Fresh rains were washing the layered hillsides and painting their vivid color “to the max” –  the fast moving clouds and the sunshine changed backgrounds by the minute.  It was…  our lucky day.

The John Day Fossil Beds National Monument is comprised of three separate sites.  The Painted Hills is one (they call it a “unit”) and is located near the small town of Mitchell, Oregon which is approximately 230 miles south and east of Portland or 85 miles east and north of Bend, Oregon.  In my opinion it is much more than just “worth your while” to take a day trip to this country.  Take more than just a day, take many. 

Here is our attempt to describe this wonderful place with the cameras.  Just click on any image then arrow left or right.

Link to the National Park Service site for The Painted Hills unit.

For more geologic history of the John Day Fossil Beds Nat. Monument click here

I’ve tried photographing and making pictures the past few years (we have many blooms) but can not ever seem to do them pictorial justice — not been able to capture the essence of the bloom as I see it live.  My photo bloom always gets lost in the plant and foliage, it seems to not ever stand up and out in the photo like it does live & in real life??  What is the problem??

So…. I’m going to resort to artificial means and isolate the intricate bloom and put it on non-plant backgrounds.  Maybe it’ll be interesting this way.   We’ll see.

Tell me what you think and …. I’ll explain how I put the textures and frames in behind and on top of the blooms to hopefully contrast and bring out the bloom’s amazing beauty.  Maybe this’ll be a step in the right direction.

My family and I were extremely fortunate a few years back, July of 2005 to be exact, when this bridge was the only of Oregon’s 51 registered sites I had not photographed and we stopped in at the property that used to be owned (and inhabited) by the Fourtner family.

The daughter of Doc Fourtner was at the farm that day and…. not occupied with urgency — she took us for a personal tour to the location and the bridge.  I am indebted to her. Mrs Margie Ellis.

Follow this series of photographs and I hope you get a certain sense of the bridge as it is now.  It’s a seldom seen gem in my opinion.

Mrs Ellis was most gracious with stories of her father and the bridge and you’ll see her in one of the photos on the long south ramp going to the cattle pasture in the rear fields.  A few years later I mailed to Mrs Ellis a framed copy of this photograph and she in return sent me a personal card of thanks and bridge history.

Some Requirements are:

• Each image has to include a variety of farm buildings, including the barn AND house (at least a hint of it).
• Each image needs to be accompanied with location and a bit of story.
  
• Each image has to be unique in my collection (no cookie cutters or simpletons) and hopefully interesting.
  

(click on any image to go “full screen”,  then arrow left or right)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

That may be true but…  you need a multitude of other factors to converge, all in perfect timing, WITH that light.

• You check frequently to see if the vineyard colors are the shades of orange, gold, and red you’re looking for.
• You pray Mother Nature to not make so much wind and/or rain that leaves will fall, especially the up-close ones.  If you loose too many leaves you can kiss-off the project till next year’s try.
• You choose the time of day for your preferred light direction (morning or evening most likely).
• You “scout out” and find shooting sites that “will work” and don’t involve property trespassing.  I take along a tall step ladder so to see over fences, walls, or field corn.
  
• You make sure to take ALL your equipment, especially the tripod, so you can adapt to the various conditions (low light levels, etc).  Lack of a tripod has been my biggest equipment problem.  Solution;  buy a second tripod and keep it in the car.
  

2012… this is the third year I’m trying to capture Yamhill and Chehalem Valley vineyards with full Fall color, blue skies and puffy clouds. 

It seems like I get 2 or 3 “misses” for every 1 “hit” when I drive out to the valleys… so check the “hit” I got last week near the Oregon town of Yamhill (Chehalem Valley).    It felt really good when all these conditions came together.  Tell me what YOU think.

→click on this image to make it fill your screen←

The thin layer of light blue evening mist caught me by surprise.

Check the following gallery of vineyards….   Each image shows vineyard and location.  Click on any one to open the gallery then “arrow” left or right for other images.

These few images made my 3-hour jaunt more than worth it. 

It’ll be tough… waiting till the next time the “right light” joins up with my other variables.  I’ll sure enjoy looking for it though.

I’ve been wanting to set a tripod with camera next to a particular bud and take pictures as it opened, as it developed into full bloom, and finally on October 3rd I got around to doing just that.

Here’s what happened…..  the process took two weeks.

The image on the far right happened on Oct 17, two weeks to-the-day later, and even then the bloom was still not fully open (short days of October I guess).  The next day, the 18th, the rains began and stopped my whole bloomin’ (pardon the pun) process.  I had to quit.  Ongoing rain just “kills” these tender blossoms.

Here’s what I did to capture the sequence……   It’s fairly simple:

• Make sure to use exactly the same perspective (I kept the tripod in place all the time – Carlene and visitors walked around it for the time),
• focus sharply,
• use identical aperture settings to keep the backgrounds similar and out of focus.
• and most important… make sure the light conditions are very similar so the camera will make the color shading and backgrounds appear alike and coordinated.
• I then combined the five images into one using Photoshop CS5.

