Return to St. Helens

Crater and Shadow, Mt. St. Helens

For some reason, I have been obsessed about Mt. St. Helens. In my last two posts, I talked about how the weather has frustrated several attempts to get the shots I wanted of this iconic mountain. Well, I had almost given up...when I saw a helicopter for hire. Yes, it was expensive, but really the only feasible way to get the shots I wanted, so I arranged a flight at sunset last night.
It was hazier than I would have liked, the light less crisp and saturated than normal, but the clouds that had toyed with the peak all day finally dissipated at sunset - so I had a clear view of the crater. Yes, the low light meant I couldn't capture the steaming lava dome on the crater floor, but it gave me the long shadow which I love - so it's a trade-off.  (Speaking of the shadow, notice how it makes it look as though the mountain still has a top!)
Having seen the mountain erupt in 1980, and flown over it just afterwards, this was a kind of home-coming. Spectacular.

Nikon D3, 17-35mm lens

Fog Race

Steam rises from Lava Dome above fog-shrouded crater,  Mt. St. Helens

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent three days trying to get pictures of Mt. St. Helens, especially in the evening, but every day had the same maddening weather pattern: cloudy in the morning, clear at mid-day, and then a rising fog in the evening. Definitely not weather to gladden the heart of a landscape photographer!  After two evenings sitting in the fog, with no view at all of the mountain, the third day promised a break in the cycle; the mountain was clear all afternoon and it looked like, for once, I might get a sunset.  Then this band of clouds began to form and started rising up the slope.  I was forced to shoot quickly, before the crater disappeared completely.

With such a long horizontal scene, I decided to create a digital panoramic using 3 or 4 single images, stitched together in the computer after the fact. Not bad, but I had dreams of much more.  I'll be back.

Nikon D3, 70-200mm lens : Stitched panorama

Lousy Weather above? Go Underground...

Ape Cave lava tube, Mt. St. Helens

I spent the last 3 days trying to get some decent light on Mt. St. Helens. The truth be told, it never happened: each day it would clear for a few hours in the afternoon, then cloud up again as the evening - and nice light - came and went.  Three days in a row.  Maybe I'll try again when this weather pattern moves on through.

I filled the middle of the day with exploring the area, and on one memorable morning, I hiked into one of the most astonishing underground passageways I have ever seen.  It is a lava tube, although it is so perfectly formed that it could double as a man-made highway tunnel. Lava tubes are rare in this part of the world, where the volcanos tend to explode rather than extrude flowing lava. Yet Ape Cave  is one of the longest lave tubes in the US - more than two miles long.

(Science note : lava tubes are created by very fluid lava that cools and hardens at the edges, allowing the lava inside to continue flowing inside, forming a stone tube. When the lava stops, it drains out the bottom end, leaving this remarkably uniform tunnel.)

I spent several hours in the cave, trying to sort out how best to photograph it - finally settling on the use of two flashes - one on the camera/tripod and the other in my hands. 30-second exposures allowed me time to position myself in front of the light-colored wall (where I would best show up in silhouette) and fire off a few flashes manually. It was a case of trial and error - mostly error - to get what I wanted. In a perfect world, I would have had a third flash (and a model?) in the far distant bend of the cave, but I'm content with this.

An amazing place.

Nikon D3, 17-35mm lens, 2 Nikon SB-800 flashes

Waiting for a Window

Seastacks and Arches at Dawn, Olympic Peninsula

Sometimes, pictures take planning. I have been wanting to 

photograph this location at dawn for over a year, but conditions 

have never come together…until today.  Access requires a 

minus tide at dawn, which only happens a few days a month 

if at all, as well as clear skies, which happens almost never…

Typically, when high pressure moves in to the Pacific coast, 

so does the fog.  So for weeks I have been consulting tide 

charts and NOAA weather maps, looking for the right 

combination, passing up several opportunities when, although 

the tide was right, the weather was not.

This week looked promising enough: a window of opportunity. 

