Crater Lake Moss

Update on the Trip

It's been just over a month since my eye blew out so it seems appropriate to fill in the empty spaces left with the postponement. Eye is good but still has some floating debris that will, over time, disappear. It's well enough I can drive and read so that's a huge improvement. No residual pain or distortions which could impact my ability to take my pictures (whewwww ... what a relief). So that part is good.

Just went through my yearly re-certification here in Crimea which was a stressful event. You are required to fill out a form that basically gives up all your secrets ... or at least it feels that way. How many trips out of the country did you take? Where did you go? How long were you gone? Who did you talk to (a few thousand in my case during the 3 months). How much money did you make and what were the sources? It's pretty intense. Even the wife was more than a bit nervous about this but the guy we worked with (same guy we used last year to get the permanent residency papers) was very quick. We waited for him for about an hour and then it was over in 7 minutes. So I'm good for another year in this wonderful place. And I'm now cleared to leave once again. So, I'll be making plans this weekend for the trip home. Expect I'll be out of here during the month of March and will return around June 1. Need to make all the flight arrangements and get balls rolling for everything else. About time!

Crater Lake Moss...

They get a lot of rain at Crater Lake. Guess it's because it's really the first major mountain range the weather hits once it leaves the coast. We had rain several days I was there last spring along with some snow. And it's mighty damp. So, one shouldn't be surprised to see lots of moss and other wet weather stuff growing on the trees. We're not too far south of the Colombia River Gorge and it gets lots of rain and has trees covered in this stuff. Oregon is a wet place...

I was stuck at the visitor's center during a very heavy rain storm and, being the resourceful type, I started casting around for some interesting scenery to photograph. Across the road from the center the cliffs rise very quickly and are prone to develop fog and mist. I fitted the 70-200 on my camera and started shooting. Got some nice mist shots and then found these cedars all covered in the brightest green moss and lichen. They literally glowed even without the bright sun. And the cliffs weren't too shabby either. This is a 3 image set, run through Photomatix and then finished (including a severe crop from landscape to portrait orientation) in Lightroom.

Crater Lake Moss - 200mm(1.6 crop),f/11,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Vidae Falls at Crater Lake

The TPP and our Doom

This isn't nominally a political blog but sometimes events happen that are politically driven and impact me (and you) in such a way that a protest must be lodged. I'm talking about TPP, the "Trade Pact" between the US and 11 other Pacific Rim nations. The text of this mess was released yesterday and it's a disaster. This clown (or should I say crook) Obama has produced an agreement that will, pretty much, destroy us all. It's all about corporations and their power. He's basically given them everything they want and more. Forget laws and the rights of the citizen to any protections. If a state legislature passes a law that a corporation objects to, they can take the dispute not to the courts but to a private arbitration board comprised of ... wait for the drum roll ... corporate lawyers. Who do you think these people represent? Do you think for even a second that their allegiance lies with the citizen and the state? Of course not. They make their living serving the needs and desires of corporations so they will always decide in the favor of their bread and butter. So any protections that threaten the profits of our corporate masters can and will be shot down. Forget environmental protections, forget worker's rights, forget any consumer protections ... they are all subject to this special, private court. Sovereignty is gone. For all your conspiracy types, this is your feared one world government coming in through the back door. Any country that signs on to this agreement will be compelled to do whatever the corporations want. Even simple municipal regulations can be thrown out and there's no recourse to correct even the most egregious outcomes. Corporations will have tremendous power to influence how government works. Is this really what you want? This is the moment when you need to get up off you ass and scream "ENOUGH". Write that worthless congressman and tell him that he'll be seeking employment somewhere else if he votes for this piece of crap. We need to make it very plain to these corrupt morons that we will not accept this sellout without a fight.

