Oh-yeah! We Wanna

As I write this caption almost 4 years after first visiting Oneonta Gorge, it’s amazing how things have changed. When we came here in 2013 we were the only ones in the gorge. We had this place entirely all to ourselves. Flash forward to 2017 and the park service has had to close this area due to so many people getting injured. It’s a madhouse during the spring and summer here. To get to this little area, one must walk into a river, climb aboard a giant log-jam, crawl up the fallen tree trunks, back down to the water, and then hop back into the river. If you keep going a little further there’s another waterfall, though it gets a bit deep for a short-guy like me with tons of camera gear on my back. This is one of the first places that I walked up a river. Now I own my own “frog suit” and constantly walk in rivers to get my photos. I loved the fall colors, the fallen trees, and the shape of this little gorge. The title here is a little play on the name "Oneonta", the name of the gorge. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8: 70mm, f/11, 0.4 sec, ISO 250

Autumn Metlako

I’ve seen many photos of the Columbia River Gorge and it was high on my photography bucket-list. Willie, Alan, and Jave still laugh at how jealous (and how quickly I responded to their behind-the-scenes post) I was of their trip to Oregon in the spring. I asked Alan and Willie if they wanted to go back in the fall and off we went. I was in Portland a couple weeks earlier for a bachelor party and the fall colors were just starting to emerge; I figured a trip in a couple weeks would be perfect timing. Unfortunately recent rain and some weird weather caused the fall color to somewhat fizzle — we never really found a great abundance of color but we did manage to find little patches here and there. After exploring the Gorge for a bit we decided to head to the Eagle Falls Trail and visit a few more waterfalls. We came upon Metlako Falls and found a nice patch of orange leaves. I immediately setup my tripod, pulled out the 80-200 and proceeded to drop my lens hood into the gorge. I seem to have a habit of dropping things when in precarious places: I almost lost my Lee Filter Holder off the side of the Grand Canyon, I dropped a 2-stop filter off the edge of a wall at Hawk Hill and now I lost my lens hood. Oh well, at least it wasn’t my camera! The one nice thing about the rain was that the waterfalls were gushing very nicely. It was a great hike and we saw some beautiful scenes. I can’t wait to get back! P.S: Thanks to Alan I think I put on 20 pounds after this hike. We stopped at the local eatery and Alan somehow convinced me to eat an ice-cream that was taller than my head! And I downed most of it! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8D ED AF: 100mm, f/9, 1/10 sec, ISO 400

Punch Drunk in Love

Eagle Creek is one of the most popular hikes in the Columbia River Gorge. You must get here early if you want any chance of getting a parking spot. It’s a fairly flat hike, so it’s great for the family, and features a number of waterfalls. More if you want to hike further. Willie, Alan, and I made the trek to Punch Bowl Falls on our first visit to the Columbia River Gorge. It’s about 4 miles round trip and we passed, and photographed Metlako Falls on our way here. Wedecided this was as far as we wanted to hike, took some photos, and turned around to explore more of the Columbia River area. Using our “frog suits” we were able to wade into the water, into the creek, and get this photo from in the water. We didn’t dare get any closer because the water started to get a bit deeper. We also heard that after we visited a giant tree fell and landed smack in the right side of this scene! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8: 80mm, f/13, 0.5 sec, ISO 100

Autumn's High

In autumn I spent a few days in Oregon with Willie and Alan exploring the Portland area. Although the entire trip was filled with gorgeous places, one of our favorite spots was a row of trees that we found. We spent quite a while trying to find the perfect set of trees but we had so much time to kill that we started playing around while we waited for the light to get “right”. We loved the way that the trees lined up but also converged on a single point. The yellow leaves, white bark, and brown grass made for a wonderful contrast of color. One fun thing to do with a photo is to move the camera while the shutter is open and create motion and blur. When done with a row of trees, like this, it gives a painted look. This is not a photoshop effect nor is it a painting. It’s a single press of the camera shutter and moving the camera in an up or down motion over an 1/8 of a second. Just a fun little photo while I’m in between shoots! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 80-200mm: 200mm, f/11, 1/8 sec, ISO 100

Lined Up to Fall

There are lots of beautiful places in the Columbia River Gorge — far too many to photograph in one weekend. Despite our short time in the area, we decided to drive 6 hours round-trip to see a field of trees. Not just any field of trees, but a man-made tree farm that’s going to be replaced and turned into a cow farm! The trees, whilst still here, are pretty neat to see! We arrived and found we were 2 weeks too early for the fall colors. The leaves still had a little bit of green tinge to them. We had hoped that some leaves would be on the ground, that they’d be beautifully orange, and perfect fall color. Oh well! I loved the way they were all lined up in a perfect line. Depending on how you stood you could make them appear more or less lined up, with a giant hole or arch-way in the center, which you can just manage to see here. This is a 95 megapixel beast of an image, created by taking a number of photos at 155mm and stitching them together. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8: 155mm, f/10, 1/8 sec, ISO 100