountain’s north side. The view is amazing, and in the early 1920s, one of the early industry magnates from Everett thought it would make a great location for a hotel. The Big Four Inn was constructed near the base of the mountain, burned down in 1949, and was never rebuilt. Today, the site of the inn has become a “picnic” area and the only remnant of the inn is the fireplace which still stands in a large open field. For more info about the inn and its history, click here.

The mountain and inn site are located about 25 miles east of Granite Falls and accessed via the Mountain Loop Highway. During winter, the road is closed and gated at Deer Creek (about 2 miles shy of the site). We weren’t sure what to expect for travel conditions since the last report was by the Forest Service almost 2 weeks ago. Optimistically, we brought some cross country skis hoping for a nice glide out and back. As I mentioned a few posts ago, the low elevation snowpack has been melting quick. Here on the Mountain Loop Highway, we experienced the same thing and had to carry our skies a couple times during the initial part of our trip out.

The skies were clear, the sun was out, and it was getting warm. When we arrived at the picnic area, we had the whole place to ourselves. I decided to set up in the shade of the old fireplace. I spent my time taking several frames for some potential panoramic photos of the face before turning to my telephoto lens and some more intimate scenes of the mountain. We had hoped to witness some nice sized avalanches off the mountain; in reality, it looked like we might have been a week or two late for that. With time, we started to hear cracks and rumbling in the general vicinity of where we were at.

We did have a time constraint so we packed up and headed up the trail towards the Ice Caves viewpoint, which is located near the base of the mountain. The ice caves are a summertime phenomena in which melting snow water hollows out the large piles of avalanche snow that accumulate at the base of the mountain. Caves form and last throughout the summer due to the shade afforded by the mountain. The caves are dangerous and fatalities do happen; the most recent death was a young girl in 2010. This link has a lot of nice old photos of the ice caves over time as well as the Big Four Inn. Once at the viewpoint, our time was limited, and we left within ten minutes. The viewpoint is much too close to the mountain for photography (and safety for that matter!).

I was actually a bit eager to head back to a particular spot back out along the highway, about a half mile before the picnic area. Here, the South Fork Stillaguamish River makes a sweeping turn in the foreground with Big Four in the background. The sun wasn’t overhead but wasn’t too far from it. I had to use my graduated neutral density filter technique to slow down my exposure times. The landscape version seemed to work out well but the portrait version had a weird artifact in the lower right corner where the sun reflected on the river’s surface. I don’t know if it was a reflection off one of my ND Grad filters but I was able to correct this in Photoshop with some dodging and burning.

Snohomish Fog

Apr 20

My sunrise days are just about over until fall as sunrise times creep earlier and earlier (I’m not much of morning person!). Last week, we had a cloud free sunrise but really wonderful valley fog at just the right elevation to sift in and out of trees in the Snohomish River valley…

Springtime come and me Ohanepecosh

Apr 14

The last few years, I’ve made an annual winter trip to the Ohanepecosh River valley in Mount Rainier National Park. I’ve made my trip around mid-February but didn’t get a chance this winter until this past week. I convinced a friend of mine to take a day off from work to join me. Given our abundant snowfall, I was quite shocked by the LACK of snow once we turned off Hwy 12 and onto Hwy 123. It looked like we were going to be in for a repeat of last winter’s trip.

The highway was snow-free all the way to the gate (3 miles off of Hwy 12) where we parked. There was a lone DOT worker who was responsible for opening the gate for DOT vehicles (who are performing the annual highway clearing northward to Cayuse Pass). I chatted with the worker for a little bit and he told me the highway was snow-free all the way north to Panther Creek (which is about halfway between the Cayuse Pass and the Stevens Canyon Entrance to the park). He went on to say that the snow WAS here at this low elevation but it’s been melting fast.

My friend and I wisely decided to ditch pretty much all of our “winter” gear and just walk the road north to Silver Falls. From the Ohanepecosh Campground north, snow appeared in patches throughout the forest. As we arrived at the Silver Falls area, the sun made its appearance. Normally, this would be great unless you’re there to taking photos of waterfalls and a flowing river. All is not lost when you’re faced with these conditions. Many of the photos in this post were taken in sunshine and are single exposures.

