I spent three days of this week on the coast, most of it in the back of my truck reading as the rain pelted the aluminum cap above my head. First, I went back to the cave at Pacific City to try and get a better shot, but for some reason the water was brown and muddy and not very photogenic, so I headed down to Seal Rocks and Cape Perpetua. There’s a huge sinkhole on the rock shelf at Cook’s Chasm, and I had a great photo of it in my mind. The hole is about 12 feet wide and 100 feet from land, perched on the edge of the rock shelf where the full force of the waves smashes ashore. You definitely take a chance going out there, but it’s more a chance that you’ll get bowled over and lose your equipment that anything really dangerous. I’d set up my tripod at the edge of the hole and then try and decide if the wave about to slam into the rocks was big enough to knock me over. Every fourth or five wave i’d decide that it was and run back from the hole about 10 feet and jump up onto a higher rock for safety. I was building a pretty good guessing record when I looked over and hesitated... uh..maybe..uh..ah screw it. I stayed where I was and the massive wave exploded over the rocks and fast-moving, waist high water swept me back about 5 feet from where i’d been standing. Somehow I kept my footing and didn’t get any icy water down my hip waders, and was able to hold my camera high over my head and keep it dry also. But that was the last straw, and since I wasn’t getting anything good anyway I decided to retreat.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 2 sec at f/16, ISO 100

While I was headed to Cape Perpetua I remembered that the moon was recently full and so would be setting at sunrise, and since low tide was around the same time I decided to stop at Seal Rocks. It’s hard going to a place you’ve photographed recently without going to the same spots you found before, but I shot from a couple new vantage points.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 2 sec at f/22, ISO 50

This was a spot i’d photographed before, but I thought maybe I could get something better this time. It’s a close call, but I think I like this one better than my best from the last trip here.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 3 sec at f/22, ISO 50

As I was headed out I noticed the way the sea foam formed a little ribbon as it headed back to sea through this little channel in the rock, and used a longish exposure to blur it a little.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 1.6 sec at f/22, ISO 50

The big hole at Cook’s Chasm. It was fascinating to watch the water inside shoot up and down with the swells, but when it shot up it often shot out also and I had to be careful. I’ll probably be back to give it a second try.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 1/200 sec at f/7.1, ISO 250

I don’t know why the sea foam bubbles were all different colors like this. The first thought that came to mind of course was oil, but it’s a really pristine part of a really pristine coast and that seems unlikely, though I guess you never know. Either way I think it’s beautiful. I watched as the waves would wash white bubbles into these little pools, and moments later some patches of them would turn colors while other remained white..... I just googled the above quandary and it looks like it’s not oil after all :

An interesting aside to bubbles in foam is iridescence. When you see beach foam on a sunny or slightly overcast day, look at the colors in the bubbles just before they burst. You will see in each bubble a partly reflected sun in some color of the spectrum, one purple, one green, another yellow, and so on, depending on the thickness of the bubble film. Light is reflected from both upper and lower surfaces of the film. The color has two possible explanations: one, the interference of light waves reflecting from the two surfaces, the other (and probably the more accurate) by the quantum theory of the interaction of light and matter with the “horrible name” of quantum electrodynamics, simply and entrancingly described by Richard P. Feynman (1985) in “QED – The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. I refer you to this book.

Definitely a cooler explanation than just oil! Here’s a cropped section of the above photo so you can see my reflection better. My legs are spread because I was bracing myself on the sides of the pool, and the three straight lines are the legs of my tripod.

Erin was not on call this weekend for the first time in a while, so we headed out to the coast for the weekend. I’d heard about this cave and was eager to get down into it, and i’m happy with this photo but I think i’ll definitely have to go back. The swells were about 15 feet and at very short intervals, so my camera and I got soaked several times. I’d set up the tripod and take a photo quickly, and then have to turn and run up the boulders behind to escape the next wave. Unfortunately, I didn’t always make it.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 2 sec at f/16, ISO 50

I made sure to arrive at the cave near the bottom of a very low tide, but the huge waves were still able to thunder all the way through the 200 foot long tunnel and slam into the rocks on the other side. Using Live View helped a lot in setting up the tripod and snapping a photo in the 10 seconds or so I had before the next wave hit, as I was able to arrange the composition and watch the waves at the same time. I’ll go back when a low tide coincides with smaller waves.

I’m pretty sure that i’ve never suffered as much for a photograph as I did for the one I have to show today. I’ve been bitten by snakes, sucked dry by mosquitoes, spent hours with numb extremities and even been injured while out in the field, but the last two days have topped it all. I rarely plan my photographs, partly because it just hasn’t worked out well for me, and partly because I enjoy photography more when it’s spontaneous. That said, I decided to try and get a great panoramic photo of Crater Lake in the winter, and set out on Tuesday morning to make it happen. The weather was supposed to be clear the day I arrived, snowy the next morning, and clear thereafter, so I figured i’d stay two nights and hike out Thursday morning. To get Wizard Island in the middle of the frame, where I wanted it, I had to hike 4 or so miles to the west along the Crater rim because the island is in the western corner of the lake. Earlier in the day I had gone to REI for some snowshoes and hiking poles but they were closed until 10AM. I checked my clock, 9:15, and decided I could manage. Big Mistake. I set off from my car with my 60 pound pack and was post-holing about 1 foot deep with every step. It was difficult, but manageable, and it took me about four hours to get to where I needed to be. I explored the rim for a few minutes before finding a suitable spot, where there was a lovely curve to the snowy edge that framed the island. As I was walking out to the edge I suddenly froze about 6 feet from it as two words locked me up, Snow Cornice. I backed up slowly and walked along the rim until I had a view of where I was standing and sure enough, I had almost walked onto an ice overhang with about 500 feet of nothing underneath it. The sky was clear that night and I got some nice photos from my chosen spot, but not yet what I was hoping for. In the morning I awoke to a howling blizzard, and when I poked my head out of my tent I saw that the visibility was about 30 feet, so I retreated back into my cave and finished reading my book. All day I lay trapped in there, hoping that the storm would end and I could get to work, but it didn’t. Eventually I started to worry because I had barely been able to make it out to where I was, so how was I going to get back if there was another foot of fresh snow to wade through? The storm cleared that night and I took some nice long exposures under the half moon. At some point I realized that I had drastically under-packed food and would have to manage the last day and the hike out on a spoonful of almond butter and a 2 inch piece of salami. It got down to around 10 degrees that night and sleeping was not easy. I was curled up with my water bottle to keep it from freezing and had to rub my feet every once in a while to restore feeling. It was a long night, but eventually a blue light in the eastern sky roused me and I got everything ready. It’s always a special thing when I get to watch a sunrise unfold from the first faint glow, but this one was just amazing. Crater Lake is so big that you need to make a panorama from two images to get it all in, so I was taking one photo of the south side of the lake and then rotating the tripod and taking another of the north side. The color in the clouds just got brighter and brighter, but I was pretty sure the best photo would be at the moment the sun crested the horizon, when it was bright enough to register as a sunburst but not bright enough to cause flare. Finally it happened, and I got the photo.

Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 1/2 sec at f/22, ISO 50
This is a two-photo panorama. I used a 3-stop graduated ND filter to darken the sky.

After I packed everything up and started heading back I knew immediately that I was in trouble. Post-holing about a foot is difficult but doable, but post-holing up to your knees is barely possible. Every step is a labor, especially with a sixty pound pack and nothing to eat, and I was having to stop every hundred yards or so to collect my strength. I was never really worried, because I knew that i’d be fine and just had an ordeal to get through, but it was the kind of situation that 10 years ago would have caused me to fear for my life. There were a couple of times as a young novice hiker when I thought that I might not make it, but looking back the situations really weren’t that dire. I’m glad, though, that I thought they were, because I think they’re some of the most meaningful experiences i’ve ever had. It took me about 4 hours to get back to my truck. When I got there I ate a muffin i’d left in the cab, cracked the ice in my gallon jug and drank some water, and headed home. I’ve done around 5000 miles of hiking in the summer, but almost nothing in the winter and i’ve got a lot to learn. The lessons from this trip are; always bring snow shoes and hiking poles, take several pairs of socks even for a short trip, carry more than one book in case you get pinned down and have to hibernate, pack more than just a Z-Rest to separate you from the ice you’re sleeping on, carry more food than you think you need, and bring a camp stove even if you don’t bring cookable food, you need it to melt water. Most of this should have been common sense, which I normally have, but it’s ok. I don’t mind being humbled by the elements once in a while.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 300mm f/4 lens w/1.4X teleconverter, 1/50 sec at f/5.6, ISO 1000

Another photo I took today in the woods above my house. I had to use a high ISO because a slight breeze was blowing the web around.

I’ve seen some really interesting photos of the Alvord Desert in eastern Oregon, so on Tuesday I loaded up the old Toyota and headed out there. After I crossed over the mountains the road was covered in a thick layer of ice and the sleet was falling hard, so I didn’t get to the desert until late at night. In the morning I explored around and got the lay of the land. The dry lakebed I mainly went there to see was interesting, but the clouds were amazing. I really miss living in places where the sky is such a source of joy. I spent two days in the area before heading to Crater Lake on my way home. The road up to the lake is blocked 3 miles shy of the crater rim, and since I didn’t have a tent, backpack, or snowshoes with me, that’ll have to be another trip. I did stop by Diamond Lake on the way home to photograph the crescent moon and fast-moving clouds, and got a great idea for a photo on the next full moon. Stay tuned...






