When I awoke yesterday morning and looked out the window and saw snow on the ground, I knew I was heading up into the mountains. Row River Rd., the route I take to the high country, was blocked by a fallen tree about 20 miles from town, but I found a way around on a side road and made it to the trail I was headed for. The forest was so beautiful, all white save for the huge trunks of the evergreens and small sheltered patches of bare ground. I felt like a kid in a playground, and with waders and a rain jacket on, I could act like one. Sliding down hills and clamoring over fallen logs, i’m lucky I didn’t break something. I only got a couple of good photos, but I had a wonderful time. Trying to get out was another matter. The Achilles Heel of my wonderful old Toyota Pickup is its performance in the snow, and in fact it might be the car with the worst traction of all time if the back isn’t weighted down. When I tried to turn around the car couldn’t do it, so I jumped out and found that one of the chains on the back tire was broken and lying in the snow. By alternating between digging a path and driving a few feet I eventually got pointed downhill and was on my way, and when I got to pavement and jumped out to take the chain off the other tire, I found that it was broken too. This is the third pair of chains i’ve broken in 3 years, what gives? I’ll have to look for some better ones. Anyhow, I eventually made it home.



Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 1/8 sec at f/9, ISO 400, tripod

I’m wearing waders just about every time I go out to take pictures in Oregon, especially in the winter, and this is a good example of why. I was able to wade out into this icy stream up to my waist in order to climb up on a rock to get this shot. The only thing you have to worry about then is not falling into the water with your camera in hand. I tried this shot at first with a long exposure, but with so much of the frame occupied by the waterfall, there just wasn’t enough solidity to the photo. Speeding up the exposure by raising the ISO and opening up the aperture gave me what I was looking for.



Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 5 sec at f/16, ISO 100, tripod

I got this shot using a very simple technique that I think most people are unaware of. In the middle of a long exposure, you just zoom in slowly. That’s it. You can picture in your mind what happens: the bright areas of the photo register as streaks as the square that is the photo gets smaller. It’s an easy technique that makes wonderful photos, but it’s easy to overdo it because almost every photo comes out looking very nice.



Canon 5d Mark ii, 300mm lens w/1.4X teleconverter, 1/80 sec at f5.6, ISO 600, handheld

The snow in the trees above me was beginning to melt fast by 1 or 2 in the afternoon, and I was headed out when I noticed this composition a couple of feet off the trail. I took a few photos of it that were nice, but then some snow shook off high up in the trees, and the fine powder came cascading down around the leaves. I quickly put the viewfinder to my eye and snapped off two or three shots before the snow was gone. It’s quite a testament to the Internal Stabilization system of the Canon 300mm F/4 lens that I was able to handhold the camera at 440mm and get sharp shots at 1/80 of a second. The mistake I made was in assuming I had Autofocus on while I was taking the two or thee best photos of this plant, and it wasn’t, so they’re not as sharp as the rest. It’s fine, because this kind of photo is best for small prints anyway in my opinion, but it could mean the difference for this photo between winning or not in competitions.