I don’t want to go into details here, but a couple of things have kept me from blogging.

The big one has been my wife’s illness. I’ve spent a good part of the past months either at one of several hospitals or at home taking care of my son. My wife is not 100% yet, but she is home and starting to pick back up where she left off.

In the meantime after working 19 years at a small midwestern medical lab, I’ve lost my job. The lab was bought out by a much larger national lab and was slowly absorbed. I knew where all the data was kept so I lasted for quite a while, but once it all got moved over to their data center, I wasn’t needed anymore.

I decided to take a chance and use this as an oppurtunity to take a break from computers and see if I can make it on my own as a photographer. Yikes!

To make this work I’ll need to branch out from the artsy stuff I’ve been doing and get into portraiture and commercial work – something that might actually afford me an income. I decided I need a more general name for the business to go along. After playing around with lots of crazy ideas, I finally decided to keep it simple and just name it Mark Whitney Photography.

I’ve started a new blog at http://markwhitneyphotography.wordpress.com/ and a new website at www.markwhitneyphotography.com.

It’s all in the early stages so bear with me as I get it all ramped up. I need to get things going soon - living off severance and savings with no income is getting real scary.

I’m going to leave Forest Rat here, but any new posts will be over at the new blog. I’d love it if you checked it out.

Thanks for all your support and kind comments over the years and I hope to continue to hear from you.

MDW

My last post had photos of my son’s toys. They are in black and white. I’ve really been into the monochrome thing lately and I leave my camera set that way more often than not. Flandrumhill commented that it was cool to see a child’s toys, which are almost always brightly colored, in monochrome. This got me thinking about something I’ve wrestled with for a long time.

What is it about black and white photographs that is so alluring? Is it because photos only came in monochrome for so long that there is a bias for it based on conditioning?

Although I’m sure this is partly the case, I don’t think it is the only factor. I can remember the advent of color TV, however many people have grown up knowing pretty much nothing but color imagery in all forms of media and yet there is still an appreciation for black and white. The art of Sumi-e painting is traditionally done in monochrome and has been that way for much longer than photography has existed even though colored inks are and were available.

Fencer in his blog was playing around with some photos to use as a basis for a watercolor painting and delved into monochrome versions as a way to analyse the scene. Lookingforbeauty describes art works that while not exactly black and white, still work with a reduced palette of just two tones.

An internet search or two pulled up nothing much in the way of research into the various reactions people have to monochrome versus color photographs. A few studies tried to quantify the amount of information that could be conveyed through color vs monochrome images. Color seems to win out in the strict “did the viewer get the point of that bar graph” category.

Still mere information transfer is not my interest. I want to know about the emotional impact, the subtle communication of form and texture, and the sense of involvement evoked by an image.

Did you know that Ansel Adams produced over 3500 color images? Have you ever seen one? ’nuff said.

In a review of the book “Ansel Adams in Color” (which contains 59 color landscapes by Adams selected by Harry Callahan) for Booklist magazine, Gretchen Garner wrote: For Adams, black-and-white was an abstract medium and color was inseparable from banal realism.

“Banal realism” seems to sum it up for me. There are many many landscape/nature photographers out there working in color and they produce many beautiful images everyday. People rave about these images. But how many of the photos are more than just  reproductions? Most of the images are beautiful because the scenes themselves are beautiful, but after a few seconds viewing, I realize that I’ve seen pretty much the same images dozens of times before. I quickly lose interest after the initial attraction of colored eye candy.

It is extremely difficult to avoid being overwhelmed by the “reality” of color photography, particularly in landscape work. It can be done, but it ain’t easy. Even Adams had trouble breaking free from the tyranny of color.

Working in black and white is no panacea, but I think it allows the photographer to hold on to a significant portion of the ”reality” while at the same time abstracting the scene. This abstraction takes away the reproduction factor and thus provides a space for the photographer’s creativity to come to the fore. A free space with limitless possibilities yet paradoxically with fixed boundaries.

A black and white image can so easily fall flat. Without the support of eye-catching colors, merely capturing the scene is rarely enough. Now comes the difficult job of making something with the pieces one has left. Unique compositions, attention to form and pattern, subtleties of light and shadow, and consideration of the smallest details become all important.

I love color. I love to shoot in color. For a long time all I ever shot was color, but also from early on I felt the restrictions of color. I struggled to find fresh perspectives to avoid scene reproduction – only occasionally succeeding. I also continued to experiment with black and white despite my poor results with it. It takes a different kind of “eye” to see beyond color. I hope I am finally starting to develop that ability.