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 1/200 sec at f/11, ISO 100

Several of the photos i’ll show in this posting will be in Black and White. Some photos are just better that way, and the truth is I don’t really know why I haven’t done it before. This lone juniper tree caught my eye as I drove down the icy highway in Eastern Oregon. I tried several different compositions, but in the end this simple one was my favorite.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 2 sec at f/16, ISO 100

There were several of these 3 foot wide mounds near the shore of Alvord Lake, and I walked by them a couple of times before finally deciding to photograph them. I thought that the best perspective on them would be to use my wide angle lens about a foot above the water, as it enhances the round feel of the photo and adds some vignetting to the corners.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 2 sec at f/16, ISO 100

There were a few streams coming down from the snow covered mountains surrounding the lakebed, so I followed one as it snaked through the sand. The clouds were amazing.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 1/60 sec at f/8, ISO 250

While exploring around, I found a trail that wound it’s way toward the snow covered peaks along a small river, and whie hiking up it I noticed this little slot on the opposite slope. I was wearing my hip waders of course, so I crossed the stream and worked my way up as high as I could go inside the slot before bracing myself against the walls and taking this photo.






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

The entire time I was there, a stream of lenticular clouds cut through the sky from the same place, the little gap between those distant mountains. I set up my tripod and just had to wait for the sun to break through the clouds behind me and illuminate the golden grass and sagebrush.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 2 sec at f/22, ISO 100

My main idea for heading out to the Alvord dry lakebed was to get wide-angle shots involving the geometric patterns in the mud. I had a heck of a time trying to accomplish that, partially because the mud was not dry, but semi-wet and so the cracks were not as distinct. It’s definitely a good thing to do some planning when setting out to take great photos, like logically deciding when to go where, but I swear that almost every time I go out, even if I get the images i’m after exactly right, they’re not nearly as good as those I take on the spur of the moment. It makes me wonder if i’d be just as well off if I simply closed my eyes and put my finger down on a map to choose my destinations.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 80 secs at f/2.8, ISO 400

After getting turned back by a snow gate just shy of Crater Lake, I was headed home and decided to pull over at Diamond Lake to try and photograph the crescent moon that I could see setting through the trees. When I got to the water edge and noticed the fast-moving, wispy clouds, I thought that i’d try blurring them with a longer exposure. I took several shots before the last light faded from the sky, but I like this one the most. If I had to give this photo a title, it would be “Why?”.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 30 secs at f/2.8, ISO 400

I was taking wider shots like the one above when I noticed a small cloud about to cross the moon, so I zoomed in and timed it so the streak would be moving to the left, into the frame.

After 2 months of unseasonably dry weather, a snowstorm blew through last night and left a thick blanket of snow on the valley floor, which we haven’t seen in the three years we’ve lived here. We get a dusting or two a winter, but this was several inches, and nearly a foot up in the mountains. So I loaded up my pickup before dawn and headed up, very slowly, into the high country. It was gorgeous up there, and although I saw some beautiful vistas and visited two big waterfalls, the real gem was a mosquito just hanging out in the snow. We’re supposed to get a little more snow the next couple days, so i’m sure i’ll be back up there.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 2 sec at f/16, ISO 100

I’ve always admired this view on the trail to Moon Falls, and have tried to photograph it a couple of times without much success. When I rounded a bend in the trail and saw the scene today though, I knew I could capture something worth showing.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 100mm macro lens, 1/60 sec at f/2.8, ISO 400, handheld

I uttered a curse word as soon as I saw this tiny mosquito on the snow, because I just returned a lens i’ve been trying out, the Canon MP-E 65mm macro, which can fill the entire frame with a grain of rice and which would have been perfect for this situation. I like how it turned out anyway, the utter simplicity and how the mosquito is lost against the white backdrop.

I’d seen beautiful photos on a couple of photographers’ websites of a big cave at Cape Kiwanda on the Oregon Coast, and decided that I had to find it. If I had been able to dig up any information about it or directions to it I probably wouldn’t have been very interested, but I couldn’t find anything. I explored Cape Kiwanda recently on a surfing trip, however, and though it’s a fairly big little peninsula, I was pretty sure I could scour it and find the cave. Well I did, and it was at the bottom of what looked like a giant sinkhole and there were 6 foot waves thundering through it and slamming into the rocks. I was there around high tide, so I decided that I would return when there was a combination of a very low tide and fairly low surf. I spent two morning photographing at Seal Rock State Park, where most of the following photos were taken. It’s a beautiful place, and additionally I timed my visit for what I thought would be the most photogenic period; during a full moon when low tide was right around sunrise.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 90 sec at f/5.6, ISO 250

I set my alarm for 5:30 AM so I could get some photos of the moon setting over the rocks. When I arrived at the beach the first morning there was a halo around the moon, something i’ve seen fairly often since I moved to Oregon. I kept the ISO down to minimize noise and was able to take a fairly short photo thanks to the bright light from the moon.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 3.2 sec at f/22, ISO 100

Once the sun began to rise and I was able to get my shutter speeds down below 10 seconds, I started trying to catch the movements of the foamy water as it rushed passed me and receded back to the ocean. It was not easy to keep the tripod or myself steady as knee to thigh deep waves slammed into me, and the light conditions were continuously changing so I had to keep adjusting the exposure. It was, of course, well worth it.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 4 sec at f/11, ISO 100

As the tide came in the waves grew deeper and stronger, and finally I was forced to leave for fear of getting knocked into the drink along with my camera gear.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 2 sec at f/22, ISO 100

I really love this photo, but I wish there was some indicator of scale in it. The fact that it’s shot with a 16-35mm lens is a clue, but there’s really no way to know by looking at it that it’s an area probably 100 feet wide. I was perched on the edge of a cliff, looking down as huge waves crashed against the sandstone walls of Cape Kiwanda and then receded in beautiful little rivulets back to the sea.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 30 sec at f/8, ISO 250

I had two main ideas for photos on this coast trip. One was the cave, which didn’t work out, and the other was to get the full moon setting over the seal rocks formation, which did. I had taken several photos from this vantage and they were fairly good, but somewhat dull, and then suddenly the air temperature warmed and my camera lens fogged up. This often happens and it can be a real pain, because even if you wipe the lens off it will continue to fog until the lens warms up to air temperature, so I usually try to get it over with quicker by cupping the cold lens in my hands to warm it up. So I wiped the lens as best I could and took a photo, and to my surprise there was that beautiful streak through the moon. It was there for about 5 photos and then was gone, and though I didn’t verify this at the time, I bet the lens wasn’t fogged any longer either. However it happened, I sure am grateful.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 4 sec at f/22, ISO 100

One of the last photos I took of the full moon before it dropped behind a cloud bank and disappeared. I really enjoyed trying to catch patterns in the swirling water, and though it was fairly difficult and my feet were pretty much numb the whole time, the hardest part has been editing them and choosing my favorites. Usually photos from nearly the same spot at nearly the same time are nearly the same, but these are completely different from one another as the rushing water etched its path onto the sensor. I will definitely be back to the Oregon Coast.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 2 sec at f/8, ISO 100

Some sort of residue left by the waves near the high tide mark. As I was taking the photo my attention was on the long vertical streak and the black rock, so I cropped it down to match that.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 150mm Macro Lens, 1/250 sec at f/8, ISO 400

I was driving east towards Eugene on my way home and every time I passed a little side valley coming in from the south, the sun was backlighting the moss covered trees brilliantly. When I could take it no more I pulled off at one spot and went running through the brush trying to find a composition to isolate from the general chaos of light and shadow. Eventually I climbed on top of the rootball from a big fallen tree and was able to isolate this photo with a telephoto lens. I’ve found that photographing forests in the Pacific Northwest is very challenging, so i’m particularly pleased when I manage to do it well.

Canon 5d Mark ii, 100mm Macro lens, 10 sec at f/32, ISO 160

When I spotted the old rotten tree covered with 8 inch wide mushrooms, I knew i’d found something. My favorite view of mushrooms is almost always from underneath because their gills are their most interesting feature, and because the light that comes through is often turned a beautiful color. This group was attached to the trunk about 4 feet off the ground, so I positioned my tripod beneath them with my camera pointed straight up, its side resting against the bark.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 300mm f/4 lens with 1.4X extender, 1/4000 sec at f/5.6, ISO 100

It’s when taking photos like this that I appreciate Live View the most, as it spares me having to look through the viewfinder directly at the sun or its reflection. I was holding the camera above my head to get the sun where I wanted it, and moving my leg in the water to get the ripples.

It feels like the tail end of fall up here in the cold, foggy southern Willamette Valley, time to steel oneself against 5 or 6 months of dreary weather. Almost all the leaves are off the trees, except for a few types like oak whose dry brown leaves cling to the branches until springtime. The departure of the leaves has made photography a little more challenging as they greatly increase photographic opportunities, but the thick old growth woods are full of mushrooms, moss, and other macro possibilities. I’ve got 3 macro photos to post, taken over the last two days.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 100mm Macro Lens, 2 sec at f/11, ISO 100

I’ve really enjoyed waking up to thick frost for the last week or so and it’s pretty rare here, so I tried to head out with my camera every morning. I took this photo yesterday, which seems like it will be our last frosty morning for a little while. I was pretty sure I had a photo when I saw the leaf laying over the thick grass, and I just had to determine the composition. I almost always use a large aperture on all my non-landscape photos, but when there’s no background that needs blurring, like with this photo, I will use a smaller aperture for more depth of field.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 100mm Macro lens, 1/60 sec at f/2.8, ISO 400

These little mushrooms were growing from thick moss on a vine maple branch about 7 feet off the ground. To get the straight-on angle I wanted of them, I flipped on Live View and held the camera over my head, and composed with the LCD screen.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 100mm Macro lens, 1/8 sec at f/11, ISO 100

After rising abruptly when we had a couple days of heavy rain a while back, the Row River has dropped very low and left a lot of small pools of water along its banks. They’ve all frozen during our recent cold snap, so I walked along the river today, checking them out. I had a heck of a time choosing a composition when I found this leaf, but i’m pleased with how it came out.

