Crater Lake Blueminosity

On my way up to Oregon, on my usual pilgrimmage to Mom's, I made a stop at Crater Lake National Park, for several hours. I had hoped to focus on the Phantom Ship, a small volcanic spire near the southeast shore. As I was driving up the road into the park, I noticed there was still plenty of snow around, and realized my original plan wasn't going to work. Now, I had already shot much of the area around the Lodge, so I picked some other spots along the west edge of the scenic caldera.

There was a healthy breeze down on the lake's surface and it produced these very interesting ripples reflecting the morning sun's rays. I wanted to take advantage of this unusual vision of Crater Lake by not using the polarizer.

Using the polarizer facing away from the sun produces the usual stunning blues that Crater Lake is so very famous for. YES, it really DOES look that blue to the naked eye!

Here's another example of not using the polarizer and seeing the wind's ripple patterns on the lake, near Wizard Island. It's a very surreal scene, very much like a painting might produce. Nope, I didn't apply any filters or processing to get this unique image!

I ventured around the lake to see how far the road had been opened with the snowplows. I can certainly testify as to just how much snow this place gets during a wet winter. Nearly half of the road around the lake was closed due to snow on July 1st. The boat tour wasn't running yet, either. However, I did find some nice shots looking down into that perfect blueness.

I finished up with a peek over the side at the "Devil's Backbone" and the amazing blue water.

More pics from beautiful Oregon.

Here's an intriguing shot that looks like it was processed and manipulated but, actually wasn't. The flower is vivid and sharp, while the water has an interesting shine to it. Hmmm, what kind of frame to put this one in?

Here's another nice macro shot from Shore Acres. I love the sharpness and contrast in the middle of the flower. Those colors sure are vivd!

Here's those mossy maples again, with moss on all sides of the tree, instead of just the north side. I do like the portions of the tree trunk which don't have any moss on them.

I saw this scene and decided to have the Crater Lake shoreline and a blue "foreverness". Having tons of digital storage allows me to shoot things on a whim, just to see how they come out. Another one that might be tough to find the right frame for.

The deep blue of the water usually just stuns people. Sometimes it's fun to watch people see it for the first time, in the Lodge parking lot. The wide angle did a good job of capturing a slice of this southern Oregon gem.

Oregon in July!

I went up to Mom's, up on the Oregon Coast, to celebrate her birthday and to tame her wild yard. My "brother" Chris and his friend Mercedes was there and we all went out on the local tour, with Shore Acres included. The Oregon coastline is spectacular and here's a photo to prove it.

Of course, at Shore Acres Botanical Gardens, there are always lots of flowers during this time of year. I practiced my macro techniques on some of the flowers and got some good results.

The pond had some great lilypads and I took a few really nice artsy abstracts.

Mom and I took a nice drive on some Oregon backroads and ran across this nice picnic area underneath some very large bigleaf maples. The Oregon rainforest is very good at growing trees, as well as moss.

On the way back from Mom's, I made a short little stop at Crater Lake National Park. It was an idyllic day and I got an early start so, the sun was still at a good angle for photography. After I took a series of pictures on a rocky outcropping on the edge of the caldera, a Park Ranger was waiting for me with a stern look on his face. He reminded me that such activities were dangerous and that I shouldn't be doing them. I replied that I have lots of experience but, he seemed like he wasn't in the mood for an argument. I decided that I couldn't win against his badge and uniform so, I moved on down the road to find another cliff to stand on and shoot until my camera battery was gone.

Photoshopping

I decided to try my hand at surrealistic photoshopping. It just doesn't seem enough that I shoot "natural abstracts". Nope, I guess I have to explore my own twisted sense of beauty. In this uncompleted work, I took one of my Crater Lake shots and did a couple of artistic filters on it. I then took the sky from another picture and made it to look like sunset, then pasted it into the original sky, stretching it from corner to corner. I felt I needed some extra color in the middle of the picture so I've started some handpainting of trees back to a greener color. I'm still considering what to do with the water. I'm thinking I need to give it a bit of a tint to match the sky, as reflections do.

To Be continued!!

More Oregon fun!

For the Holiday, I went over to the Oregon Coast, as usual, to see my Mom. She was very happy to see me, as none of her other sons or grandchildren came up to see her this year.

This first picture is a "leftover" from my last trip to Crater Lake. I tried to frame the viw of the Phantom Ship with natural items in the field of view. I'm not exactly happy with many of the photos I took on that trip. It seems that I should've had more really eye-catching, spetacular pictures but, I can find things wrong with so many from this batch.

Here's another "leftover" that could use some "tweaking" of the original exposure. I'm finding out that many of the pictures I take have fundamental problems with contrast. I attribute this to my Fuji's automatic mode. I'm sure there's lots of ways to correct this stuff like spot metering and manual mode exposure control. Dayum, I gotta find that camera manual!

This picture below still has the potential to be one of my best ones taken that day. I'll have to play around with it a bit.

OK, yesterday I was coming back from Mom's, driving along Oregon Route 38, which crosses the Cascades through the Diamond Lake area. The road is so incredibly scenic and typically Oregon, with lots of old growth forests, an impressive major river and geologic wonders at almost every turn. I stopped for a rest at Clearwater Falls, a campground and picnic area in the Umpqua National Forest, and snapped off a few pics that tickled my fancy. These very tall Douglas-fir trees top out at over 200 feet tall.