Vidae Falls at Crater Lake

I didn't know there was a waterfall at Crater Lake. It's not all that big or impressive but it's there. Take the rim road to the east (before you get to the Visitor's Center) and you'll see the signs for the waterfall. I like to use my 10 stop ND filter whenever there's moving water as you get such a creamy, almost misty effect. However, this technique tends to eliminate any structure in the water and that's not always a good thing. So, I've developed a technique where I combine a long exposure with a very short exposure (one that freezes the individual drips). I bring both images into layers in Photoshop and then use a simple adjustment of the opacity on the top layer to bleed through just enough of the underlying image to get both the creamy and stark together. I also did some contrast adjustments around the edges so I made the moss and rocks stand out and some Lightroom adjustments to bring out the colors. A nice image overall. You should try it if you have the filters.

Vidae Falls - 70 mm(1.6 crop), f/18, 50 sec,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Crater Lake Storm

Contrails and other human detritus

I tend to be a landscape photographer ... that means I'm a photographer of natural formations. Natural implies an absence of man and his artifacts and his lame attempts to tame the unruliness of that world. Anyone who's visited a national park or any wilderness area knows that it's almost impossible to erase the human influence. There's always garbage and scars and destruction no matter how far from 'civilization' you run. Surprisingly (or maybe not), the most visible impact is in the sky. I'm always having to deal with jet contrails ... the white lines left by the hot exhaust from jet engines at altitude. This is a major problem in the California parks due to the high traffic flowing into LA. Imagine how jarring that is ... a magnificent image marred by one or more basically straight lines drawn across the sky. And, they are surprisingly hard to remove. It's not like you can just erase them. Of course, both Photoshop and Lightroom have tools for removing unwanted features from an image but they can only do so much. Contrails, being large and obtrusive, often don't lend themselves to this type of surgery so one has to be creative. But it's extremely hard to deal with and getting worse. In Yosemite it's almost impossible to find shots that don't have some type of human artifact in them.

Crater Lake Storm

I was in Crater Lake for 4 days. Three of them brought rain and bad weather. I started feeling a bit waterlogged and then the snow came. But the old saying goes ... when life gives you lemons make lemonade ... and that's what I did. I'd watch the weather from my campsite and, if the sky started to clear, I'd drive the 7 miles to the crater's rim and hopefully find interesting and challenging views. Sometimes I'd not even get to the rim before the fog closed in and forced me to retreat. It's not a good idea to drive the twisting and somewhat dangerous roads leading to the crater when you can't see the road. But several evenings I was lucky and the sky gave me just enough clearance to let the late afternoon sun break through. Those were dramatic images.

Crater Lake Storm- 16mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

This image was very challenging. Not because of the weather but because of the jet contrails. The open area to the west was almost obliterated by contrails. There must have been a dozen or more. I'm not sure where those planes were going but flying in and around Crater Lake seemed to be on everyone's agenda. I was also forced to redo the entire process several times as there was an added problem with popcorn size noise coming out of Photomatix. I think it has problems with nearly saturated pixels and deciding how to show them in the final image. Whatever it decides, it doesn't work too well. So, to get around the issue I was forced to use Noiseware on the images going into Photomatix and on the HDR images coming out. This seems to knock the noise out but does some serious damage to the sharpness. I like my images sharp and it bothers me that I have to sacrifice even a bit because of this noise amplification coming out of Photomatix. I've sent them emails asking for help but they are silent so far. Fortunately, because Noiseware is so good at obliterating noise I was able to use very aggressive sharpening in Lightroom which brought back at least some of the definition. But I'm still looking for a solution to this problem.

Anyway, once I had the panorama I went to work with Lightroom's content aware fill to see how much of the contrail mess I could fix. It took a while and a lot of retries but I think I did a pretty good job overall. There's a bit of fluff left over but it looks natural enough that I just left it. Hopefully it doesn't do too much damage to the final image. I'll let you be the judge.

Crater Lake ... day 4

Crater Lake ... day 4

It's with a heavy heart that I say goodbye to Crater Lake. It's such a beautiful, peaceful place. It's hard to imagine that beneath that tranquility lies a still active but dormant volcano. Most people assume it's dead because there's no steam rising from the cone. But the rangers will tell you that there are thermal springs at the bottom of the very deep lake and that the USGS believes the volcano will, someday, awaken again. Not for a long time but someday.