Last Saturday I left home before daybreak, headed for the coast. A friend from my firefighting crew had invited me on a surfing trip, and I was excited to go as i’ve been hearing a lot about the Oregon coast surf scene and was eager to try it out. It was quite an experience, but I must admit that the overriding memory of the trip is physical pain. So the water is around 50 degrees, and even though you’re covered head-to-toe in neoprene, it still finds its way to your skin. It mostly comes in around the headpiece when you dive under a crashing wave, and no matter what you do your face will be numb after 10 minutes or so. I was using a friends gloves that let the freezing water right in, so I had numb hands as well. The waves were 8-10 feet during the two days we were out there, which is terrifyingly big if you’re not an expert surfer, and it felt like an accomplishment just to avoid getting drowned by them. Overall, it was a very intense experience and one i’ll never forget, but I probably won’t become an avid cold-water surfer. While I was out there I noticed that the moon was full our first day, and woke up before dawn the next day to try and get a photo of the moon setting behind a huge rock off the coast. I took a bunch of photos and it was really difficult to narrow them down to 6 or so, and i’m posting 2 of my favorites here.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm f2.8 lens, 1.5 sec at f/11, ISO 100

I took this one the last morning as the moon was setting. I knew that if I got there a little earlier, the moon would be higher in the sky, obviously, but also closer to the rock because it sets at an angle, not straight down. I would let each wave chase me up the beach away from the water until it lost its momentum, and would plant the tripod in the sand and trip the shutter as quick as I could to catch the movement of the foamy water back to the ocean. It involved a lot of running, thank goodness, because otherwise I would have frozen to death. The dunes behind me were covered in a thin layer of ice!





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm f2.8 lens, 2 sec at f/11, ISO 100

Most of the photos I took of this composition were vertical but occasionally I tried a horizontal one, as much to make sure I wasn’t missing anything as anything else. It’s a good thing I did, this might be my overall favorite.





Canon 5d Mark ii, Sigma 150mm macro lens, 1/50 sec at f/2.8, ISO 250

I’ve seen plenty of dewy spider webs in my life, but I really don’t think i’ve ever seen an icy one, at least not one so perfectly preserved. The frost was thick this morning when I woke up, so I headed out to a nearby field before the sun crested the mountains and found this spider web in the deciduous forest on the way to the field. Deciding where to set the borders of the photograph was a bit of a puzzle, but that kind of fine-tuning is absolutely essential for good photography. I could have just snapped a photo of the web and it would have been interesting, but any skilled photographer could have looked at it and known right away that it was a snapshot, an average photographer working with a beautiful subject. The devil is in the details I suppose, like with cooking.

I few days ago I headed up into the mountains, chasing the rapidly melting frost. The trees are so thick up there that frost made it to the ground only in clearings and along the road. I stopped in a clearcut and went tromping around in my hip waders. I found a couple of nice photos, and a couple of big, hidden plastic containers that obviously contained marijuana plants a couple of months ago. I’ve often heard that clearcuts are a popular grow spot, and apparently it’s true.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 100mm macro lens, 2 sec at f/5.6, ISO 100

The frost covered ferns were so beautiful, but it was difficult finding a composition to isolate. In the end, this was my favorite.





Canon 5d Mark ii, Sigma 150mm f/2.8 lens, 1/50 sec at f2.8, ISO 100

Even though it’s mid-December there are still a few lonely leaves left on the trees, and I found a nice composition of one lined with frost.

I woke up two mornings ago to thick frost on everything. My plan was to drive the 2 hours to the Proxy Falls area and explore it for the day, but I stopped at a familiar trail to check out a big grassy field. It was beautiful, a rare time when it’s hard to isolate a good photo because everything is so interesting. I did get one that I like. Yesterday I did head up to the Proxy Falls area, and wound up mostly shooting the icicles around the waterfalls. I got a nice photo, but the real gem was a short video of water dripping off an icicle. I’m working on a five-minute, mostly macro video and its up to about three minutes now. When it’s closer to five i’ll see about trying to post it here.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 300mm f/4 lens, 1/100 sec at f/4, ISO 100

I tried something new for this photo. Basically what I wanted was a vertical panorama, so I took three horizontal photos, one each of the top, middle, and bottom of the grass, and then lined them up one on top of the other. I’m pleased with the result, and the incredible detail you can see in one photo that has the resolution of three. I wish we had more frosty mornings like today, but they are very rare and yahoo weather tells me that clouds are supposed to roll in again tonight.





Canon 5d Mark ii, Sigma 150mm macro lens, 1/50 sec at f/2.8, ISO 1600

This icicle was handing from a log near a small waterfall. I tried framing it against the white water, then against the dark brown of the exposed earth of an embankment, and finally against the soft bluish-green of the forest. Obviously, I chose the last one. Since 1/50 of a second was as fast a shutterspeed as I could get by opening up the aperture and turning up the ISO, and since the photo was on an extreme macro scale and so the falling water drops were moving across the frame incredibly quickly, the drops were not frozen in midair but blurred a little.

I took a trip to Proxy Falls after getting home from my Thanksgiving trip to Louisiana. I’ve seen it before, but I was still struck by how spectacular it is. There are innumerable big waterfalls in Oregon and most of them are very nice, but after seeing 20 or 30 they tend to lose their luster, but Proxy Falls is one that I can’t imagine anyone not being impressed with. The first photo is the best from that trip. I didn’t get to spend too much time there because I had forgotten my jacket when I left home, and it was right around 30 degrees up at the falls. I remembered everything else; lunch, waders, wading boots, gloves, fleece hat, water, camera gear, tripod, but I forgot the jacket. I had to retreat from the cold wind and spray several times to do jumping jacks in the woods to thaw out. The other three photos I took last year but never got around to dealing with.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 2 sec at f/14, ISO 100

Proxy Falls, one of Oregon’s best. I like this photo, but it’s hard to tell how big the falls are because of the distortion of my wide-angle lens being held close to the water, enlarging to foreground. But trust me, it’s huge.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm, 2 sec at f/16, ISO 50

This waterfall is the end of the hike up Oneonta Gorge which opens into the Columbia River just a few miles from Eagle Creek. Hip waders are absolutely necessary for the hike as the water is swift, cold, and up to three feet deep in places. It’s not a long hike, maybe half a mile to the waterfall, but it’s not easy either.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 100mm macro lens, 1/60 sec at f/2.8, ISO 250

Macro subjects are not that easy to find in the winter up here, but there’s always dried grass around to study for interesting shapes. The results are not spectacular, but sometimes I prefer them to more dramatic photos.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 2 sec at f/11, ISO 100

This waterfall is about 6 miles up Eagle Creek Trail, but is worth the hike.

I drove up into the high country yesterday without a good idea of where I was going, and decided to stop and explore a tumultuous little creek I saw from the road. The hike up the creek was difficult mainly because the algae-covered rocks were as slick as ice, but it was worth it when I eventually came to a birch grove that hugged the creek on both sides. The other photo is from a hike I took a week or so ago.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 4 sec at f/11, ISO 100

When I turned a corner of the creek and saw this birch grove, I knew there was a wonderful photograph there, so I set about finding it. In situations like this my method is usually the same. Wading up the stream (i’m always in hip waders) with my camera around my neck, I stop at every potential spot like a riffle or little waterfall, anything that might be a nice foreground, and check it out through the viewfinder. I had waded just up to the grove without finding a photo, when I noticed from a few feet away the way that the water parted around this rock. With an ultra-wide lens, the foreground can be magnified if the lens is held close, so I positioned the camera about two feet from the rock and got the photo.






Canon 5d mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 2 sec at f/22, ISO 100

This is a photo that was much more difficult to take than it seems. These leaves were pinned to the riverbed by the current as it went over the edge of a long, steep cascade, and I was perched on the edge on slippery rocks, hoping my boots would hold. My camera was about 6 inches above the water, mounted on my tripod, and I held the legs steady in the rushing water.

We had the first snow of the year that got down to 1000 feet or so, so I readied the old Toyota and headed for the high country. I only have a couple photos to show today, but I really like them.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 4 sec at f/20

Such a sublime scene. I’m always struck by the contrast between how serene and lovely a photograph looks and the pain and discomfort I endured in order to take it. This photo is a particularly good example because I was very wet with cold extremities when I took it, but that couldn’t dampen the joy I feel making a beautiful photograph.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 10 sec at f/22

A heavy snowfall around midday got down even to below 1000 feet, so I wandered up a creek i’ve explored before, hoping for a new and interesting shot.

Well i’ve spent the last couple of days stumbling my way up rivers in my hip waders in the pouring rain, and I don’t have a whole heck of a lot to show for it. Sometimes I get frustrated when I come up relatively empty handed searching for photos, but the process is usually so enjoyable (and such good exercise), that not getting a great image is only a mild bother. In the pissing rain it’s not quite as enjoyable, but oh how much I appreciate getting home and stoking up our wood stove! So I had been advised by online weather forecasters that a big storm was coming, and I knew that if they were correct (and they always are in Oregon when predicting rain), the calm, meandering, leaf-filled streams I have been photographing for the past week would become raging torrents, and both the weathermen and I were correct. One thing i’ve learned, however, is that there are opportunities for great photos in any weather and on any region of the planet, so I had no excuse not to head out. Keeping myself dry is not as big a bother or concern as keeping my camera dry, as it is worth twice as much as my car (1989 Toyota Pickup, 230,000 miles), and that is no easy task when it’s raining hard. I normally use an umbrella, but using one numb hand no fiddle with control dials and extend tripod legs is nearly impossible, so I think i’ll make some kind of umbrella stand that will free up my other numb hand. They’re expecting snow in the foothills of the Cascades over the next couple of days, and I think i’ll try and find some.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 8 sec at f/16

A 2 mile hike from the Brice Creek Trailhead will bring you to this lovely waterfall, though the hike feels much longer. For this shot, I laid my camera on the ground, using a couple of rocks as a “tripod” to keep it still. My tripod allows the camera to be low to the ground, but not on the ground, so sometimes I have to improvise.







Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 1/30 sec at f/8

In situations like this, the hardest part can be deciding what to exclude from the composition. Like editing photos, what you exclude is just as important as what you include, or what you choose as your subject. For this image, I focused on a small part of a long waterfall.







Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 6 sec at f/11

I kept working my way closer to the bunch of red maple leaves piled on the rock in the middle of the river, shooting as I went. In the end, I was perched on top of the rock at the top left of this shot, directly above the leaves. As I went through all the photos i’d taken, this one, the first of probably 30, was the best.

It’s been gorgeous here in western Oregon lately, with fall colors at their brightest and the creeks not yet swollen and murky with runoff. I’ve gone up into the mountains several times over the past few days, and have some interesting shots to share, in particular some time lapses of leaves carried in circles by the water current. The first photo of a leaping toad is the only photo I got in Kauai while Erin and I were on vacation there for a week, but we were there for surfing and relaxing, not photography, so I only took my camera out once. I’m going to try and go out as much as I can before all the leaves fall, so hopefully i’ll have more to share soon.




Canon 5d Mark ii, Canon 100mm f2.8 macro, 1/500 sec at f/2.8, tripod, remote cord

I found this big toad on a rock in the middle of a rare mud puddle on the extremely dry northwestern corner of Kauai. The other side of this fairly small island is extremely wet and tropical, and the top of the volcano in the middle of the island is the wettest place on Earth, getting over 400 inches of rain a year. I got a couple other shots, but I prefer this one, where the shadow is more complete than the toad itself.




Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 1 sec at f/16

This was the first nice photo I got of the fall color, and it excited me about looking for more. I tried many different angles and took probably 50 shots of this general composition, but settled on this one in the end. Often i’ll spend two hours and take 100 shots of something and one of the last few will be the best, but not this time. This was one of the first shots I took.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm, 1/6 sec at f/8

I could never have gotten this shot, or half the ones i’m putting up today, without my hip waders. I wear them every time I go out taking pictures here when it’s wet, which is most of the year. Not only do I not have to worry about getting wet or muddy crawling over or under logs, but I can wade out into streams and rivers to get a different perspective. I had a hard time keeping my balance for this shot, and the current made the tripod legs vibrate violently so that it was difficult to get a sharp image.






Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 6 sec at f/16

I took a trip to Moon Falls today, and had the problem I typically have at big, spectacular, photographed-to-death places; I just don’t want to take any pictures of it. But I can generally find a smaller, unique composition if I explore around for a while, and that’s how I got this photo. The subject is about the middle 20 feet of the 100 foot waterfall. I climbed up the steep cliff alongside the falls and climbed out onto a ledge about halfway up, so i’m pretty confident not many people have shot the falls from this angle!





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 10 sec at f/8

I took a hike off trail up a little side creek of the Row River, and boy was I glad I did. This photo and the next three were all taken on that inconspicuous, amazing little creek that was choked with colorful fall leaves. The steep canyon in the above photo was as slippery as ice, and twice while shooting up there I slipped and started sliding towards the pool below, but was able to catch myself against the rock face. I think it would have been fun until I hit the water with my $2400 camera.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 30 sec at f/22

As I was taking the first shots of this little pool, I noticed the leaves would make small streaks as the current carried them along, so by using the smallest aperture and lowest ISO that I could I was able to extend the exposure to 30 seconds and get a better blur. To get some more leaves in the pool, I climbed a nearby tree and shook the trunk like a gorilla for a few seconds. To get a softer feel, at about 25 seconds into the 30 second photo I picked up the tripod and camera and moved them around gently.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 30 sec at f/22

The same pool from a different angle.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm, 30 sec at f/22

Farther up the creek I came to another beautiful pool, with the current pushing leaves in 3 separate circles. A polarizing filter is essential for shots like this, or any with water, because it cuts the glare coming off wet surfaces and enriches color. Mine basically never comes off my landscape lens.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 100mm f2.8 macro lens, 1/50 sec at f/2.8, handheld

I saw this tiny fly on one of a little group of three mushrooms and scrambled to get my gear together. While moving very slowly so as not to scare the fly away, I crept closer and closer, shooting all the while. As is typical with macro photography, the sequence of photos shows me getting closer and closer, and lower and lower to the ground until I was actually looking up at a tiny bug on a tiny mushroom about 2 inches off the ground. Macro photos shot from above looking down are almost never as good as those shot from the same level as your subject or below, partly because of the interesting, unusual perspective, and partly because the background is far enough away to be a pleasing blur instead of a semi-visible distraction. I was able to handhold this photo at 1/50th of a second with the help of Internal Stabilization, a feature of many professional level lenses nowadays. My tripod can’t go ground level, so I might not have been able to get a sharp shot without it. The glow in the middle of the photo is an out of focus mushroom in the foreground.





Canon 5d Mark ii, 100mm f2.8 macro, 2 sec at f/6

Sometimes the streams are so choked with leaves up here that the difficulty is in isolating a subject from the greater scene. This maple leaf had come to rest on a rock in the middle of a small waterfall, and getting very close allowed me to focus on a small, nice composition in the midst of a lot of confusion.

It wasn’t long before we were called again, this time to Montana for a small, 30 or so acre fire on some really steep, remote ground. After a few days there we went to a fire in the wilderness on the Montana/Idaho border, and were there until our 14 days ran out. We travelled home and were about 30 miles away from our home unit when we began to hear a lot of disturbing radio chatter. Apparently there had been a lightning storm the night before and we were arriving just as the place was exploding with dozens of fires. We were all exhausted and really wanted to go on RandR, but I had an uneasy feeling. Sure enough, we were extended about 20 minutes before we were to be released. Normally an extension is just a few days, because you can only be away for 21 days including travel, but a week or so before this the rules had been changed so that the 21 did not include travel anymore. What it meant to us was that our extension was not for 3 more days, but 7. It was difficult to get over the bitter disappointment, but we eventually did which I think is a tribute to the heart of our crew, many would have self-destructed or mutinied. Eventually, we did get an RandR, 3 days actually, and then went back out the next day to the same fires, which were mostly dead by this point. I worked until day 10, and then left for a best friend’s wedding on the west coast. So the season is finally over, and I am occupied at home with harvesting vegetables from the garden and wood from the forest. Erin is in Virginia with her family for the next three weeks, and the weather has turned typically bad for this time of year, so it’s going to be lonely. It’s been an intense year, mostly good I would say. It will be my last as a hotshot, and i’m still undecided about what I will do next year. Hopefully I can pick my big camera back up and start posting some “real” photos on the website.




The scenery was really gorgeous on the fire in Montana, which is no surprise. When you’re not there for negative 30 in the winter, the place is irresistible.





No, your eyes are not deceiving you, we found a disembodied wolf paw. It could have been caught in a trap, though that’s doubtful because of the terrain, or it could have just become dinner for something bigger.





I guess you would call this a “sawyer pride” moment. Our 28 inch bar looks ridiculous with the 4 to 6 inch trees of this area of Montana.





Our next fire was in Idaho, and for breakfast we were fed fried burritos. Our diet normally doesn’t contain a lot of fat, and though many people thought they were going to puke on the hard hike that morning, I think only one person did. That person was kind enough to leave a sign.





Halvey cut one of his clown hands on his pulaski.





We spent a few hours at a fire lookout between wildfires. It was pretty neat, and we actually spotted a new fire from the top. It had been around for a long time, I don’t know how long, but I saw names carved into the wood from the seventies.





Joby enjoying some snuff, or snorted tobacco. I tried it, and it definitely makes you want to make that face.





I was relaxing with our lookout on the next fire, the Granite Pass, when I took this photo. I had two tools because the swampers often carry two so that the sawyer has a tool to help with mopup, or stirring up hot dirt to cool it off.





Our next fire, the Cedar, on our home forest the North Umpqua. It was something of an IA, or initial attack, which is rare for us, and I thought it was a lot of fun.





After a hard afternoon of going direct on the fire’s edge down a really steep mountainside, we prepared to make our way back out.






Some professional fallers were taking down a huge snag uphill from us, and Puckett found a safe place to hide in case it made it down it us.





A smoky scene in the evening.





This is what we saw behind us as we hiked out the first night. Groups of trees were torching in the dark, which usually means you’re screwed and not going to be able to catch the fire. The next day we caught spots thrown by the torching trees and managed, with some help, to get line around the fire and keep it to about 30 acres.





While we were gridding for spots the next day, I came across this, the first split-tip fern i’ve ever seen.





Puckett got hit on the chin by the butt of a small tree and decided to just lay there for awhile.




Halvey sitting on the holding wood from a big tree that the fallers took down. We counted the rings and came up with 580.






A new fire on the same forest.





We often have to cut in pretty hot situations.





Halvey basking in the glow of a short break.





More smokey forest.





I got to cut a pretty big tree on one of our last days.





The cut looked good at the end, but the face cut took me longer than it should have. Those are my gloves on the stump. We almost never get to cut live trees, but this one was broken off about 60 feet up and was full of fire. They’re a lot of fun because the holding wood is so pliable and they tip easier than most snags.





Halvey isn’t that big of a guy, but he’s got the hands of a heavyweight boxer. Here he’s doing what I call the “rubber chicken”. He just shakes his hands around and it really looks like he’s shaking around a couple of chickens.





A risky way to get across a drainage.

We went to a 600 acre grass fire near The Dalles, Oregon and were only there for 4 days. It was a strangely beautiful landscape of rolling hills covered in golden grass and patches of sagebrush, but sort of a hostile place also. It obviously got very little rain, and the hills gave the impression that they had been stripped of vegetation somehow. It seems that this type of fire is what we’re going to get for the rest of the season, grass fires that go big quick and then go out. It will be nice to not be away from home for 3 weeks at a time, but we may not get another R&R for the rest of the season.





Joby and his ridiculously American coffee cup.






I took this photo from the window of our buggy, and it was our first clue that we were getting close to the fire.






We drove along the entire south flank of the fire and it was completely out, and then arrived at the north end, which was active, and started putting in line while they did slurry drops nearby.






Heres’ a rare head-on shot of a tanker dropping slurry.






It was a strange landscape, and this was one of the rare patches of tall sage. Mostly it was just short grass.