The tides and timing were right, but I had to move quickly 

before the building high pressure brought the inevitable 

fogbanks. I also had to do my own weather research. The 

forecast for the coast was for mist and drizzle, but a quick look 

at the satellite pictures – and a couple of coastal webcams 

online – told a different story. The sun was shining!

Getting up at 4 am, and hiking out in the dark, I arrived before 

the first light. As it was, the fog hung just offshore, giving me 

only a few minutes of dawn before the warm light vanished in

the gloom. Still, I got some pictures I’m pleased with, and I’ll try 

again tomorrow.

My point is simply that there are dozens of tools on the internet 

that can help with planning a shoot: tide tables, weather maps, 

webcams, road condition reports. However, it is also possible to 

sit at home, staring at the computer and find reasons not to go; 

in the end, there is no substitute for simply being there.


Nikon D3, 17-35mm lens

Life in the Rubble

Bitterroot Flowers, Cascade Mountains, WA

There is a barren ridge top about an hour east of my home where, every year, these handsome Bitterroot flowers emerge out of the rocky slope for a few brief weeks. It is one of my favorite flowers, and one of my favorite places to go.  With the heavy snows we had this past winter, most alpine flowers are peaking at least 2-3 weeks later than normal, so I delayed my visit accordingly.  Yesterday, most of the flowers had still not emerged yet, but this small cluster caught my eye, framed by the broken rubble of the talus : an astonishing expression of the tenacity of life in a hostile environment.

Nikon D3, 60mm macro lens

Re-discovered Images

Fairy Tern on branch, Midway Atoll

I am making a concerted effort to stay home for a while this month; after two straight months on the road, I need to get caught up on editing, writing, yardwork, and...oh yeah, a social life.

One of the pleasures of having time like this is taking the occasional troll through the old slide files and finding images that I had either forgotten about or overlooked. (I edited my entire 200,000+ analog collection two years on a similar self-imposed home-exile, and discarded 90% of the slides. They were just taking up space, and, to be candid, only 10% stood out as worth saving.)

So it was that, preparing a client submission this week, I stumbled onto this image of a Fairy Tern, taken on Fuji film over a decade ago. I remember loving the curve of the branch, and the elegance of the tern's spreading wings.  Simple, but handsome. Guess I'll have to scan it!

Meanwhile, although I am not doing any major traveling until the late summer, I do have some shooting I'd like to do locally, including heading out for a few days this week to shoot on the Olympic Peninsula. I love this time of year in the temperate rainforest, and there are some minus-tides scheduled on the coast.

I know, I know... I'm supposed to be pulling out ivy, but there are limits to this exile thing.

Nikon F100, 70-200mm lens

With Hummingbirds

Male Allen's Hummingbird. Channel Islands

OK, I'll admit it: I've been a rotten correspondent lately, and haven't posted to this blog in weeks. I could blame my travel schedule, but it really has more to do with the fact that I haven't been terribly successful on several recent shoots. Most recently I spent a week on California's Channel Islands where I hoped to get more coverage of the endangered Island Fox.  I suppose the fact that I'm showing you a hummingbird rather than a stunning fox portrait can tell you something!  In six days I saw foxes for all of about 3 minutes, and never in a setting that worked very well.

Happily, there were other diversions, and other subjects, including these tiny Allen's Hummingbirds, which, to my delight, bathed every day in a tiny stream right next to my fox stakeout. I could while away the hours of waiting for foxes by shooting these little gems coming and going from the water. I have never spent such so much time observing hummers, and it was wonderful, especially seeing them immerse themselves in the water, bathe and drink - all in water less than an inch deep.

Photographically, the challenge was focusing on the birds, which are small and in constant motion - and getting an exposure that worked since the best light was in full shade. Fortunately I had time to try different settings, experimenting with pre-focusing - and time to simply get lucky. Luck is an inevitable part of every  successful wildlife photograph; whenever you are dealing with a live, unpredictable subject, whatever pictures you get have as much to do with luck as with skill. In this image, for example, I was focused on the bird in the water - when he popped up to hover and scan the area, he did so in the same focus plane, and stayed in sharp focus. Pure luck, and an abundance of time.

Nikon D300, 200-400mm lens with TC14x