Morning Sunshine

Portland, Oregon would be my top choice I had to move to a different city in the US. I’ve visited a number of times for both fun and photography and the beauty in the Columbia River Gorge just blows me away. Most of my photography trips have been waterfall centric and I was excited to return with Willie to spend most of our time photographing wildflowers. The entire west coast had an extremely dry winter and we knew we had to arrive early in the season to catch the flowers. Unfortunately, the dry winter combined with windy days caused most of the blooming wildflowers to lose their beauty before we even arrived. While the lupines, with their short petals were OK, the beautiful yellow Balsamroot’s were mostly withered and falling apart. Willie and I spent a long time scouting this wildflower field at Rowena Crest for signs of a few patches of beautiful flowers. At one point Willie went off to my right and spotted our first patch of beautiful flowers. I spent the next 30 minutes searching and searching but only came across dying flowers. Almost defeated, I returned to Willie, where he pointed out this patch of 2 healthy flowers. This is one of those instances where it was great to have a shooting partner to keep my head up high and help the morning end with a smile on both our faces! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8: 22mm, f/5, 1/800 sec, ISO 640 Several photo focus blend

Casper's Playground

When I set out for the Columbia River Gorge I had one thing on my mind: Wildflowers! I’d been to this area, just outside of Portland, a few times to shoot waterfalls and I was excited to spend my time photographing something different. Unfortunately the flowers had a different plan. They were all dead, dying, wind blown or just ugly. Not a good year for flower photography. :( Willie and I had spent the day shooting waterfalls with some friends but we were determined to make a full day of waterfalls. Neither of us had been to Spirit Falls and we loved the turquoise blue water and decided to make the hike down to this beautiful waterfall. There’s no real trail to get down to Spirit Falls. Follow the well worn path in the shoal rock and eventually you get to the falls. We just missed a few kayakers making the run (which woulda been awesome to watch!) down the falls. It took a bit of searching to figure out how to get the classic view but eventually we found the small waterfall that everyone climbs down and made our way into position. I decided to include some of the leaves, moss, and rock on the left so that they would provide some contrast with the awesomely turquoise water (which was made possible by a nice blue sky day). Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8: 17mm, f/8, 0.4 sec, ISO 100