Just some side notes concerning the focus…   check the aphids on the #1 shot, the closed bud, (click on the image to fill your page); I sprayed for them immediately after the shot.

And… the first two images were perfectly exposed and focused however the backgrounds were considerably lighter in color than numbers 3, 4, and 5 (I couldn’t re-shoot them) and so my only solution was to isolate the respective flowers and darken the backgrounds in post production.

Hope you enjoy the compilation.  I sure had a fun time doin’ it.

(click on images to enlarge)

Grandmother Carlene got this “Cameron-in-the-pumpkin” idea earlier in the week and was making preparations the couple days leading up to  Sunday morning.  To get ready…. she figured the necessary pumpkin size by trying some household baskets,

then finding and buying the right size and shape orange globe (is pumpkin fruit or vegetable?) Saturday at the Fred Meyers,

then cutting out the top and disemboweling the sacrificial pumpkin (she used a cordless drill with a hole saw to help make the leg ports)…

and finally…  driving and scouting the neighborhood Sunday morning looking for a site with the right terrain and Fall-colored leaves to make the effect she’d been seeing in her mind.

It all came together just before noon after Cameron had finished his hour-and-a-half nap to help with his happiness and co-operation (mom was hopeing) –  we all gathered cameras and blankets and headed for Ibach Park about a mile away where the setup and picture-taking lasted twenty-plus minutes (with over a hundred images) while park motorists and strollers stopped to watch the commotion of us adults urging Cameron to smile and/or look at the camera. 

It was a good time and now Carlene is drawing up plans for the coming Thanksgiving photo shoot with Cameron.  He’ll be five months then.

Stay tuned.

Here is Cameron up close and with his mom and dad, Lori and Matthew.

The soft and colorful light within those two daily hours can compliment many, maybe most, or even all compositions.  The light following the morning “magic hour” progressively gets sharper, more harsh and with precise and distracting (downright ugly) shadows.  Midday is a great time to be creative & imaginative when looking for photo subjects, subjects that are not in the direct sunlight.

My most memorable case-in-point was last October when for two days I had access to multiple  areas of the Grand Canyon “taking pictures”  The canyon walls and valleys were bright and striking but the corresponding shadows took away from my compositions and left me very unsatisfied.  There was not a cloud in the sky and the resulting harsh and dark shadows were distractive  — beginning just a few moments after sunrise. 

Ideally I’d like to be at the Grand Canyon on a sunny day with white puffy clouds to cover the sun (for short times) and act as a huge soft box filter so to suppress the canyon shadows. It would be awesome to have a thunderstorm in the distance.

Now… that being said, the most challenging part of this “magic hour” is to try and catch the sunrise or sunset in action.  A challenge for me is the sunrise lasting such a short time <maybe just seconds> and then… the light is quickly so intense the camera sensor cannot handle it without “blowing out” and resulting with undefined area and ruining the image.  Lens filters can be helpful here.

My wife, our two puppers, and I have been camping by three different Oregon lakes during the past 6 weeks and it’s been “my job” to capture the view before the sun rises or…  sets — It’s my job to catch the soft and colorful light.  Here are a couple of my interpretations.  Tell me what you think.    Enjoy….

Late July sunrise at South Twin Lake in the Oregon Cascades

The sun emerging through the trees at South Twin Lake, Oregon

Before sunrise at the Wickiup Reservoir in Central Oregon

The sun has climbed up and over the mountain top by Timothy Lake

The early sun is starting our day in Florence, Oregon

The highway 101 bridge hides some of the intense sunset

From Florence, Oregon the sun is settling over the sand dunes and the Pacific

Rebuilt Chambers Railroad Bridge, photo sept. 2012

I have question to the bridge’s original build date and will pursue to find the correct date.  You’ll see on my bridge spec list that I show it being built in 1936.  Now I see a couple information sources saying that date is 1925 (Wikipedia).  I will follow up to get that definitive date.

Chambers Railroad Bridge (2005)

It was built to haul logs to the J.H. Chambers mill and served that function until the 1950′s when the mill burned.

Chambers Railroad Bridge 2005

The bridge suffered years of deterioration and when I photographed it in 2005 it was missing many panels and appeared in dire condition.  I think I remember reading press in 2006 or ’7 that the bridge would likely be dismantled and removed because of it’s physical instability and potential danger.

In 2008 the National Historic Covered Bridge Preservation Program awarded a grant to the City of Cottage Grove to restore the bridge.  The original bridge was removed and another of exactly the same size was built in it’s place.  It was completed in the fall of 2011.

The bridge in 2005…

Chambers Railroad Bridge 2012

And, the bridge now…

Here is the intricate and artistic inside structure – Click on the image to better see.

Beautiful new wood interior geometry

It’s an engineering marvel and a “work of art” in my opinion.

For a very thorough timeline of events  and bridge details check here.

Cottage Grove, Oregon is an easy drive on the Oregon Interstate 5 Corridor,  in a picturesque part of the Willamette Valley, and about 125 miles south of Portland or 170 miles north of the California state line.