Halvey picked up a buddy during the course of the day.







A Type 1 ship drops its load of water on a hotspot that was flaring up in the bottom of a canyon.






We always stop working and keep our eyes on the helicopter when it comes in for a drop, and the reason why was brought home to us shortly after this drop. We had someone on the opposite slope from us calling in the drops and flashing the helicopter with their signal mirror to show him where they were. He couldn’t get their flash so someone in our group decided to flash him too. Over the radio we here, “Oh there you are, ok I got your flash.” Then we watched as he came near our group and descended until the bucket was probably 50 feet from the ground. We didn’t think he would drop because it was obvious that there were 5 or 6 people under him, but he did. 1000 gallons of water can really ruin your day if it’s dropped from 50 feet above you, but we all scampered away and didn’t get hit.





The terrain was so rocky that the fire probably would have gone out by itself after running out of continuous grass to travel through.





My saw boss sent my saw partner and I to go cut out a thick patch of brush and trees that was putting out a lot of smoke, and about halfway to it I stopped and realized that we’d be in big trouble if it ignited because we were surrounded by dry grass. Just as I was having that thought it burst in flames and sent us running back the other direction. This is a shot of Jeremiah watching it move uphill.





It’s dangerous to work while ships are dropping, so we took a break and watched 3 helicopters doing our work for us for about 20 minutes.





The drops got pretty close to us.





A view from underneath as a helitanker drops its water.





A last view of the strange landscape before we headed home.

We were home for a week or so after Alaska and were called again to the Southwest. We were expecting to end up on the Las Conchas Fire outside of Los Alamos but were instead sent south to the Little Lewis Fire near Alamogordo. We were only on that fire for 3 days before a huge storm passed over and drenched it, and us. We spent the next 8 or 9 days staging in Mayhill, NM and finished off the roll on the El Paso fire near Timberon, NM. We started off that fire with a 36 hour shift which was pretty tiring, and a couple days later were headed home. We didn’t spend too many days on fire this roll, so I don’t have many photos.





I was the lookout on our first day on the Little Lewis fire, and was posted on top of a little mountain across a valley from where the crew was working. Slowly the clouds began to build, and I got some nice shots of them as they did.






The bottom of a building thunderhead.






Fairly suddenly the sky turned black to the West, and I could see heavy rain coming towards the fire. I was letting the crew know over the radio that they might get wet, but it ended up hitting before we could get out.






A gloomy scene.






The last view of the sun before it was swallowed up my this massive thunderhead that began dropping peanut-sized hail on us, in June!






We did a lot of repairing fences during our staging days, and things occasionally got a little goofy. Here Joby is wearing a cow pelvis as some kind of war helmet.





Some poor elk met its end at this spot after getting its leg caught in the fence.






This is a poor quality photo because of the camera I was using, but it was an amazing thing to see. Fire is running through the grass on the El Paso fire at about midnight when we got there, with a big yellow moon setting behind it.






Miller and Natalie chatting over a burning juniper stump the next morning. We worked through the night getting the edge of the fire secured, and it was beautiful to see the sunrise from the first faint glow.






My saw partner swinging a pulaski at the break of day. I really like this photo, because it catches such a serene moment.






I crouched down behind an ocotillo to get this shot. Sometimes I like deliberate overexposure in photography, and I do think that digital sensors handle it better than film does.






Once again we were chased off the hill by massive thunderstorms.






Halvey found three elk sheds one day, which added quite a bit of weight to his pack on the hike out.






A rainbow in the sky on our last drive out from the El Paso fire, as thunderstorms raged all around.






An Oryx, first introduced to the US from Africa in 1952 I believe. I was pretty surprised to see such a beautiful and strange creature out in the creosote, but there it is. We ended up seeing probably 15 of them in the time we were there.






A last view of New Mexico from my buggy window on our way home. The Southwest is so wonderful, and it was great to see the monsoons again. I don’t think we’ll be back this year, but perhaps i’ll end up living there again...

We were home for about a week after the 34 days in the Southwest and were then dispatched to Alaska to the Hastings Fire. There weren’t too many fires up there at the time, but the weather was ominously hot and dry and there were new fires popping daily. By the time we left after 14 days it had rained so much that the only heat left on our once mighty fire was in birch snags and protected areas of deep duff. Like the other two Alaska rolls i’ve been on, this one was interesting, occasionally beautiful, and painful in small but significant ways. I’ve been home for about 4 days now and am just getting feeling back into the tips of my big toes. Something about your feet always rolling from side to side on the squishy tundra does a number on them, and the mosquitoes were horrible. I did a lot of hazard tree cutting, which is good if you don’t get whacked by one because in Alaska most of the trees you cut are either burning, burned, rotten or hollow, so it’s a good learning experience. No sawyers on our crew were hurt, though i’m willing to bet that they all had close calls, as I did, but a guy on Zig Zag Hotshots wasn’t so lucky. He got hit by a 16 inch White Spruce tree that he wasn’t even cutting, and was seriously injured. We were listening to the chatter over the radio and could hear their saws going as they cut a helispot just 300 yards or so from where we were. I’ll never forget a short exchange I heard over the radio after the injury. The helibase called the crew and asked if the injury was life threatening, and we waited with bated breath for the reply. A stressed-sounding voice said “Yes”, and we all looked at each other, thinking serious thoughts like “that could have been me”. We heard a few days later that the guy had bleeding on the brain, a broken shoulder, and several broken ribs, but was probably going to make a full recovery. A few days later a black bear found our camp and proceeded to eat most of our bread and tortillas. We chased it away with a helicopter and chainsaws, but it kept coming back so we called in a shooter and had bear stew for dinner, which is delicious by the way. Alaska was interesting as always but I was happy to leave and I think most everyone else was too.






The plumes in Alaska are hard to beat. Our first day on the Hastings Fire we took part in this burn, and it was quite a way to kick off the roll.





A little window inside the smoke at some trees torching.






A dozer headed down the line. These guys are pretty brazen and occasionally set in tight spots. A few days ago 2 firefighters were killed in Florida, and I believe they were dozer operators.






All was well with the burn and things were cooling off, and then the wind switched and plunged us into smoky near-darkness. It was like this for days, and you can’t escape it even at night. I remember waking up to people coughing violently. It’s one of my least favorite parts of the job, but luckily we rarely breath smoke for prolonged periods of time.





Apocalypse. Another view of the plume when it was really cranking. I think this could be a poster for a doomsday movie like The Road. I’m standing on the dozer line, on the edge of the scorched black as the plume runs in the other direction.





A huge tanker flies over my head before dropping a line of fire retardant. A smaller “lead” plane comes through first, and that’s when you know to grab the camera or hit the deck, depending on where it’s line is. Seconds later, the tanker rumbles by overhead.




About 10pm in the land of the midnight sun. I realized while we were up there that i’ve been in Alaska for 3 summer solstices, this year, last year, and 2006 when I did gillnetting. I started to miss the darkness, but you sure can get a lot done when it never comes.




Two members of the Rogue River Hotshots fire Berry Pistols into our burn to get more depth. The rounds that are fired ignite after hitting the ground.





Quinn was my swamper for a few days at the end of the roll. The smoke from his stogey kept the mosquitoes away for a little while, so he could pull up his bug net. They were horrible, not the worst i’ve been in, but pretty close.




Here’s another not-quite-so-cool one of Quinn, and Mac. The job is really hard, but not ALL the time.




A self-portrait. Look closely at what i’m standing on, pretty bizarre huh?





Another self-portrait. I’m fortunate enough to spend 3 or 4 months a year in the woods, so I get quite a few butterflies landing on me.




The macro feature on my little point-and-shoot is actually not bad.





I like these leaves that have been munched on by something in an interesting pattern. There were many of them littering the ground on this fire.





Yeah, we actually cut this and dragged everything to the right side. They asked for a 60-foot saw cut, and I have to admit my first thought was “what the fuck”. The funny part is that it was contingency line and shortly after we finished it rained for a week, so it’ll never be used, except as a highway by moose. The next photo is one I took from the helicopter on the way out, I wonder if you could see it from space?





Ridiculous or what?





I was pump operator for about half a day, and got to spend that time relaxing next to this beautiful lake. It was a little stressful because I haven’t run many pumps and was just positive it was going to break down and leave me scratching my head. But all went well.





I got someone to take a few photos of me cutting this tree. You learn a lot cutting is situations like this, but it’s not much fun. The ground was so hot around the tree that I had to cut rounds off a log to stand on, and smoke made it difficult to see well. The cuts weren’t the prettiest in the world, but it went pretty well considering.





Towards the end of the roll it dried out again and we were able to do a final burn to secure an open edge. Obviously it worked out.





I almost hurt my neck while craning my head to see the top of this plume.





A close-up of the fire running through the black spruce.






The bear was small, probably about a year old and under 200 pounds, but it was plenty brazen and persistent.






Another freedom bird. A different helicopter pilot was pulling out our gear and dropped it about 200 feet into the trees, so when we got back to base we surveyed the damage. A few ipods and phones met their maker, but nothing too valuable. Luckily I had my camera with me.





Halvey was pretty excited to be going home.





A river we flew over on the way out. That’s it for Alaska photos, but we’re number 1 on the out-of-region rotation and the Southwest is exploding, so i’m sure i’ll be shooting more soon.

On our first fire in the Southwest, the Last Chance Fire, we ran into my old crew the Carson Hotshots. It was amazing how many people I still knew on the crew, and not much seemed to have changed except the marital status of several people. It was great seeing them again. In this photo our Assistant Superintendent Rich Tingle is talking to Carson’s Assistant Superintendent, trying to figure out how we can attack this thing, which is obviously running through the grass and uncontrollable. Crews normally take large leaps on each other to stay out of each other’s way, but since we couldn’t do that on account of the fire behavior, we just acted like one 40 man crew with 6 saw teams, and it worked out great.






I told my saw partner that you can put lizards to sleep my rubbing their bellies so he gave it a shot. This little guy looks pretty tired, but not quite asleep.






