I was selected as one of 20 photographers to be featured on Photoshelter’s home page this month. Photoshelter is the site that hosts my photographs for rights-managed licensing and online stock sales. From Photoshelter: “… you’re just one of 20 members selected to represent our community of 60,000 photographers this month.”
They have selected the image of a black-necked stilt chick below to represent my work.
Last month my wife and I got a chance to visit Crater Lake National Park in southern Oregon. I had been several times before, but never armed with the digital equipment of today. Although I knew there would still be snow in July, I was surprised at how much was still there.
Snow was several feet deep in the forest, and drifts up to 10 feet deep still had the eastern rim road closed for the foreseeable future. In fact, it even snowed on us while we were there – something I was certainly not expecting in July. Thankfully I have a sensible wife who had booked us into a cabin – it saved us from camping in the mud between the snow drifts that covered the camp ground! And the snow really does add to the scenery.
At night, the temperature dropped below freezing, and the wind picked up. While most sane people were in the lodge enjoying an after dinner drink around the fire, I was standing at the rim freezing while waiting for the sun to set. Luckily I got some nice colors that made the temporary discomfort worthwhile.
Crater Lake is most famous for its amazingly deep blue color. This color comes from the clarity of the water (the lake water comes only from rain and snow melt) and depth of the lake (over 1900 feet deep). Blue is the last color of the spectrum to be absorbed as light passes through water. It is this intense blue that is reflected up from the depths of the lake. In fact, Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States and one of the clearest in the entire world.
It was a great trip, and inspired us to go back for some hiking when there is less snow. It might also be fun to do a multi-day cross-country ski trip around the rim. In spite of the weather (or maybe because of it), it was a pleasure to see Oregon’s only National Park. See the entire Crater Lake National Park gallery.
This week’s photo was taken last month a couple of hours after sunrise, from the north of the mountain. The Mount Shasta area is very photogenic, with numerous waterfalls and views of the mountain.
I was blessed with a clear morning. I had planned on a sunrise shot, but my progress out of the Bay Area was severely hampered by a grass fire closing the freeway. As a result, my wife and I got into Weed extremely late the night before. Even though I missed sunrise, I managed to get the shot before the harshest light of the day.
It has been a very busy (and sleepless) couple of weeks for me, as I’ve been trying to keep up with watching the Tour de France while keeping up with my current work load. That translates to earlier mornings and later nights! I’ve been busily processing photos from a recent trip to Oregon, and I’ll have some of those shots posted soon. For now, please enjoy a couple of adolescent Canada goose photos from before the trip.
These goose siblings were lined up behind a long puddle, taking a break from gorging themselves on grass to drink. In the photo below you can see one of the parents looming in the background. To drink, they would sip water to fill their beaks, and then tilt their head backward to let the water run down their throats.
In both of these photos, I stopped down the aperture to f/9 in order to get a bigger depth of field. I knew this was needed to have any chance of catching both geese in focus. In the first photo, the difference in distance from the focal plane was greater than the second photo, throwing the sibling farther from the camera into soft focus. The photo still succeeds however, as the closer sibling is in sharp focus. At least the second goose is easily distinguishable here – if I had gone with a larger aperture, the second goose would have been blurred away into the background.