I’m not going to give up color completely and my attempts at black and white often fail, but the variety and the challenge it brings can only improve my image making.

MDW

I haven’t been out in the woods to take any photos lately. It seems I am always busy or the weather is bad or I am out of town. While searching through my hard disk for a lost file, I ran across some images that I had taken back in March that I never finished. I took them and then forgot about them. Then I found them again. And then I forgot about them again for another couple of weeks and now I finally went back and worked them up.

I was knocking around the house one day after lunch and felt like getting the camera out. I didn’t have time to go anywhere so I just looked near at hand for subjects. The low arcing early spring sun was reaching through the windows deep into the house. What it showed up for me were my son’s toys.

My son is not into putting his toys away when he is done with them. He just drops them where ever he happens to be standing and moves onto something else. As parents we try to discourage this kind of thing, but so far it has had no effect on him. Maybe in another eight years it will start to sink in – yeah right. The photo of the books is surprisingly neat – evidence of his mom cleaning up a bit.

This day the odd collections of stuff provided me with a way to record his presence without him being there. I could follow him around and get an image of him through the trail he left behind. You are what you play with sort of thing.

I’ve taken photos of his toys from time to time while photographing other things. This is the first time I concentrated on just his stuff.

MDW

A lot of times we think of nature as only what we can see from a scenic overlook. Now, I like a big panoramic landscape view as much as the next guy – lofty snow-capped mountain peaks behind a flower carpeted valley or a canyon filled with strange formations of red rock -  you know the kind of stuff I mean. These postcard views are nice, but there is way more to the story than that.

When I’m out walking in the woods it often strikes me that nature isn’t just a pretty backdrop for our human activities; there is life here that goes on quite apart from me or anyone else that happens to wander through. Flowers bloom whether there is anyone there to see them or not - trees grow, deer browse the underbrush, birds sing. There is a vast, beautiful, and complex world that we completely miss when we reduce nature to mere scenery.

I thought about this once again as I was wandering through one of my usual haunts the other day. I was feeling sluggish and tired. I had to push myself to keep climbing over stones and fallen logs and up and down ridges and gullies. I even took a nap next to a waterfall at lunch time. It turns out I was coming down with a virus and spent the next couple of days on the couch.

The illness was a bummer, but the early effects of it slowed me down so that I took the time to better appreciate the small hidden life of the forest. I would be hunkered down taking photos of a waterfall or an interesting tree root formation or something and then my mind would wander off somewhere and I would find myself just sitting and staring at the current lines on the surface of the water as it twisted among the stones.

At first glance the lines seem to always be the same, but watching them for a little longer reveals that they undulate back and forth across the flow of the water. I couldn’t tell if the fluctuations formed a repeating pattern or not.

I took some photos of a waterfall at very high shutter speeds to “freeze” the water. I noticed that in each photo the shape of the water looked different. I wonder if the water always falls in some complex pattern or if every instant in time is as unique from another as snow flakes?

I stared into a deep plunge pool – white and roiling at one end; smooth and clear as glass at the other. Instead of seeing it as a swimming hole for hikers to splash around in on a hot summer day, I understood it as a home for water striders magically skating over the surface and a place where frogs leap from the banks with a kerplop and kick and paw their way under the submerged leaf litter to hide and as a hatchery for tiny young fish darting into the shadows.

I watched for some time as a crawdad slowly made its way across the bottom of the pool. It was about 3 inches long and all rusty brown. The color matched almost perfectly the iron stained rocks. I wouldn’t have seen it at a glance. Only by watching the pool intently was I able to descry its subtle movements as it tip-toed along on its spiny legs until it vanished under the shadowy lip of a stone.

At another point I stood watching the light play across some stone ledges and movement caught my eye again. A newt rushed into view. He flitted in and out of gaps in the stones with staccato bursts of speed - in just a few seconds he was gone.

On the other end of the speed scale is the millipede. No speed bursts here. About 5 inches long and as big around as my pinky, the millipede just rolls along on all those legs. The movement ripples from one end of the body to the other like the crowd “wave” at a baseball game or a gear traveling down a screw - over and over again. I found it soothing to watch actually.

Next time you are outside, remember to stop and look intently once in a while. You don’t have to be miles away in the deep dark woods; a back yard or a park will do. Enjoy nature for itself rather than as a backdrop for our human activities.