A new fire now, the Bull Fire in southern Arizona right on the mexican border. It actually started in Mexico and crossed over. We did a burnout along a dirt road and afterwards someone found a hummingbird nest about three feet off the ground in a small bush. This egg is about the size of your mother’s pinkie fingernail, it’s small. It’s funny, I had never seen a hummingbird nest and then I saw one in Peru and another in Arizona within 4 months of each other. For a camera gear comparison, look at the next photo which was taken with a high level point-and-shoot, and then the following photo taken with my Full-Frame DSLR and pro lens in Peru this winter. Anyone who tells you camera gear doesn’t matter is full of it.





Just like the hummingbird in Peru, she would fly away when you came near, and then return 3-5 minutes later.






See the difference?






Our next fire was the Wildcat I believe, and this is the little plume it was putting up when we arrived. The fire was started, like so many others in the Southwest, by someone welding in tall grass.





The fire was in danger of getting up and running and it had plenty of room to do so, but this helitanker dropping slurry just might have saved the day. We ended up working till about midnight to get around this one.






Night burnouts are one of my favorite parts of firefighting because they’re always so beautiful, and this late-night burnout on the Wildcat was no exception. The firefighter in this photo is little Black (I can’t remember his first name, but it might be Brian), one of our two 18 year old rookies this year. He doesn’t have a huge jaw, that thing hanging from his face is a shroud, which we use sometimes to keep from burning our faces or beards when working in close to the fire.






Embers thrown up from trees torching. We’ve got to watch the unburned side, or “green” closely to make sure they don’t start fires across the line and send us off to the races again.






A new fire who’s name i can’t remember, and the last one before our crappy R&R in bumfuck Arizona. The fire was on a hillside above a native village, and this adorable and presumably stray dog found his way up to while we were eating lunch. How could we say no to that face? She left fat and happy.






Our first fire after R&R was the Miller, and we ended up staying on it the entire 14 days, which is somewhat rare in the Southwest. Though as I speak there are huge fires down there that many crews are spending 14 days on or more, and we will probably join them soon. One day my saw partner, saw boss and I went on a rogue mission down a steep-ass canyon to make sure the fire had held in the bottom and wasn’t in danger of running up the other side at us. It had held, but getting down there to find out was not an easy task as this photo shows.





We had relative humidity readings down to 4%, and the dead trees and downed logs would burn fiercely once they caught fire. Sometimes I have to go in and cut on shit like this, which is another good time to use a shroud to cover your face and neck. It’s a real tribute to Stihl chainsaws that they last for years even when firefighters use them.






A nice view of some Ponderosa pines on our way back to camp one evening.






We were spiked out for several days on Alpha Division right when we got to the Miller Fire, and this is a shot of people sitting around our campfire at the end of the day. The fire was in the Gila Wilderness, so it was beautiful and fairly remote, though we did find the occasional rusty old horseshoe in the dirt.






The next morning. Like every other when we’re spiked out, they start with LOTS of coffee for those that partake, and a breakfast of either MRE’s (yuck), or little breakfast items flown in by helicopter like milk, cereal, muffins, fruit, etc. Then we usually wait to hear the morning briefing over the radio, and off we go for the days work.






This big double-bladed helicopter is called a Type 1 ship, and has a really large bucket capacity. Sometimes these helicopter shenanigans seem like a waste of money, but other times they save your ass without any doubt.





A self-portrait from the top of a peak in the Gila Wilderness. The fire was 55,000 acres at this point and was minimally active, so we were mainly just getting to high points and keeping an eye on things for a few days.






Like I said, night burns are beautiful. We hiked to a new division near the end of our two weeks on the Miller Fire, and did a burnout the first night there. This was one of those days that just beats you to hell. We hiked 7 miles to our new division, and then spent all day cutting line and hazard trees, and then had to hike back to where we started to cut line for the burnout, and then finally we were able to relax while the lighters brought fire by us. It’s moments like this one, just relaxing and watching something beautiful, that I can’t believe i’m getting paid.






The legend, Rich “The Ting” Tingle. He’s been a hotshot for 32 years or so, and though he looks nearly crippled walking around on flat ground, he manages his way around the steepest ground imaginable, and isn’t slow about it either. There was one hike he led on the Miller Fire that pushed me to the edge, and I was shocked to look up front and see Tingle up there. He has a big personality to match his 6’6” frame, and i’m so glad he’s part of our crew.






I got someone to take a photo of me watching the burn.





I’m on Saw 1, so i’m either third or fourth in line depending on whether I or my saw partner is carrying the saw that day. In front of me here is Jeremiah the Saw Boss, and Rich Tingle in front of him. Our superintendent, Eric Miller, leads the line whenever he’s with us.






No this isn’t some cave-dwelling neanderthal we stumbled across in the wilderness, though he has the strength of one, it’s my saw partner Chris “Puck” Puckett after about 12 days without a shower.





Puck cutting a buckskin Ponderosa Pine on the Miller Fire.





Our freedom bird. After 30 days of fighting fire and being away from home this helicopter was carrying us back to our buggies so we could begin the long drive home to Oregon.





A shot from the helicopter. Notice the burned trees in the foreground of the photo.





A crew photo on the way home, I believe in Arizona.





I’ve never seen a cicada emerging from it’s shell before, though i’ve seen countless empty shells clinging to trees. This one decided that the wheel of one of our trucks was a good place to make the transition, and lucky for it we were parked for the day.





The same cicada about 10 minutes later, it’s wings fully unfurled and drying.





Home at last!

I start work as a Wolf Creek Hotshot again next Monday. I’m not as excited for the beginning of the season as I have been for the past 3 years, but i’m glad it’s here and i’m glad i’ll be working again. There’s some activity in the Southwest right now, so hopefully we’ll get pulled down there soon. My crappy little digital point-and-shoot was stolen this winter when someone broke into our house, so I took to opportunity to upgrade to a less crappy digital point-and-shoot for the upcoming season. I see some incredibly beautiful things on fires, but almost never have the time to stop and spend a couple of minutes getting a good composition. I considered getting a Panasonic G1, a camera with a micro-four-thirds sized sensor which is basically much bigger than a point-and-shoot sensor and much smaller than a full-frame one, but I knew I wouldn’t have time to fiddle with all the dials and really make use of it. The camera I got looks pretty good though, and it shoots in raw, so perhaps I can get some decent shots with it. I’m posting what will probably be my last nature photograph for a while, along with some old fire photos. I had a year’s worth of fire photos on the camera that was stolen that I never downloaded, so that was sort of heartbreaking, but I have some good ones from before that. Now, if the weather cooperates here for ONCE and the ground dries a little bit, i’ll be able to start tilling up our garden today.




Canon 5d Mark ii, 200mm f/2.8 lens, 1/500 sec at f2.8, ISO 100, handheld

I went up in the mountains yesterday morning because I saw that the snow level had dropped to around a thousand feet. The forest was beautiful as always, but my heart wasn’t in photography and trying to find a composition. I’ve got to get the garden going and get ready for the start of the season, but I was able to get this nice stark portrait of a branch on my way out of the forest. The camera wasn’t in black-and-white mode or anything, sometimes when you frame your subject again a mix of foliage and sky, all the color gets washed out by the high contrast and you end up with something like this.




2008 Fire Season, Nevada

These are the little buggies we travel around the country in, with the fire blowing up in the background. I still get a rush when we’re hiking towards something like this, into the dragon’s maw.




2008 Fire Season, Northern California

Every morning on a fire we gather up and get a briefing about our objectives for the day, what the weather is expected to do, things like that. This was a pretty miserable roll, with high heat and humidity and LOTS of poison oak. Several people went to the hospital because they had oak so bad, while I went because I cut my hand on the saw (see following photo).





8 stitches later, i’m lucky I didn’t slice through my finger tendons.




2008 Fire Season

Credits to Chuck Sweet for this photo, probably my favorite one from the fire line yet. We were working on a fire in a fairly urban part of Southern California when this Swallowtail landed on me, probably thinking I was a big yellow flower.




2009 Fire Season, Montana

This was a pretty rough fire, though the scenery was unbeatable. The fire was in the mountains and making it’s way down towards the grass and farm-filled valley. I was back on a Super-pulaski tool after my hand injury in California, and we had to “dig” line up the rocky mountainside, which basically consisted of smashing your tool into rocks enough to remove the loose organic material on top. My fingers were swollen at the end of every day.

The biggest midwifery conference of the year happened in Eugene last week, so we had 6 of the 8 women that graduated from Maternidad La Luz with Erin staying with us in our modest-sized home for several days. They’re all very unique and wonderful people, but I decided to take a little trip away after a couple of crazy days. Although i’ve been there many times, I chose the Columbia River Gorge as my destination, because I think you could explore it for a lifetime and still see new things each time you went. It was as beautiful as ever, but I did have a hard time with photography. Ever wonderful composition I found, I felt like i’d already shot, and I instinctively went to the places i’d been to before. I spent the chilly night in the back of my 89 toyota pickup as usual, but I had taken the cap off a few days before so I could start hauling manure for the garden, so I was hoping and praying that the light rain that had been falling would stop and I wouldn’t have to sleep in the cramped cab of the truck. The rain did stop, and I waded up Oneonta Gorge in the morning before heading home. I get a charge out of going places i’m not supposed to go, so the sign that read “Danger: Logjam up Oneonta could shift causing injury or death,” was pretty much irresistible. I’d been up once before, but the water was up higher and the going was much more difficult. Once again, without a pair of waders it would have been impossible.




Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 1/8 sec at f/9, ISO 250, tripod

I took several shots from this spot at various shutter speeds, and ended up deciding on a faster one. When water takes up a majority of a photo, i’ve found that the normally nice effect of long-exposure-blurred water results in a photo that isn’t “solid” enough, or just doesn’t look right. The sharpness of the photo is fine, but much lower than normal because the legs of the tripod were being shaken violently by the rushing water. When I tripped the shutter I was hanging onto the tripod with all my weight to give it some stability.




Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 1/8 sec at f/11, ISO 300, tripod

Another shot from nearly the same location.



Canon 5d Mark ii, 300mm f/4 lens, 1/30 sec at f/4, ISO 400, handheld

A small dead fern clinging to the canyon wall. The white at the bottom of the photo is the rushing water, the black is the canyon wall.

Erin and I are home after a month-long vacation, two weeks in Panama and two weeks in Virginia. I had my camera gear with me the whole time, but only pulled it out twice; once when there was a tremendous lightning storm over the ocean, and once to try my hand at high ISO night photography. I’ve done a lot of night photography with film, but it’s a whole different thing with digital. With film you can leave the shutter open all night and not worry about grain or noise, though batteries can fail on you. With digital, you can use ultra high ISO to capture things you couldn’t capture with film, but any exposure over 3 or so minutes is going to be unacceptably noisy. I’ve still got a lot to learn, but my first attempt was somewhat successful.




Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 30 sec at f/2.8, ISO 1000, tripod

There was a small river that flowed into the ocean on the beach we spent most of our time on, and during the lightning storm I took some shots from the river looking out over the ocean. This shot, like the ones that follow, was taken in complete darkness except for the occasional lightning bolt. This photo was only 30 seconds long and is not very noisy, but the next photo was 198 seconds long and it’s a different story.




Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 198 sec at f/2.8, ISO 1000, tripod

I love this photo, it’s probably my favorite of all the ones I got during the storm, but it’s unacceptably noisy. It’s hard to tell when the photo is this small, but with a little enlarging it’s obvious. So the threshold must be between 30 and 198 seconds, not very helpful!




Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm, 30 sec at f/2.8, ISO 1000, tripod

I set up my camera out on the beach just at the edge of where the waves stopped, and would trip the shutter and then run back to the edge of the palm forest for cover. I have a fear of lighting that I think exceeds what is reasonable, but i’ve always been able to get shots like these despite it. It was such a beautiful night, I think I spent 3 or 4 hours watching and shooting this storm.




Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 135 sec at f2.8, ISO 2000, tripod

I got the idea to try and get some shots of the Milky Way while Erin and I were walking on the beach one night. The stars were amazing, and low tide was a couple of hours after dark, which was perfect. They were difficult shots for many reasons, but mainly because I condensed my camera bag down for our trip, and two items that didn’t make the cut were my remote cord and graduated split neutral density filter. So for any exposure over 30 seconds, I had to hold the shutter button down by hand, and without a split neutral density filter to even out the exposure between the sky and the ground, I had to do that myself too by covering the top half of the lens with my hand for the first 70 seconds, and the removing it and letting the whole frame expose for the last 65. It worked out ok, but the vibrations of my hands definitely cut down on the sharpness and it was just really difficult, much more so than it had to be.




Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 198 sec at f/2.8, ISO 3200, tripod

This is my favorite shot of the stars from that night, and like my favorite one of the lightning storm, it’s just too noisy. I even like the thin clouds that drifted in front of the MIlky Way and the softness it lends the photo. All the difficulties mentioned in the previous photo apply to this one too, but I had an extra one with this image. I could only use f/2.8 because it was so dark out, so there was no way I could get the foreground and the stars in focus. My solution was to set the focus for the foreground while my hand was covering up the top half of the photo, and then change the focus to near infinity when I took it away.




Canon 5d Mark ii, 100mm macro lens, 1/60 sec at f/4, ISO 400, handheld

This is the view of the beach we had from right out our little cabin door, and on this particular day there was a powerful storm with heavy rain and wind, and funnel clouds. This huge funnel cloud never made land luckily, but I don’t know if I would have been strolling along the beach when it was just offshore!




Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 30 sec at f/2.8, ISO 800, tripod

Erin and I on the beach. Just after dark the Milky Way was nearly straight up in the sky, and over time it slowly pivoted to the right and became more angled. Eventually it was too sharply angled, so that was another constraint.

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.

The promised storm is here, and its magnitude is just as the weathermen promised us. Out my window right now I see the foothills of the Cascades powdered with snow in waning light, so I’ll be out there again tomorrow morning. This morning I waited too long to get up there, about 9 in the morning, so when I did it was like being in heavy rain. The sun had come out and the air was warm, and the snow in the trees above me was melting quickly. I took a nice photo from a small bridge up in the mountains, but it was one of those funny times where everything around me is beautiful but I can’t find a picture to take. That and my strange urge to go higher up in the mountains, always higher, until I get stuck or have to turn around, so that I end up spending more time digging my car out of the snow that taking pictures. Still, all in all, a wonderful morning.



Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, polarizing filter, 2 sec at f/16, ISO 100, tripod

I stopped on the road and jumped out of the car to take a look over this bridge and instantly decided it was worth shooting. I got my Oregon winter photography getup on (full wader, rubber boots, and a rain jacket), and took this shot from the bridge. I took it at the 20mm focal length on my lens because 16mm was too wide and included too much in the frame.



Canon 5d Mark ii, 100mm Macro Lens /w 25mm extension tube, 1/40 sec at f2.8, ISO 250, tripod

I found this tiny set of seeds in an open field yesterday, after one of the torrential rains we’ve been having. With subjects this small, my 100mm macro is the lens of choice, and is able to sufficiently isolate the subject and blur the background. With a larger subject like that in the next photo, a longer focal length is necessary. The difficult aspects of every photograph are different, and i’m often struck by the contrast between the feelings I get while looking at a photograph and the feelings I remember having while taking it. When I took this photo yesterday I was hungry, tired, wet, and my feet were numb. Whenever I see wonderful photos taken by other people, I often wonder what they were feeling while taking the photo, and I know that many photos that make me feel warm and fuzzy were taken by people in all kinds of pain and discomfort. Not that i’m complaining, I love testing myself and well, I guess I even love suffering if it’s in pursuit of a goal.

It’s been dry here since I got back from Panama 3 weeks ago (I can’t believe it’s already been 3 weeks), but a storm rolled in today that promises to make us forget all about that. Yahoo weather said an inch of rain every day for the next three days, so I went out yesterday and today to do some photography before the deluge set in. There are plenty of photographic opportunities in rainy weather, probably more actually, but it’s just different and more difficult to capture them. First I went up towards Moon Falls again but decided to stop by a small stream that I have been intrigued by each time i’ve gone up that way. The stream itself didn’t lend itself to photography, but a small dead moth that came floating by me did. It’s one of the only times i’ve used autofocus to get a shot, but it certainly worked well in that instance. Then today, in the woods behind our house, I shot some tassels hanging down from a tree for a while until it started pouring, and then went back out in a dry interval and found a solitary tree fern. On the way back a solitary green leaf caught my eye and I found a wonderful composition by lying on the ground and pointing the lens up at it.



Canon 5d Mark ii, 300mm f/4 lens w/1.4X teleconverter, 1/4 sec at f/5.6, ISO 400, tripod



Canon 5d Mark ii, 300mm f/4 lens w/1.4X teleconverter, 1/125 sec at f/5.6, ISO 400, tripod



Canon 5d Mark ii, 300mm f/4 lens, 1/40 sec at f/4, ISO 250, tripod



Canon 5d Mark ii, 100mm macro lens, 1/150 sec at f2/8, ISO 400, handheld

Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 6 sec at f/13, ISO 100



Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 4 sec at f/11, ISO 100



Canon 5d Mark ii, 300mm f/4 lens, 1/60 sec at f/4, ISO 400, handheld

The snow level dropped down to a thousand feet or so yesterday, so in the evening I decided to head up to the snowy heights and try my luck up there. After a long, bumpy ride I arrived again at Moon Falls where I went just a week or so ago. I found the same composition i’d taken before the snow for a comparison shot, and i’m not sure which I like better. The trees were full of snow but the temperature was above freezing, so it was basically like being in a light rain when there were trees above you. On the way out I stopped at a small pond to shoot this plant coming up out of the water, too early in the year it seems to me. It might be one of those big-leaved plants I used to always see at springs on the Pacific Crest Trail in Northern California and Oregon, the ones I heard people call corn plants. And then finally there was a tree backlit by the sun with just a few leaves still clinging to the branches. To get a close enough composition I had to attach a 1.4X teleconverter to my 300mm lens, which is a combination that my lightweight tripod head can just barely support.



Canon 5d Mark ii, 300mm lens with 1.4X teleconverter, 1/200 sec at f5.6, ISO 200



Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 30 sec at f/11, 6 stop neutral density filter, ISO 100



Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 1/50 sec at f/7.1, ISO 200, handheld



Canon 5d Mark ii, 300mm lens, 1/160 sec at f/4, ISO 400, handheld

Most of what I shoot during the winter are dead plants, which gets challenging because they’re not the most dynamic or interesting of subjects. But like all other subjects, once I become engrossed in what i’m shooting two hours can go by like nothing. Editing can be easy when you’ve got one great shot that is clearly better than the others, but more often it’s difficult because you’re choosing between a bunch of roughly similar ones.



Canon 5d Mark ii, Canon 100mm Macro Lens, 1/200 sec at f/2.8, ISO 100, handheld




Canon 5d Mark ii, 16-35mm lens, 2 sec at f/11, ISO 100




Canon 5d Mark ii, Canon 300mm f/4, 1/200 sec at f/4, ISO 250

I haven’t been finding much to shoot up here in the still northwest forests, so a couple of days ago I settled on some tree ferns that were backlit by the midday sun. I put my 200mm lens on the camera and pushed the lens into the tangle of ferns, and took a look. It took a good long while to find an interesting composition, but I think that I did.