Here’s how to do it-

Use a set of soft edge graduated neutral density filters (ND Grads). Because of techniques like HDR and exposure blending in Photoshop, many people have moved away from having and using these tools. I include myself in this camp for the majority of situations but a set of ND Grad filters doesn’t weigh very much so they are always in my bag. In many of these photos, you’ll see a bright portion of the scene but then the light drops off as you travel away from the bright spots. This sets up well for use with a soft edge ND grad filter.

Generally, my waterfall or stream photography exposure times range from 0.4 seconds up to 0.8 seconds, and sometimes out to 1.3 or 1.6 seconds. Without the use of the ND grad filter, I wasn’t able to come anywhere close to a 0.4 second exposure. On some photos, I was able to just use a 0.9 strength ND grad filter; other times, I stacked my 0.9 and my 0.6 strength filters together to get up into the exposure range I like. I’ll also note that I handhold my filters; my Pentax DA 12-24mm lens has a slim mount circular polarizer (which also helps slow exposure times) and does not have any threads.

The lack of threads on the front of the lens prevents me from using a filter holder (I use the 4″ x 6″ sized ND grad filters BTW). Hand holding your filters in front of the lens can take some practice but isn’t that bad and keeps you shooting when time is of the essence. If you hold the filters against the front element of your lens, you might introduce some shake (or blurriness) into your photos. If you hold the filters just in front of the lens, be sure to review your photos for and light reflections from the surface of the filter back towards the lens. It might sound like a lot but it’s really not- and it will become second nature with a little time.

Using the ND grad filters helped get me back into that 0.4 – 0.8 second range that I wanted but weren’t the end of the story. While I was able to contain the dynamic range into a single RAW file, some areas were too dark either due to shade or the use of the ND grad. To counteract this, I will “double process” the RAW file which simply means I open one copy set up for the highlights and a second copy set up for the shadow areas. Once I have both open as layers in Photoshop, I blend the two versions together using layer masks. This gives me a usable starting point to perform my remaining adjustments (color correction, sharpening, etc).

Getting back to my story, we spent over an hour at Silver Falls taking photos of the falls and the stretch of river immediately upstream of the falls. I still wanted to check out the Ohanepecosh Campground area so we packed up and headed back south. My friend suggested we follow the trail back to the campground instead of the road and that was a great idea. It’s a lovely forest and the trail was mostly snow free expect for the occasional two foot deep snow patches.

Along the way, we spied an interesting stretch of river with a brilliant orange rock in the middle; we just had to check it out. Back on the trail, we made the remaining distance to the campground in short order. Although not open for visitors, the campground reverberated with the noise of heavy equipment clearing snow and windfall throughout the campground. We made our way down to the bridge over the river and my friend spied a harlequin duck that was diving for bugs directly below us.

As quickly as I could, I pulled my tripod and zoom lens out of my backpack and set up on the railing to take some photos. The river still had a pretty good current so the duck started to drift downstream away from us. We crossed the bridge over to the west side and moved around to a rock outcrop which we used as cover. For about ten minutes, we watched the duck dive for 10 seconds at a time, dislodge rocks, and then pop up to the surface. I rattled off a lot of shots hoping for at least SOME decent stills and then recorded a few quick videos using my camera (only the second time I’ve used the video feature).

The water running through the campground has some wonderful, deep turquoise pools with small sandy beaches. On the south end of the campground, there is an impressive landslide scar which has its origins near the Stevens Canyon road, nearly 1,000 feet above the valley floor. It looks like an avalanche path but is actually the result of a landslide from the November 2006 storm event which dropped enormous amounts of rain. We wandered through the campground back to the road and then followed it back to my truck parked at the gate.

Experiencing this part of the park in the winter is a great experience. First and foremost, solitude is possible and most likely probable. The scenery is certainly breathtaking but being there without the sounds of cars traveling on Hwy 123 or campers throughout the campground really makes it a special experience. Before completely leaving the area, we headed just a few miles further east on Hwy 12 to the Pinnacles viewpoint. At the viewpoint, andesite lava flows take the shape of vertical columnar formations with yellow lichen on their surface. The cloudy skies finally made for better photo conditions and I took advantage of the abstract patterns that the formations provided.

