First Fall Colors

Fall colors on the upper Clackamas river

Took a trip up Hywy 224 today and the colors are just starting. There really wasn't much that caught my eye and I wanted to get something captured so here it is. Looking forward to better colors in the coming weeks.

Fall colors should be fantastic this year, get out and enjoy them!

Oceanside at Twilight

Oceanside Oregon

I was here and I shall return! :-)

Yellowstone in June

Bison Calves (above), Bighorn Ram (below)

Recently I had the opportunity to visit the park so I thought I'd share some. Babies abound in June and while much of the week it rained, it was still filled with some great opportunities to shoot wildlife.

I've actually been shooting nature quite a bit lately, some travel outside Oregon and lots of local stuff. Website updates to follow... please check back from time to time.

Female Coyote moving a pup to a new den in a steady rain. She moved seven pups belonging to her and another female (part of a pack). Needless to say it was easy to see she was tired a couple hours later when she was finally done. The two den sites were maybe a mile apart.

Early Spring in the Columbia River Gorge

McCord Creek (above) and Elowah Falls (right)

The snow is still visible high above but down here the colors are coming on fast.

This post is actually a bit out of order as I've been traveling some. A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure of spending some time in SE Oregon shooting wildlife. I'll be sure to post some when I get through the mass of photos.

Spring is upon us

This weekend brought several new visitors to the feeder so I thought I'd try to capture the moment.



Hope you enjoy. -- Jeff --

Mt. Hood, a winter wonder

Mt. Hood as seen from Trillium Lake

I've been shooting a series on Mt. Hood for some time now. My goal is to capture the mountain in all its moods throughout the seasons. Friday turned out to be as beautiful as predicted, a perfectly clear morning near zero degrees. Snowshoeing in just before sunrise was fairly easy since all but the last 1/4 mile was on groomed trail.

The snow in this area is about 5-7ft deep, about 14" of that being fresh dry snow. So while the going was good on the groomed trail, it was moderately difficult in the untracked snow. Need a good workout? try 4.5 miles on snowshoes over mixed terrain and snowpack. Oh, and don't forget the 30 or so pounds of gear in the ol backpack ;-)

I headed out to the west side of the mountain later in the afternoon. The photo below was taken late day and at a spot I haven't been to before. It's an interesting area, I'm looking forward to exploring more.

Mt. Hood

Fire Light

Sunset at Cannon Beach

No, it really didn't look like that but sometimes it's just fun to apply a little artisic touch. I brought up the fill light a little and drastically changed the white balance to flood the scene with red. Otherwise, it's exactly as shot. In all I spent less than one minute on this photo. Less time than it took to upload it and write this!

Hope you enjoy :-)

JB

Just Ducky

Mirror mirror on the pond...

What can I say, been working way too much lately so I ended up with a day off during the week. Considering I'm on-call I couldn't really travel to any of my favorite spots so I made do with the local wildlife. The ducks are courting now so they put on a pretty good show throughout the morning.

The photo to the right isn't anything to write home about, but I thought the water drops looked cool.

After a rather serious courting session she decided a good bath was in order. Not having a towel handy, she just shook vigorously (like your dog does, except ducks aren't all wet and smelly afterwards ;-)

Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

The weather was dark and nasty last saturday so I decided to use the afternoon as an opportunity to check out the refuge. It's really important to know the layout of an area before coming with the idea of shooting wildlife. Well, I mean in the serious sense.

It's an interesting place, there's an auto drive tour where you must stay in your vehicle (except in designated places, at the entrance booth and a blind about half way around the loop).

The wildlife is used to the cars so it becomes like a moving blind and some wildlife will stand right next to your car (like the hawk shown below). This was on the south end of the refuge, on the north end there's a two mile hiking loop. I haven't tried that yet but looking forward to it.

The photos shown here are from that visit and they aren't very good quality, but then they were shot at about ISO 2500 in an attempt to get good clear photos. Like I said it was a dark day, dark grey, with rain and spitting snow. Can't wait to go back in nice light, should make for some fantastic photos.

If you go be sure to leave the pets at home, they aren't allowed in the refuge. Be sure to bring your field glasses and/or spotting scopes and cameras.

http://www.fws.gov/ridgefieldrefuges/ridgefield/visit.html

Why you should visit the Oregon Coast this week.

Sunset -- Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach, Oregon

In a nutshell, because when there's an off-shore airflow like now its clear and warm! Actually the weather is forecast good the next couple days, Thursday it'll start clouding up and the balance of the week is rain.

Portland was cold and windy, basically not much fun to be out and about. Contrasting that, the coast was about 65 degrees and only a light breeze, a light sweater was perfect. Consider this, much of August was actually colder!

Not sure what more there is to say, ate at Moe's, went to Ecola State Park, and back to the beach for sunset. It was my first time at Ecola, a nice place and the views are wonderful (see below). There's Elk droppings all over the grass near the parking area so watch for them if you're there at sunrise or sunset. Could make for a nice photo op!