Canon 5d Mark ii, Canon 200mm f2.8 lens, 1/400 sec at f2.8, ISO 400



Canon 5d Mark ii, Canon 200mm f2.8 lens, 1/250 sec at f2.8, ISO 400

I’ve got three weeks until Erin and I leave for Panama, so i’ve decided to try and do photography at least every other day. There isn’t much out here in the winter in terms of macro subjects, but it just means I have to get more creative. This photo is of two of the tendrils that ring the base of the Teasel flowerhead, a large flower that grows on a tall stalk and it pretty common around here. The stalks and flower heads dry out and remain upright for most of the winter. This photo illustrates another feature of my new camera that I am grateful for, Live View, which allows me to see the frame without looking through the viewfinder. For photos like this in the past I had to stare into the sun for a long time trying to get the frame right, and now I can dial down the exposure and just look at the back of the camera. I just hope it isn’t bad for the sensor to expose it to the sun for so long.



Canon 5d Mark ii, Canon 100mm f2.8 Macro Lens, 1/4000 sec at f2.8, ISO 200, handheld

Here’s another one I took in the same area. I like the stark simplicity and nearly black-and-white lack of color. I often begin photographing a subject in one way and then find a much better perspective in the process, which reminds me of how difficult it really is to predict what will make a good subject.

Canon 5d Mark ii, Canon 100mm Macro Lens, 1/500 sec at f6.3, ISO 160, handheld

Canon 5d Mark ii, Canon 135mm f2 lens w/1.4X teleconverter, 1/160 sec at f2.8, Gitzo tripod, ISO 1600, cable release



I would say that this is the most unique photo I got on the trip, of an Amazon Wood Lizard letting me know to keep my distance. I was walking back to the lodge after a few hours spent in the jungle, and i knelt down to look at something on the trail. As I was getting up I noticed him watching me. It makes me wonder how many amazing animals I walked right by, because I never would have noticed him if I had been walking along normally. For this photo I used my 300mm lens because he was pretty big, and if I had used the 100mm macro lens the background would not have been sufficiently blurred. So I laid on the ground with the camera on the tripod and as low as I could get it, and then walked over and used my presence to elicit this response, and my shadow to darken the background of the photo. As soon as the shutter tripped and I went back to look at the photo, he took off and disappeared in the brush, and I never found him. I didn’t expect the focus to be right, because once again the depth of field was so small and the lizard was moving, but it turned out that when he leaned back and opened his mouth, it aligned his body perfectly with the focus plane!



Canon 5d Mark ii, Canon 300mm f4 lens, 1/6 sec at f/4, ISO 400, Gitzo tripod



There was a tree along my favorite trail that was covered with large, round thorns, like stubby rhinoceros horns about two inches long, and as i passed it one day i decided to stop and check it out closely. I found this tiny, centimeter long insect hiding amongst the thorns and spent the next hour or so trying to photograph it. It was difficult because it was both tiny and active, so by the time i had set up a shot it was usually about ready to move somewhere else. This shot is at my macro lens’s maximum magnification, so the front of my lens is about 4 inches from the plane of focus, and the size of the photo is about an inch by an inch and a half.



Canon 5d Mark ii, Canon 100mm Macro Lens, 2 sec at f2.8, ISO 400, Gitzo tripod



One morning after breakfast I went with Wicho, Don Linho, and Jefferson to the mammal clay lick deep in the jungle to build a new observation platform about 15 feet off the ground, and i decided to bring my camera bag along, because you never know. When we arrived at the building site we all sat down for a break, and i looked to my left and saw a white flower sitting on a leaf. As i went to look at it i realized, of course, that it wasn’t a flower. We were there to build a platform, so whenever we had a break i would spend some time with this spider, and eventually i got this shot of a small fly hovering much too close, probably thinking it was a white flower, as i had. It nearly turned out to be a fatal mistake, because just after i got this shot the spider grabbed at the fly and barely missed. My back was covered with mosquitos while i was being still and trying to get this shot, and that’s true for just about every photo i got in Peru.


Canon 5d Mark ii, Canon 100mm Macro Lens, 1/40 sec at f2.8, ISO1600, handheld



This was the first good shot I got on my trip, on the morning after I arrived. It had been raining so much recently and the river was so high that it dropped twenty feet over the next two days. All the low areas in the jungle were underwater, and as i walked around in my rubber boots the only critters i saw on the water were these tiny spiders. Shooting them was difficult because they were so small that if I moved my feet at all, the ripples I caused moved them out of the frame, not to mention I was wearing a thin shirt that was no barrier to mosquitos. I’m really happy with the new macro lens i’ve been using that has Internal Stabilization, but i’ve found that with subjects this small it’s too difficult to get the subject within the tiny focus plane and a tripod is necessary.



Canon 5d Mark ii, 100mm Macro Lens, 1/15 sec at f2.8, ISO 400, Gitzo tripod



One of the most important things to remember about photography, in my opinion, is that there are many different angles from which to approach your subject, and it is rare that the perspective you would have just leaning over to look at something is the best one. This is especially true of macro photography, because just moving an inch or two to one side can completely change the background and your perspective of your subject. I often try, if possible, to approach a macro subject from their level or below, because it gives an interesting feel to the photo and allows you to use the background more. For this photo, I was laying on my stomach on the jungle floor, and pointing my lens slightly upward at this little frog as he watched me from the edge of a water-filled leaf.



Canon 5d Mark ii, Canon 100mm Macro Lens, 1/40 sec at f2.8, ISO1600, handheld



One reason I love macro photography is that there are subjects everywhere, and you are only limited by your ability to find and capture them. It’s both heartening and discouraging to me to realize that for every good subject I see, I walk right by 50, 100, who knows how many. As I was walking down a trail one morning this tiny mushroom caught my eye. It was off the trail, about 7 feet off the ground, and about an inch tall. It was sprouting from a small decaying stick in the center of a fern, so I was able to get a young emerging frond in the background. I got a couple of photos, including this one, that would have probably been impossible with film. For one thing, it was so high off the ground that i couldn’t put the viewfinder to my eye, and had to hold the camera above my head and use live view to see the composition. I also needed to use ISO 1000 to get a fast enough shutter speed to get the mushroom in focus, and the fastest good film is only ISO 400.



Canon 5d Mark ii, 100mm Macro Lens, 1/40 sec at f2.8, ISO 1000, handheld

Minolta Maxxum 7, Minolta 85mm f1.4 G lens, 1/30 sec at f1.4, Fuji Velvia 50



I spent most of my time in Corcovado in a small stream that flowed into the Sirena River just before in met the ocean. It was definitely where i found the most wildlife, like 2 snakes, a baby crocodile, this little crab, and a group of roosting butterflies that returned every evening to the same place. To get this shot, i was crouching in the knee deep, gently flowing stream with my camera mounted a few inches off the water on the tripod.


Minolta Maxxum 7, Minolta 200mm f2.8 G lens + 1.4X teleconverter, 1.5 sec at f/4, Fuji Velvia 50



I love this shot. I don’t think anyone i’ve shown it to has thought nearly as much of it as i do, but that happens sometimes. When i first got my film back from New Mexico and was going through it, i got choked up when i held this slide up to the lightbox. It just seemed so stark and perfect, maybe i should try black and white photography. I remember shooting these butterflies well, but as often happens when i’m excited and shooting something really wonderful, i don’t remember taking this shot at all. But i can tell by the diffuse light and slight cyan tint that it was nearly dark, so it must have been at the end of a long session with the butterflies.


Minolta Maxxum 7, Minolta 200mm f/2.8 lens +1.4X teleconverter, 1 sec at f/4, Fuji Provia 400



This one i do remember. Photographing these butterflies was one of the reasons i finally switched to digital. They would flutter around near the others that had already landed, seemingly looking for the perfect spot, and i was waiting until they were in the right part of the frame and trying to hit the shutter fast enough to catch them there. It would have been so much easier with digital. I wouldn’t have had to worry about my limited film supply or about how expensive it would be to develop it all. Anyhow, i’m happy with the result.


Minolta Maxxum 7, Minolta 200mm f/2.8 lens +1.4X teleconverter, 1/90 sec at f/4, Fuji Provia 400



To get this shot, i screwed on two heliopan close up filters that i carry specifically for my wide-angle lens, and positioned the lens an inch or two from the mantis. This was the best shot i got of him, just before he jumped from the tree and disappeared. I really like using the background to highlight my subjects, and this is a good example.



Minolta Maxxum 7, Minolta 17-35mm G lens, 1 sec at f/3.5, Fuji Velvia 50



Walking along the same creekbed as before, i heard a skittering and looked over to see this basilisk eyeing me warily. After switching out my Velvia 50 for Provia 400 so i could handhold the camera with a 300mm lens on it, i put the camera to my eye and moved around slowly until i found a small hole in the foliage that could frame the lizard.


Minolta Maxxum 7, Minolta 200mm lens +1.4X teleconverter, 1/30 sec at f/4, Fuji Provia 400

Minolta Maxxum 7, Minolta 17-35mm G lens, 2 sec at f/11, Velvia 50


Minolta Maxxum 7, Minolta 17-35mm G lens, 6 sec at f/13, Velvia 50

Though it appears to be screaming out for help or thrashing around, this salmon is dead. It must have died shortly before i found it and been somewhat preserved by the icy water rushing over it. Most of the other dead salmon i found had only half a head, as though the bears preferred the brain when they were too full to eat more than a little piece of each fish. I definitely think it’s one of my most striking pictures.

Sony A900, Carl Zeiss 135mm f1.8 lens, 1/250 sec at f1.8, ISO 200


Sony A900, Carl Zeiss 135mm f1.8 lens, 1/500 sec at f1.8, ISO 200

I don’t think i would have tried shooting these little guys if i’d still been using film, because they move so quickly and i had to take so many shots and adjust according to the results. The reflected sky was a mixture of bright white clouds and clear blue.

Here’s a photo i took recently in the Columbia River Gorge. I was up there camping out during the coldest spell this winter when it was around 15 degrees for three nights in a row, which did some really interesting things to those huge waterfalls. But the real prize was this little one i found off-trail that had slowly built up ice around itself until there was a little fortress around the falls.

Minolta Maxxum 7, Minolta 17-35mm G lens, 2 sec at f/16, B+W circular polarizer, Fuji Velvia 50