MDW

From the corner of my eye I watch the white water fly swiftly past above my left shoulder. Curling around in front of me it playfully threatens to leap out of the stream, but it meets a stone wall, tall and flat and smooth, that gathers it up in a pile and sends it back the other way. Twisting and bumping side to side it runs away without ever leaving me behind.

The stone wall is black and lustrous where the spray keeps it wet.  A misty reflection of the water wavers in its mirrored surface. As the stone face rises from the water its color transitions from black through brown through rust to dry pale yellow. Cracks wander over its smooth surface branching and joining and then branching again.

A quick burst of cool wind flows down the gully, whispers something in my ear, and sets last Autumn’s brown leaves flying on its current. The floating bits of confetti follow the water; curling around me then dipping down in front almost touching the water and then again lifting up they escape over the stone wall succeeding where the water fails. Suddenly the wind stops for breath; the leaves abandoned, fall. Some land on the ground and sit waiting for the next wave of air, but some land in the water and keep flying along for a while until they lodge against a tree branch that has fallen into the water.

The sky is hazy -  the sun diffuse but warming. Small yellow flowers stretch tall above their brown winter blankets.

I watch the pines waving in the breeze. Birds hop from limb to limb. A hawk spirals through the sky. Everything but the water passes silently. I can hear only the water. The rest of the world is just images.

I put my head in my hands and close my eyes. I drift with the leaves and with the hawk. I think – about what I’m not sure. Images come and go in my mind; flowing and turning over and running away like the water – memories of the past, imaginings of the future, snatches of music. I wander in day dreams.

Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods. Here grow the wallflower and the violet. The squirrel will come and sit upon your knee, the logcock will wake you in the morning.  John  Muir

MDW

When the afternoon sunshine is streaming through the throng of comets, ever wasting, ever renewed, the marvelous fineness, firmness, and variety of their forms are beautifully revealed. At the top of the fall they seem to burst forth in irregular spurts from some grand, throbbing mountain heart. –  John Muir

Warm breezes and spring drenchings have driven away the shroud of winter burial and the clear waters have arisen with a shout.  I could not resist the invitation to join the throng so I have been out playing in the water – jumping, splashing, falling, laughing.

Early spring is a great time to be around the water personally, but it is bit hard on the camera; lots of water splashing and mist flying. The lenses constantly need cleaning. The water is everywhere and running fast making it difficult to capture without it becoming a formless blur.

Water leaps out of bed at the first hint of spring. Still tired from wild Autumn parties, trees like to lie about, grab some extra sack time, and ease into things. As they stand about the forest rubbing their bleary eyes, their still bare limbs cast stark bars of shadow across the stream – no gently dancing dapples of summer sun filtered through myriad leaves.

The unhindered sun flashes and sparkles across the constantly shifting mirror surface of the water. The intense bursts of light burn holes through the scene leaving spots that float on the inside of my eyes.

The early water is thick and muddy from its new excavations of the stream banks; later it runs crystal clear and icy cold. The stones are black and grey and blue. Winter’s hand has wiped them clean of living green and orange and brown. The colors will return, but not until things calm down a bit.

If you read just about any tutorial on how to photograph waterfalls, you will be told that it is extremely important to go out on an overcast day, maybe even a rainy day. If you are cursed with sunny weather, you should make sure that you only go out in the early morning or late afternoon so that the falls will likely be covered in shade. This evens out the light avoiding bright highlights and dark shadows. It lets you slow the shutter speed down and smooth out the water for that misty flow effect. The exposure of your photographs will be nice and even and Kodak approved.

Me, I like to go a different route. I love being out in the bright sun smack dab in the middle of the day. Working among the hard shadows and bright flares lets me isolate and highlight hidden features. I think that bright sunny days are when the water is happiest and I try to capture that in my photos. It’s tricky to get the camera to work in these conditions - I’m often disappointed when I’m unable to capture the image that I see in my mind.

When I do get what I want, the images certainly aren’t to everyone’s taste. High contrast, lots of solid black with no shadow detail, definitely not HDR, empty areas, bright flares, strange shapes – not what most people think of when they think nature photography. My wife worries that I’ve gone over to the dark side. Oh well.

