Washington
A Stab At Infrared On The River
This one is again at the i84/hwy 97 interchange between Oregon and Washington. I’ve always really liked how infrared photography has worked (example 1, 2, 3) but I’ve never taken the time to actually hammer one out. This is certainly not by the book, but does a very good job of capturing the moment.
Lake Goss Sunrise
I hadn’t taken a lot of shots lately, been busy with other things; but the family and I took a long weekend to the Toivola cabin 8/14-15 which was almost precisely HERE. It was a great time, had some good food, good friends, and mediocrely behaved dogs. All in all, a great weekend. The girls learned how to swim with lifejackets on, they also learned how NOT to swim with one off – they sunk like a ton of bricks when they tried to swim without them. Thanks Ayla for teaching them to swim on Wednesdays, they clearly like it a lot!
Anyway, with the photo itself, it was a unique one in that it was a perfectly clear morning, no texture in the sky and very little on the water. I loved the composition of the shot so I wanted to bring it out. A lot of people ask the process, well for this one it was:
1. It was a .jpg file so I pulled it up in Photoshop and sharpened the image.
2. I then went to the “exposure” dropdown and pulled the gamma down so it’d be darker in the bright spots (better contrast).
3. Opened Photomatix and used the darkened image and the original image to put a light HDR feel to it. Fiddle with the settings here, to each their own.
4. Saved that photo and pulled back into Photoshop, dug into my standard background texture file and pulled out 2 I liked. Created separate layers for them, set the opacity down on them, and set the first one (scratches) to a soft ‘overlay’ and about 35% opacity and the 2nd one (brown mesh frame) to ‘screen’ and opacity to 20%.
5. Saved and popped it into Adobe Lightroom and tossed in a ‘general punch’, and ‘basic bam’.
6. Back to Photoshop to clean up the edges and edit out a few watermarks that showed on my poorly cleaned 10-24mm Tamaron lens.
That’s the long and the short of it, but I do like doing these projects that are a bit off the norm of shooting though. It was a good weekend had by all!
Big Loop Near River
This is another stitched shot right above the Columbia River on the Washington side. We pulled off and I walked back from the road and took 30 or 40 shots of things but when I came back to the car, the lighting and cloud cover was a perfect setup, so I snapped a few more:
BONUS SHOT!
I took another about 210 degree shot of the river with my macro lens just before I left too – if you look at the FULL SIZED image (60MB) you’ll see people on the bridge and across the water – stitching it up makes it look way too small, but a neat concept.
Down To The Columbia River
This one actually is a set of about 10 shots that I pivoted on each step to take. The full size version is HERE, it’s 33MB, but it makes for a pretty sweet background!
There is a turnout right as you go up the hill after Biggs, OR on the Washington side of the bridge over the Columbia that had a nice cloud cover that day that I wanted to capture.
Additionally, I wanted to test out the photo stitching capability of Photoshop CS5, and I must say that seems pretty similar to CS4. Not a bad thing, but does eat up a lot of memory in completing.
Yellow Flower Above the River
There weren’t many things growing in the rocks above the Columbia at the i84/highway 97 interchange at Biggs, OR – but these flowers seemed to be growing just fine. Toss in a dramatic background and bam, you got yourself a shot. I’m not usually a flower guy, but I DO like to take shots of landscapes, and this one fit.
Crooked River Ranch, May 2009
When we were in Bend earlier this year, I remembered that I had a bunch of photos that I hadn’t processed from the LAST time we were there. I remember I took a handful on the golf course. Jay and I played with these guys that were very into the game, but very horrid at the game. They had bad tempers.,
We also have some shots of the windmills along the Columbia River, and some snapshots at Grampa’s house. Lilla and Chloe and their rabbits. I don’t remember what they named them, but one was like “Lollipop Johns” or something.