Anyway, I sadly packed my truck for the last time and headed for the rim for one last picture. It was absolutely the wrong time ... just after noon ... when I arrived. Any pro will tell you to stay away from the sky at that time of day because everything gets washed out by the intensity. But the sky was so damn beautiful with all the white clouds and the blue ... oh man. And the lake was unbelievable blue due to it's clarity and depth. Yes, the water is actually that deep marine blue. Everyone who sees it is blown away by the color. This is one of the cleanest bodies of fresh water in the world. No inflowing rivers to dump junk. All the water comes from rain and melting snow. And it is cold .... so, I set up the camera and took my pictures expecting they'd come out crappy. How surprised was I when this emerged from Photoshop. So, don't be afraid to take a chance when the sun is shining bright ... you might just get something spectacular.

Crater Lake Daytime - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Crater Lake Sunrise

Crater Lake Sunrise ... finally

You may have realized I'm not a morning person. Sleep is too precious to me. So, when I wake early, which I do most days, I look not for a reason to get up but for a reason to return to sleep. And, unfortunately, most morning I find an excuse. It's usually the lack of stars which tells me there's thick cloud cover and a sunrise trip isn't worth the effort. Fortunately, this morning there were lots of stars at 4 when I looked out my truck's window and a nice scattering of clouds. So I crawled out of my warm sleeping bag and made the 7 mile trip to the crater. The sun was still well below the horizon but that wasn't going to last much longer. I literally ran up the hill to the spot I'd already chosen for my sunrise shot and I got the camera ready. It was worth the effort ... don't you think?

Crater Lake Sunrise - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Crater Lake - day 2

I'm cursed I think ... or very lucky

Bad weather seems to follow me. On this trip I've seen more snow, wind, rain and cold than I'd every anticipated. And it continues here in Crater Lake. It started raining last night and rained and rained ... and the fog which I had so desperately tried to get away came back in massive quantities. All day the crater was shrouded in fog and I sat in my truck and chewed my finger nails and cursed the weather god once again. When will I get some luck? Well ... it's said that a photographer's best friend is bad weather. That's when you get the most dramatic skies and the most awesome sunsets. So, keep on coming bad weather.

Crater Lake Sunset ... day 2

After a day of rain I noticed, as I huddled in my little truck, that the sky was clearing. With high hopes, I drove the 7 miles to the crater edge and this is what awaited me. I hurriedly set up my camera and started snapping. Lots of frames later I had my image. Used the same processing as I always do with HDR panos and now I present you with Crater Lake at it's best.

Crater Lake Sunset - 16mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Crater Lake Sunset

The San Fran Bust

I have to report that San Francisco was a huge bust. I was so concerned about my truck and breakins that I was distracted from doing what I wanted to do. There has been an epidemic of car robberies lately and I couldn't find anywhere to park my truck and feel safe. Even at the Cliff House, a very famous restaurant on the beach, it was made very clear to me that I shouldn't leave anything of value in my truck or it would most certainly be stolen. Well, I have computers, generators and camera gear in there and I wasn't really comfortable leaving any of that stuff for very long. So, after 2 very frustrating days, I just drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and kept heading north. Maybe next cycle I'll be able to figure out a way of leaving the truck in a safe place and simply using the very good public transportation. But, this time, I have nothing worth showing. Sorry.

Crater Lake Sunset

I drifted along the California coastline, trying to get some good stuff. It was very frustrating to spend hours sitting in a spot with beautiful rock formations and crashing waves only to be frustrated as, around 3 in the afternoon, the fog would start drifting in and, by sunset, I couldn't see the rocks, the surf or the sunset. It's not too interesting photographing fog. So, after several days of this I turned the truck away from the coast and headed north toward Crater Lake. I didn't really escape the bad weather all together as it rained for 2 days while I was there but I was able to get some really nice images. I'll not bore you with the details ... just let you drink in the absolute beauty of this special place.

Crater Lake Sunset - 16mm(1.6 crop),f.18,HDR,ISO 100, license CC BY-NC 4.0