MDW

“Now Bilbo, my boy,  fetch a lamp, and let’s have a little light on this!” On the table in the light of a big lamp with a red shade he spread a piece of parchment rather like a map… ’Five feet high the door and three may walk abreast’ say the runes, but Smaug could not creep into a hole that size, not even when he was a young dragon, certainly not after devouring so many of the dwarves and men of Dale… “It seems a great big hole to me,” squeaked Bilbo (who had no experience of dragons and only of hobbit-holes). He was getting excited and interested again, so that he forgot to keep his mouth shut. He loved maps, and in his hall there hung a large one of the Country Round with all his favorite walks marked on it in red ink. - The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

This morning I was reading Scott’s blog over at Cutthroat Stalker titled “A New Season’s Topography”. In it he waxes eloquent about the  ”possibilities and anticipation” of getting out a map and tracing routes to spring fly fishing spots along its lines. I could really relate to what he was saying. I love looking at maps and dreaming of the places I might go.

Bilbo the hobbit liked to stay at home and to be thought “respectable” by his neighbors, but nothing draws out from the soul the excitement and desire for adventure like a good map and so began his epic journey into the unknown.

Starting from any single point on a map the possibilities are endless – head north, south, east, west, or anywhere in between – follow a stream, a shoreline, a road, or a trail – follow a solid black line from town to town or wander through pathless expanses of green and brown guided by no more than a compass needle. Is the route you trace a familiar one like one of Bilbo’s favorite walks on the map in his hallway where each step is like a beloved old friend? Is it wild and new with sights you’ve never seen before and simply anything could happen?

You have to use your imagination with maps. This is the very best part about them. The description is there, but not the experience.  A map tells you where the rivers and the mountains are and shows you what is in between, but it leaves the rest to you. Its colors, lines, and symbols tantalizingly hint at something deeper and it draws you in and on. You imagine yourself moving along the route as you trace it out.

What color is the water in that stream? Is it clear and cold or is it rich and brown and rolling? Are there fish to be caught? How does the world look from the top of that mountain? Does all the land lay spread out in a wide panorama under a high clear dome of blue sky or is it all wet and misty overhung with rolling grey clouds? Do deer bound through that woods over there? Can you smell the resinous pine trees along that ridge on a hot summer’s day?

I’ve been wandering through the forest and fields since I was a kid so I’ve developed a pretty good sense of direction. A lot of it comes from just being aware of my surroundings as I walk. Of course on a sunny day figuring out the compass points is pretty easy. When the sky is overcast it is a little trickier and close attention has to be paid to the “lay of the land” and keeping track of landmarks. I never bother with a map in familiar areas.

On the other hand, I always study my maps before heading into a new area and I make sure to take them with me (as well as a good compass). Topographical maps from the US Geological Survey are the best thing since sliced bread. It almost makes it worth paying my taxes each year to support this resource. Natural Resources Canada provides topographical maps for you folks north of the border and I expect most nations around the world provide a similar service. These maps have been helping me find my destination for many years and have saved my butt from getting lost many a time. When you are alone in the forest miles from any sort of civilization, you don’t want to be relying on some little trail map in a brochure that you got from the park entrance gate, you want one of these babies.

Hey, a GPS device might be OK for getting from point A to point B following the same old route as everybody else, but where is the adventure in that? Where is the romance? Where is the self-reliance? Where is the imagination? Next time you’re heading out in the car or on foot, leave the electronics at home. Get yourself a good printed on a piece of paper map and a nice low tech compass and have yourself an adventure.

MDW

Searching for photographic inspiration, I’ve been browsing the Web looking at images. I always start out with recent works searching for what’s avant-garde, what’s new, what’s different, but I quickly tire of the tide of deadpan stares on twenty-something portraits, pics of sugar packets next to coffee cups, and heavy-handed HDRs of the swirly rocks at Antelope Canyon. Soon I find myself looking back to the early to mid twentieth century. This was a time of revolution for photography and a time when it began to be accepted as a true art form.

In 1888 George Eastman introduced the Kodak #1 camera and photography was changed forever. Once the dominion of a small group of professional and serious amateur photographers, photography was suddenly available to the average man on the street.  No more huge cameras to lug around, no more nasty chemicals, no muss – no fuss; a simple fixed focus box camera preloaded with roll film that could be sent in toto back to Kodak for processing and viola! you are a photographer.