One shot in there is a an abandoned house I found. I want to say it is of this one HERE, but I’ve been wrong before… 
A Taste of Spring
Matt Amberg is a pretty stellar photographer (see his stuff HERE) and he sent over this photo to kick around a little bit. I gave it a honey tone overlay to take out some of the contrasting background blues and did a little cloning work on it. I did 2 versions of the edit taking out another bee in the photo that was messing with Matt’s chi. Give it a whirl to see if you can tell where the cloning edit took place, or don’t and just enjoy Matt’s mastery of his new lens!
The Hairy Wolf Spider
We have these spiders around our house all the time. I want to say they’re wolf spiders, but I have no idea. They’re extremely hairy though and they do a good job of scaring my kids as they can run at speeds that seem like that of a small car…
Pumpkin Hunting 2009 And The Girls Playing in The Leaves
The girls had their costumes on and we had a need for some leaf raking anyway, good photo ops. I don’t think I had a shot with the dogs in it yet. Welcome to the shots doggies.
The other ones were when Tanner and Lydia came over for the festive occasion and we spun out to the pumpkin patch to pick our own for the Toivola Pumpkin carving party. I carved a fairly shotty Patrick, Spongebob’s best buddy…
First Day of School Fall 2009
Lilla and Chloe got their new backbacks and thought they were pretty cool! They get along really well so that’s an absolute benefit! We’ll see if they treat their little sister this nice when Millie gets old enough to play with them!
Miriam’s 5th Birthday Party
Took a few snaps at Miriam’s 5th birthday party before we went to Montana. Everyone was pretty happy at the fiesta and I think I really got a good one at the start here of Hannah’s pirate eye. The cats and dogs even got a few photos-worth in here! Happy 5th Miriam!
Alki Beach Tree Cover
May 2008 – We always go to Alki in the summer at least a couple times. It’s good to watch the kids play in the water and it’s good for people watching for sure. The beach can be a little rocky, but what do you expect in the Pacific Northwest? There is some sand down the way, but that’s usually taken up elbow to elbow so it’s not worth it to try to squeeze in there. 
A Few Flecks Of Frost
Again in the “back 40″ behind my house. Had a Halloween bug maybe since this was in October, but it really does make for some good shots when the leaves are changing color.
Barbed Wire Bothell
We’ve got a lot of wild blackberry bushes out behind our house – I took this shot I’d say in maybe October 2008 behind my house. Makes for some good dramatics certainly…
Two Trees Near Dayton, WA
This was right first when I got my 20d and we were heading down to Walla Walla in 2004. I honestly don’t remember what we were going down there in the middle of the summer for. Heather was pregnant and Bob was with us. Maybe the Alumni baseball game? I’m not sure, but I really always liked the colors in the area and this is another point to it.
Whitman College – In Between Prentiss And Anderson 360
**Note: This photo is actually 20 foot long by 3 and 1/2 foot tall in it’s original state. I had to cut it down to fit on the screen. But if you want REAL detail, HERE it is in actual size!**
I was digging through old shots this weekend and started looking at these. I didn’t realize it at that moment of looking through them, but I pulled them up in Photoshop and started to remember that I did a 360 degree shot. I pieced them all together and sure enough – it turned out pretty good. I forgot how nice it gets in Walla^2 in the summertime.
The models in the photo are Bob Jones, my wife Heather, and it appears Lilla is starting to grow, so my guess is this shot is about July 2004. Pretty good memories indeed! 
Alki Beach Composition
More of a compositional piece testing out the closeup ability – It was really poorly halo’d around that upper tree with the HDR. If you look closely you can see the Seattle Space needle blurred in the top right quadrant on the distant shore. Alki Beach gets bumping during the summer and we make the trek down to check it out a few times each year. The girls really like playing in the water there. 
Sunset in Bothell, WA
Caught a last shot before the sun went down at home in Bothell, WA. The colors were pretty deep so I got up on my roof to snap this one. I may have overexposed it a bit much, but the colors are pretty strong and they don’t cooperate like that up here very often.
