Okanogan Autumn
Last week I took a 3-day trip to the Okanogan, searching for fall colors. I drove through the area in October four years ago, but had little time for photography. The trip last week was my chance to go back. Washington doesn’t have fall colors like the northeastern United States, but if you know where to look, you can still find color amongst the evergreens. Tanya and our dog, Benson, came along, and we stayed at an Airbnb house along the shore of Osoyoos Lake, near the town of Orville and just 3 miles from the Canadian border.
The Okanogan area is a great location to find Washington’s fall colors. Along the Okanogan and Similkameen Rivers, Osoyoos Lake, and many smaller lakes in the area, there are plentiful cottonwood trees which turn yellow and gold. (The featured photo above is of the Similkameen River.) Both west of the Okanogan River valley in the Cascade Mountains foothills and east of the valley in the Okanogan Highlands, there are yellow and orange aspens and tall yellow western larch trees. Sumac and other smaller shrubs provide a splash of red.
Below are several images from the trip. In case you are interested in exactly where these images where shot, I’ll be sharing the locations for some on Photohound. Or drop me an email and I can give you the locations.
High Camp
Every November and December I try to edit the photos that I took for the year in preparation of sending them in for copyright registration. This gives me a good opportunity to find a few good images that I hadn’t really looked at or worked with earlier in the year. This year, I took a solo backpacking trip to High Camp on Mount Adams in late August. After I returned, I barely looked at the images I took because I was preparing for our trip to the Tetons and Yellowstone in September. So, with the year-end editing, I finally took a good look at the images from my Mount Adams trip and thought I’d post a few.
High Camp is located on the north side of Mount Adams inside the Mount Adams Wilderness Area. It is just shy of 7,000 feet in elevation and is about as high on the mountain you can go without a climber’s permit (required above 7,000 feet). Of course, the view of Mount Adams is fantastic, but it also has good views of Mount Saint Helens to the west and Mount Rainier to the north. High Camp is located at the edge of a large alpine meadow and great wildflower fields in August. This year, I was a bit late for the wildflower show. There were wildflower present, but it was definitely past the peak.
High Camp is a 10-mile roundtrip hike, via the Killen Creek Trail off of Forest Road 2329, with an elevation gain of 2,300 feet. Much of the elevation gain occurs in the final two miles, where the High Camp Trail branches off the Pacific Crest Trail. Though a popular spot, there are plenty of places to camp at High Camp. I picked a spot slightly sheltered by trees that still had a view of Adams to the front and Rainier to the back. The photos I’ve included with this post give a visual journey of a evening, night, and morning at High Camp.
You can read a little more about it and see a few more photos in my spot description of High Camp on Photohound.
The trail crosses a scree slope just below High Camp.
Moonrise over the shoulder of Mount Adams at sunset.
Mount Adams during the blue hour
Milky Way over Mount Adams shortly after moon set
Mountain goats lit by the rising sun on the shoulder of Mount Adams
Mount Saint Helens at sun rise
Mount Rainier at sun rise
Rainier Moon Success
After trying for about a year, I finally captured the shot of the full moon (or almost full moon) rising over Mount Rainier. I’ve discussed my various attempts at capturing this shot in several previous posts, including this one from August 2019 and this one from earlier this year. Using the Photographers Ephemeris, I calculated what days the nearly full moon will rise behind Mount Rainier from spots near to Tacoma. This happens every year in June, July, and August.
I say almost full moon because I wanted to capture the moon just before sunset, and on day of the actual full moon, it ususally rises after sunset. The shots here were taken two days before the official full moon. My other attempts, described below, were the day before the full moon.
Last August, I went to the Fox Island Bridge along with several friends to capture the rising moon. We did see the moon rise behind Rainier, but the clouds partially obscured the moon and the light on the mountain itself was not optimal. I went again last June and had similar results. In July, I again met two friends, this time at Dune Park in Tacoma. However, the mountain and the rising moon were not visible due to clouds (though I did get some other worthwhile shots).
Finally, last month I had success, as you can see from the shot above and those below. Once again I journeyed to Dune Park, and all the necessary elements for a successful shot fell into place. I had the added bonus of seeing a dolphin frolicking off the park’s shores – the first time I’ve ever seen a dolphin there. Were the shots worth waiting and planning over an entire year? You be the judge.
Principles of Photographic Improvisation – Say Yes
I’m currently reading The Soul of the Camera, the Photographer’s Place in Picture-Making by David duChemin. This book is full of nuggets of photographic wisdom, and I can highly recommend it to any photographer who wants to improve their game. You will not find much in the way of technical details about how to shoot great images. Instead, duChemin discusses the photographer’s mind and it relationship to picture-making.
There are easily dozens of blog post topics I could cover based on this book, but for now I’ll discuss his four “rules” or “principles” of photographic improvisation; the first of which is to agree or to say “yes” and not “no.” That is, say yes to the scene in front of you even if it was not what you expected or intended. You could say this is to go with the flow (which duChemin also talks about earlier in the book). Say yes to photographing what the world gives you rather than turning your back on the scene and giving up because it isn’t what you wanted. Accept what’s there and make the most of it.
Not much of the moon could be seen behind Rainier earlier this month due to clouds
A couple weeks ago, I went over to Fox Island Bridge to take a photo of Mount Rainier with the full moon rising behind it right before sunset. This situation only happens on two days each year: the day before the full moon in both June and August. Last August I tried for the same shot with only limited success. I was disappointed from that shoot, and that probably set me up to ignore the principle of saying yes. The weather was not ideal, and the view of the moon was not very good. I snapped a few shots, including the shown here, and packed up and went home disappointed. I failed to look for what else nature might be offering up. It was a few days later that I read about duChemin’s first principle.