Now, we get into the high country, returning to views of the 9000 foot ancient volcano called Mount Thielsen and Diamond Lake. There's a very nice bike trail that connects several campgrounds on the west shore of Diamond Lake. It looks like a great place for a weeklong campout. (Hint, hint, Mrs. Zig!) As I said in a previous posting, I climbed that peak back in '84. You can see the route we went up, as it goes diagonally from the lower right corner up to the peak.

Here's a zoomed-in closeup of the spectacular Mt. Thielsen. The last final 80 feet at the summit pinnacle was where we climbed, using the ropes, harnesses and hardware to safely climb above a 2000 sheer drop-off. That upper-most portion of the left-hand side of the pinnacle was the class 4 route my climbing partner wanted to climb. The regular route follows the right-hand side of the pinnacle. Both routes are NOT for the scared-of-heights crowd... heh heh.

Perfection at Crater Lake?

Naw!

Maybe the weather and view was last Sunday but, I wished I was "the Master" of my own camera, though. After working hard in the pumice of the forests east of Crater Lake for 6 days straight, I took my one day off to hike up near Garfield Peak on the south side of the lake.

It's almost impossible to take a truly bad picture here but, getting that "AWESOME" shot takes some work. Yes, the blue captured in the picture below really does look that deep and blue. The depth and purity of the lake reflects the blue sky back up to the viewer. Wizard Island always dominates pictures of this precious jewel.

Here's me, daringly dropping over "the edge" on this self-portait. Don't worry, it's only a 1200 foot drop down to certain death. Behind me are 4 peaks I have climbed in the past.

Since the road around the lake was still closed, due to snow, views of the Phantom Ship for the average tourist were rather distant. Even hiking towards it from the Crater Lake Lodge, the other island in Crater Lake still looks small, especially with my wide angle lens. However, this shot was not intended to show off this favorite island rock formation.

This picture IS intended to show the detail of the Phantom Ship. My 10X zoom brings it pretty close and shows why it was named. The boat ride brings you even closer, even going between the narrows. If you're ever there, consider hiking down the 700 foot descent to Cleetwood Cove to board the summer boat tours. It's well worth the 20+ dollars and the sore legs. You can also explore Wizard Island, as it docks there during the tour.

Finally, here's a view of the impressive Mount Thielsen, a long-dormant volcano eroded down to the old volcanic "neck". I climbed this peak way back in 1984 with an old roomate. I had a bad knee on that trip but persevered in climbing the 4000 vertical feet, complete with a class 4 variation at the summit, dangling above a 2000 foot sheer drop-off. While you don't actually need a rope to reach the summit, you'll definitely need it for the descent. At the very top, there's only about 100 square feet of space on top of that pinnacle. While we took in the view, we were surprised to meet a family (father, mother and two pre-teen) kids who came up the standard class 4 route to the top. The descent is full of fun and you can go "scree-ing" down the loose volcanic rock, riding piles of scree by keeping your feet moving.

My 10X zoom brings Mt. Thielsen in pretty close from all the way across Crater Lake. Would you attempt to climb this awesome peak??!? (I was 26 at the time, with a bum knee)

Mix n Match scan batch

This picture kind of looks out of place in my blog. This is the Cinder Cone from near Butte Lake in the northeast part of Lassen Volcanic National Park. Even though there hasn't been an eruption here in the last 100 years, it's amazing that so little has grown back since then. Even Mt. St. Helens has grown back much more than this.

This next picture below is from the Minarets Wilderness, southeast of Yosemite National Park. Also, this is yet another example of my friend Euell's power in providing me perfect conditions for picture taking. This rugged wilderness is definitely one of my very favorite places to get away from the everyday world.

This aerial photo always takes my breath away. I went for a flight with a workmate back in '89 and we flew from Placerville, in California, to Yosemite and then back. Taking this picture through the cockpit window made it a little less than sharp but, I gave it a little sharpening after I scanned it. The northern part of Yosemite National Park is a rugged place, as you can see, and not many people make it out into all that glacier-polished nirvana.

This long exposure of Vidae Falls, in Crater Lake National Park, turned out pretty nice. There's still plenty more of the park for me to discover and photograph. Maybe I'll return there on my trip up to my Mom's in July, like I've done many times in the past.

Finally, I came up with another pic of Moraine Lake, in the Canadian Rockies. I sure didn't spend enough time there to properly "capture" everything I wanted to. During that trip, there was lots of rain and I managed to squeeze in quite a few pictures between storms. I wasn't so lucky a few days later in Glacier National Park, though.

More new scans

I did a little experimentation with this next slide of Bear Creek Spire, in the central Sierra Nevada of California. I wanted to see if I could make a high quality scan on a smaller portion of the original slide. To my old tired eyes, there does seem to be a slight quality loss when zooming in.

Notice the tiny little skier who I tried to enlarge. Nature DOES have a way of making us all look very small. As I had skied up to the base of the peak, I was very uncertain of what lay on the other side. Luckily, I had total trust in my ski partner and we made good use of that rope, along with the piton and caribiner.

Crater Lake has been the site of many of my best pictures. I also feel that there's plenty more there, just waiting for me to come along and capture them.

Wizard Island truly is a magical place at Crater Lake. I've barely scratched the surface of what visual pleasures there are in this flooded caldera. About 10 hours will do the trick, methinks.