Finally, here’s a quick, Zapruder quality video of the harlequin duck diving for bugs:

Harlequin Duck – Mount Rainier National Park from Steve Cole on Vimeo.

The Elusive Moon

Apr 10

This past weekend brought the sun-starved Northwest a magnificent weekend. Lot’s of sun and warm (ok, spring-like) temperatures. Hallelujah! How did I celebrate this momentous weekend? By visiting the deep winter snowpack, of course. To be more specific, I wanted to shoot sunset from Artist Point. I’ve meant to do it all winter but things just haven’t come together like this weekend. As luck would have it, a full moon would also be rising after sunset in the vicinity of Mount Shuksan. Winning!

I grabbed a friend and we made our way up to the Mount Baker Ski Area. I always have the best plans in mind when I start but good ‘ole Murphy makes an appearance. The hike from the ski area parking lot up to Artist Point takes me a little more than an hour, and another half hour to make it out to Huntoon Point. Our start time of 6:15pm didn’t bode well (sunset was at 7:50pm). At 7:10pm, we were about halfway up the last steep pitch below the Artist Point. The light was entering the “magic hour” but we clearly weren’t where we had hoped to be.

After some debate, we decided to settle down nearby so we didn’t miss any photo opportunities. While we couldn’t get a view of Mount Baker, we still had a great view of Mount Shuksan as well as the many peaks to the north and northwest. The high slopes of Mount Shuksan absorbed some nice, warm orange light before it quietly faded into the coming night. Some occasional winds chilled us to the core and I began to evaluate the second component of our evening- moonrise. Apparently I misread my moonrise app and thought moonrise was at 9:12pm (roughly an hour wait). When I checked the time again, it was 9:42pm.

Neither of us relished the idea of waiting close to 90 minutes up here for the moon to rise so we decided on Plan B. It was too dangerous to (cross county) ski back down to the parking lot so we walked out instead. My friend originally thought we should take our moonrise photos from Picture Lake buuutttt the 25 foot high snowbanks surrounding the lake convinced him otherwise. I knew of a particular turnout along the highway between the lower and upper lodge which has a nice full view of Mount Shuksan so that’s where we headed.

I stamped out a platform in the roadside snowbank and set up my camera. In addition to moonrise shots, I wanted to get a photo of the stars above the mountain so that’s what I worked on. One common technique is to take two photos, one photo taken with a high ISO to capture the stars in the sky and then a second photo at low ISO to capture your foreground of interest. The two different photos are then blended together in Photoshop to come up with your finished photo. In order to keep the stars “stationary” in your photos, the exposure times have to be no more than 20-30 seconds. The high ISO (1600 and above) and a wide open aperature of F2.8 is what makes this happen.

Provided you have a newer camera, this is the easy part! The harder part, at least for me, is determining the length of exposure for the foreground part of the photo. Using an ISO like 100 requires a lengthy exposure time to sufficiently expose the scene. I haven’t practiced night sky photography enough so I have to experiment to get things right. Many cameras have a “feature” built into them to reduce noise on long exposures. This is accomplished by taking a second photo after your first photo for the same length of time, but as a black image. The theory is that any noise becomes apparent and the camera can then subtract that from the first image taken.

The problem with long exposure noise reduction is that for a 4 minute exposure, you have to wait another 4 minutes for the black reference image to be taken. This makes it difficult to hone in a proper exposure through trial and error. Most cameras allow you to disable the noise reduction feature so this is recommended since you can do a better job using Adobe Camera Raw and third party plugins within Photoshop. I experimented for about an hour but it was clear the moon wasn’t going to crest above Mount Shuksan anytime soon due to a low trajectory. We still had close to a 3 hour drive home so we hurried to pack up and get going. After dropping off my friend, I finally got home at close to 2am.

I wasn’t all that excited at the time about the photos I shot but I changed my tune as I spent time processing them. It turned out to be a great caper on the day.

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Steve Cole Photography

Pacific Northwest Landscape / Nature Photography