I should have known better even before reading the book. I had a similar idea earlier this year. Back in February, I wanted to photograph the full moon setting behind the Olympic Mountains at sunrise. On the appointed day, I got up early and drove across town to Brown’s Point in Northeast Tacoma. When I got there, the Olympics, let alone the moon, were obscured by clouds. I climbed back in the car and headed toward home, thinking that perhaps I still might get some decent sunrise shots from the Cliff House parking lot. Sure enough, Mount Rainier was visible and the rising sun painted it and the low hanging clouds, as shown on the featured shot above and the other images below. I didn’t get what I wanted, but I said yes to what was given, which wasn’t bad at all.
Sun Lakes – Dry Falls State Park
Last week, as part of the gradual easing of its stay-at-home order, Washington State opened up the majority of state parks for day-use only. Knowing that I was going into photography withdrawal, Tanya suggested we head out on a photo day. Even though the parks were open, it was suggested people stay local. Well, local is a relative term, and being a Westerner, I don’t mind driving several miles – in this case 200 miles one way. Is that local? It was still in the State of Washington and we didn’t need to stay overnight – that’s local to me.
So last Saturday we packed up a picnic and the camera gear and headed off to Sun Lakes – Dry Falls State Park. Why there? One, it has the raw beauty of the channeled scablands. But perhaps more importantly, I thought there wouldn’t be as many people there as in closer state parks. The weather was sunny and warm, and there was bound to be more than a few people out enjoying the state parks on this first weekend since the pandemic started that they were open. And while there were a fair number of people at the park, the park’s parking lots was not crowded – unlike the several hiking trailheads we passed on the way over the mountains that were overflowing with cars. In fact, the parking for the trail we took in Sun Lakes State Park only had one other car (out of four parking spots – so with us, it was half full; is that crowded?).
Drone shot of Alkali Lake
Sun Lakes State Park is located in the Grand Coulee. The park itself contains at least four lakes, and there are a number of other lakes further down the coulee. That gave this trip the added bonus of having a place to stop before reaching the park for me to fly my drone (drones are not allowed in Washington State Parks without a permit) while Tanya took Benson, our 8-month old, 102-pound Newfoundland, on his first swim. We picked a spot along Alkali Lake, and while Tanya and Benson frolicked in the water, I checked out Alkali Lake and Lake Lenore from the air.
Then it was on to Sun Lakes. The state park has a developed camping (closed) and day-use area on Park Lake with nice green grass and large shade trees. Instead of stopping there, we took the road to Deep Lake, which is developed with a small picnic area with natural vegetation and a boat launch. There were about 10 cars there and several dozen people swimming or fishing in the lake. So instead of taking the lakeside trail, we decided to take the Caribou Trail with climbs the hillside above the lake (not sure why it is named the Caribou Trail, caribou are definitely not native to this desert terrain).
Though I’ve been to Sun Lakes perhaps a dozen times before, I had never been to Deep Lake or on the Caribou Trail, so this was new territory to me. I knew the trail climbed above up toward the top of the coulee, but I didn’t know if it had a view of Deep Lake from up there. It is a relatively short trail, and the official trail ends when reaching the top of the cliffs. No view from there. So we kept walking on a faint unofficial trail, and then, eventually, set off cross country to find a view. And sure enough, we found a view of Deep Lake far below. We sat on the rocks, pulled out our water bottles, and drank in both water and scenery.
After shooting for 15 or 20 minutes, we headed back down the car. We don’t quite have our car setup organized well with the new dog yet. Trying to fit the dog and all the camera gear in the car along with food and drink (which must be separated from the dog) is a challenge. I decided to pack the camera backpack in a different spot after the hike, to be loaded after the dog got in. Unfortunately, after loading the dog, I forgot about the bag and started to back out onto the road only to run over something. You guessed it, my camera backpack!
Luckily, my camera was not in the pack, and a quick check didn’t show anything broken. We drove back to Deep Lake for our picnic dinner. There were a few less people, and we got a picnic table isolated from others. While eating, I checked out the gear in more detail. All the lens seemed to be working okay. However, there are cracks on a portion of the barrel of the Tamron 150-600 mm zoom. Also, the split neutral-density filter is history. Hopefully the lens can be repaired (currently the Tamron repair shop, which is in New York, is closed due to the pandemic).
After dinner, we drove over to Dry Falls Lake, which, not surprisingly, is located at the base of Dry Falls. It was an hour or so before sunset and the light on the cliffs of Dry Falls was particularly nice. The featured shot above is a 4-shot panorama of Dry Falls and Dry Falls Lake.
If you plan on making the trip out to Sun Lakes – Dry Falls State Park, be forewarned that the road to Dry Falls Lake is extremely rough. We did okay in our SUV, and I do think most regular passenger cars would make it, but some cars without much ground clearance could have difficulties. The road to Deep Lake is paved.
We left before sunset so we could get home before 11 pm. All in all, even with the the misadventure with my camera backpack, it was a good day. As always, I welcome your comments.
The view of Deep Lake from near the end of the Caribou Trail.
Telephoto shot of some of the cliffs along Deep Lake.
This is the west end of Deep Lake. The picnic area is in the cottonwood trees next to the boat launch.
Some of the cliffs near Dry Falls Lake.
Wide-angle shot of Dry Falls and Dry Falls Lake
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