By simplifying the apparatus and even processing the film for the consumer, he made photography accessible to millions of casual amateurs with no particular professional training, technical expertise, or aesthetic credentials… Within a few years of the Kodak’s introduction, snapshot photography became a national craze… By 1898, just ten years after the first Kodak was introduced, one photography journal estimated that over 1.5 million roll-film cameras had reached the hands of amateur shutter bugs. Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

In reaction to this tidal wave of kodakery, groups of “serious” photographers began promoting photography as a fine art form rather than just a hobby. Most notably Alfred Stieglitz formed a group called Photo-Secession in 1902. The group exhibited their work in New York and produced a magazine called “Camera Work”. Pictorial photographers wanted to emulate impressionistic paintings that were popular at the time and to emphasize the skill of the photographer in portraying an artistic vision rather than mere mechanical reproduction so they employed soft focus techniques, roughly textured papers, and lots of darkroom manipulation.

While in negotiations with the then director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, General Luigi Palma de Cesnola, Stieglitz recalled the General saying:

“Why, Mr. Stieglitz, you won’t insist that a photograph can possibly be a work of art… you are a fanatic.” Stieglitz replied that he was indeed a fanatic, “but that time will show that my fanaticism is not completely ill founded.”  Metropolitan Museum Bulletin

In 1910 the Albright Gallery bought 15 photographs from Stieglitz’s gallery and photography was on its way to becoming “art”.

Oddly enough by the time photography in the pictorial style came to earn its place in the official art world, the tide was already turning against its highly manipulated “painterly” roots. By the 1920s Stieglitz himself turned away from the style in favor of “just the straight goods” and in 1932 eleven photographers including Ansel Adams and Edward Weston formed Group f/64 with the express purpose of breaking with the vague impressionistic pictorial style in favor of sharp representations of the world. The designation f/64 was the smallest aperture of a view camera at the time thus providing the greatest sharpness and depth of field in photographs.

The f/64 group wanted to celebrate the camera’s ability to present the world as it was captured. This shifted the focus away from extreme darkroom manipulations intended to hide the true nature of the photograph and threw it onto the subject – its selection, its framing, and its lighting. Print making turned from soft focus and texturizing techniques to technical precision that could powerfully portray the essentials of the subject. This movement brought us terms like previsualization and the Zone System.

The turmoil of the 60s would eventually change the scene again as photographers turned against the rigorous requirements of “straight” photography and reverted back to heavy manipulation as in “postvisualization” where images are created in the darkroom from many random originals and even a turn back to regarding “snapshots” as an american folk art form.

I think I’ll stop here for now. Things start to get pretty messy about this time and it is going to take some sorting out before I can write anything coherent about it.

MDW

I’m kind of in a funk right now with life in general and (especially for the purposes of this blog) my photography and in a wider sense the whole medium of photography.

I always have a love-hate relationship with my work. Some days I look at the images on my walls or on my monitor and I think, “These aren’t too shabby – maybe I’m getting the hang of this”, but the next day I look again and think, “Time to give it up dude – this stuff is just way bad”.

One of these emotions would be good about now. Instead I’m just disinterested – well maybe not disinterested really, I’m still very interested in photographic imagery - more like discouraged? tired? dissatisfied? gripped with a feeling of ennui? I don’t know.

I look at a lot of photos – I go to shows, surf the web, and read books. Nothing is really holding my interest these days. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I know I’m not seeing it.

Going back to the “old” masters helps some – Adams, Weston, Steichen, Horst, Link, Penn, Cartier-Bresson, etc.

I just pulled up Flickr. It tells me that over 6000 images were uploaded in the last minute. Yikes!

Photography started out as a technological novelty. It took many many years to gain enough respect to be considered an art form. Has digital technology overwhelmed the artistry so that photography is once again just a novelty?

Maybe there is a dividing line in the photography world. Maybe it has always been there.

Some of the hottest trends in digital camera features for the $3,500 and lower range are HD video, photo sharing technology, in camera image manipulation, sound recording, auto-focus, and even 3D photography.

On the other hand, ads for medium format digital cameras in the $10,000 and up range still tout image quality and true color rendition as major features. Someday I’ll win the lottery and be able to afford one.

I don’t really know what this post is about – just some random thoughts about photography that are running around in my brain right now. I promise that I’ll do something better next time.

MDW

I live only a little over an hour from Niagara Falls so I’ve visited them a lot through the years – childhood visits with my parents, trips with my own family, taking out-of-town visitors on the grand tour. I often gripe about the stupendous amount of commercialization surrounding the falls. I cringe each time I see the yards and yards of concrete, the casinos, the wax museums, the gift shops, the billboards, the lights, the whole carnival atmosphere; and yet the falls themselves are so amazing and so powerful that I keep going back.

