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First time in the PNW and I had a blast. I didn’t come away with much but I got to spend time with some awesome people. Thanks for letting me hang with ya’ll. And a huge thanks for the hospitality and for letting me crash at your pad. Oh, and it wasn’t poison oak. Just a water rash from swimming in my waders all day 馃檪
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What does this weekend have in store? Hopefully some more of this kind of action.
This is fairy falls, one of the more unique cascading falls in the gorge. Unfortunately someone decided to strip away the right side of the falls which was also covered in ferns. Kind of lame but forced me to think differently about composing a shot that would work.
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Anyways, we shot up here for a few hours and I wanted to check out Elowah. I hadn’t been there in 2-3 years, so it was time for a visit. By the time I was at dip down point, it was roughly 12pm/ The light was horrid, HOWEVER clouds were throwing me a bone and masking the sun, if for only 45 seconds at a time.
I got down to the creek, a bit downstream from the main spot where a lot of people shoot this falls. I didn’t like what I was seeing, and was contemplating just leaving. No point in taking photos I will never use or do anything with. If I want “memory photos”, that is what my phone is for 馃檪
So i took a single image, just to see what time it was. Brian and I were going to meet at the truck at 1pm or so, and the time was 12:20ish, so I had some time to play. As I was walking creekside, I slipped on a rock, and had a helping full of boulder. My camera and lens went flying (tripod mounted and no lens cap on, how I roll), and I new right away my shoulder was dislocated.
I tried to get it back into socket – even pulling a Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon 4 – where Jet Li works him on the pier. The power of movie magic. It didn’t work for me. So here I am creek side with one good arm to use, and in pain. I tore an ACL totally off years ago, and worked through that pain (horrible pain), but this was 10 times worse. Remember I am down about 20-30 feet from the trail, down a boot path.
When I went to put the camera in my bag, the memory card door was open, and I thought it was toast. Nope. This thing is like a timex. Takes a licking and keeps on clicking. The lens hood isn’t pretty and has marks on the hood, but still works as new.
So after maybe 20 minutes of mustering up the strength to crawl out of here, I get up to the trail. I looked like I was one of the actors from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. I was walking hunched over with my right hand almost dragging the ground. By chance, when I got to the fork in the trail, I saw Brian. By this time, I was in bad shape. Luckily there were some of the nicest people helping out. On my way down, when I would let people pass me on the trail (coming the opposite way – hiking ettiquete :)), I would give a friendly hello. No ONE said anything to me. Kinda weird.
So after 5 hours of my shoulder being dislocated, they had to put me under to get it back into socket. Crazy. I am afraid to see the Dr. bill. Ofcourse I think the place I went to was out of network, but whatever. The Emergency Room crew was by far the nicest people I have ever met. If you live on the west side of the Portland Metro area, the new Hillsboro Keizer hospital is the place to go!
anyways, I may be out of commission for a while. I fractured my shoulder in 2 spots and may need surgery. Out of all the crazy adventures and risks I have taken, I injure my self at F%$king Elowah. 馃檪
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*Click on the picture to see it on black background and with more detail.
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Ponytail Falls 路 Horsetail Creek 路 Columbia River Gorge 路 Dodson 路 Oregon 路 USA
Sometimes I forget how stir-crazy Oregonians get during the cold winter and wet early-spring doldrums. But we’re rather tough ol’ birds at the same time, and as soon as the rate of rainfall drops to less than an inch an hour, you can expect the Gorge parking lots to fill up faster than Walmart’s on Black Friday. So it was with a little bit of shock and dismay when, while on an entertaining hike with photog friends Steven Michael, Kay Martin, and Gulnara “GiGi” Peek, we returned to Ponytail Falls to find a throng of ogling spectators after having been turned back by trail crew clearing a landslide directly above the boot path to Upper Oneonta Falls. But who could blame them, really, when the falls traces such a graceful arc in the belly of a such a beautifully verdant canyon? I usually don’t care to include people or manmade objects in my landscapes if I can help it at all, but I figured this time I’d just go with the flow and resist the urge to Photoshop them out in post-production. I think they lend a dual sense of scale here rather nicely–both in terms of Ponytail’s beguiling size and its growing popularity with the locals.
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~Click the photo to view on black and get rid of the annoying ‘Request to buy this’ crap underneath.~
Forest scenes are very challenging for me. To find simplicity in chaos takes a special way of seeing. It takes a certain mood.. a cohesiveness with my environment.
I had been walking the forest for nearly two hours looking for a scene that I could be satisfied with. I just couldn’t do it. Friends I was shooting with were photographing scenes that I had walked past and didn’t even consider and they would come up with something really nice. I wasn’t in that zone. I was flustered. Pissed.
Frustrated, I gave up on the forest and walked towards the creek for a consolation photo while my friends retired to the meeting area for beers, conversation, and good company. I HAD to get at least something I could consider a keeper.
We had great light all day long. The thick canopy diffused the harsh light into yellows and greens. It lit up the vine maples and moss. The weather was perfect. The situation was perfect. Great conditions, good friends, nature, my camera.. and yet here I was in a sour mood.
As I took off towards the creek I saw one last stand of vine maple trees and figured ‘Why not?’. I walked over, sat down, put the sun in a place where it would cause this sunstar effect, and this is the scene I saw. This was it. This was my shot.
I only had a couple of minutes before the sun disappeared behind the branch and I lost this composition. I set up, checked my settings, and started shooting. I finally started to feel good. I found the yin to my yang and it was represented in the tree shape.
Needless to say.. my friends saw me walking back up with the biggest smile on my face.
A huge thanks to Alex ‘aNorg’ Noriega for his direction in the processing of this photo, his mentorship, and his friendship. If you want to up your post-processing game.. he can teach you how.
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