I stand at the water’s edge and mentally block out all the crap around me, focusing on just the water. Taken all together somewhere around three-quarters of a million gallons of water flow over the falls every second. The water’s voice is a never-ending roar. The force of the water hitting bottom blasts a roiling cloud of mist back out of the gorge that can be seen from miles away. It can be overwhelming.

Back in late November I decided to go to the falls by myself. I have always gone with friends and family and only carried a point and shoot camera for tourist type shots. This time I decided to take my good camera and tripod and see what I could do. Being pretty far off season meant no crowds so I’d have room and time to fiddle around setting up shots. The temp was in the low 40s F, a bit chilly, but the sun was out so it actually was pretty nice in the afternoon.

I stuck to the American side this time. I just parked at the visitor center parking lot and walked wherever I was allowed. There is an elevator down to the river’s edge so that people can take boat tours close to the falls, but it was shut down for the season so I had to stay up on top. Sidewalks and bridges provide walking access across the main falls to Bridal Veil and on around close to one end of the Horseshoe falls. There wasn’t much wind so the mist could billow and swirl and float high into the sky which meant that my camera and I could stay relatively dry. Some days you just get soaked if you are down wind.

It was really quite enjoyable. With many of the “attractions” shut down and very few people around, I could relax and take my time. I tried to apply some of the principles of Sumi-e that I have been reading about.

Traditionally the ink used for painting Sumi-e comes in the form of a solid stick. The artist uses an inkstone to grind the solid and mixes it with varying amounts of water to create shades of color. The time it takes to prepare the inks is a perfect time for meditation. The mind can be cleared of the daily distractions and focused on the image to be painted.

Sumi-e is mostly painted from memory. The artist does not set up an easel in front of a flower bed and paint what is there. Instead the flowers are studied day after day to learn everything about them. Not only is the physical shape and color of the blossoms studied, but the artist attempts to learn the essence of them. To copy a flower exactly as it appears to the eye is one thing, but the key to great Sumi-e is to show something more – something that conveys the experience of the flower not just the image of it.

So the artist meditates to clear the mind, to think about the subject, to visualize the finished work. Ink painting is a once and done kind of thing. There is no erasing and no painting over. Once begun the image must be painted rhythmically, boldly, and confidently. Proper preparation of the materials and of the artist is essential.

I think that I already use some of the techniques of Sumi-e in my photography. I’ve never been one to carry my camera everywhere with me so that I can snap off images whenever something catches my eye. I generally only take my camera with me when I am specifically heading out to “take pictures”. Sometimes I just head out to see what I can find, but often I go to shoot a subject that I have seen before and have thought about how I might photograph it. I go into our old barn day after day and I see it in various lights and at various seasons. I notice the reflections, the dust floating in the slanting light from a window, the smell, the heat, the cold, the shadows, and the shapes. Then one day I decide to take my camera with me. Who knows why.

I have been to Niagara Falls many times. Although many of the visits are busy and chaotic, I always try to take some time to study the water. While planing this trip, I thought about where I might stand and what kind of exposures I might use. I thought about the photos I have taken before and what worked and what didn’t. When I arrived I didn’t just start snapping. I walked around studying the light and the water and thinking about what makes the falls so unique and amazing. I tried to capture the experience of the falls rather than just documenting the surface shapes.

I’m afraid I didn’t just take one shot of each subject and have done as in true Sumi-e form, but neither am I one to just fire off shots of everything on the assumption that if I take enough shots, a few of them have to turn out. I like to look with my eyes first and only bring up the camera when I think I have found something interesting; something that has a chance of “working”. The images from most of my trips come in clumps – I only take a few subjects, but I take many many shots of each one as I play with various combinations of shutter speed, aperture, framing, and lenses.

I photographed the falls for a few hours in the morning and then had lunch down the street at the Hard Rock Cafe. Before heading home I drove a couple of miles to a park along the river gorge. There is a place here where you can take a steep jumbled winding trail down the cliff face to the river’s edge. I spent a couple of hours climbing the rocks and exploring the rapids. At one point I was treated to a show of fish (steelhead I think) jumping up the rapids just like I’d seen in those nature shows about pacific salmon swimming up-stream to spawn. There weren’t zillions of them, but every few minutes one would pop up.

All in all it wasn’t a bad outing. It was way cooler (literally and figuratively) than being there in the summer. Maybe I’ll go back sometime this winter and check out the ice formations.

MDW