SoFoBoMo: Loowit

This was my first sight of the mountain, from the Silver Lake visitors' center. It was also the first time I had a chance to see it with that much snow.

This is the view from the Hofstadt Bluffs visitors' center. I wish there had been some clouds in the sky, but with nature photography you have to work with what nature gives you.

I find the new spring leaves on the stands of forest growing atop the landslide debris in the Toutle River Valley makes for a striking contrast amidst the devastation. The evening light gave their foliage a soft glow, and the snow covering the shattered stratovolcano gave it an air of peace and tranquility.

I also highly recommend the Fire Mountain Grill, at the Hofstadt Bluffs visitors' center. I ate a delicious dinner on their porch while watching this view.

No matter how many times I get a view of this, I suspect that I will never tire of it. I am also planning a Mount Margaret backcountry trip, intent on finding a campsite with a crater view so that I can get some more views of it.

This was my third SoFoBoMo photo safari. I'm now up to 22 images for the book, so I think that I'm making excellent progress, and I have a few slides to get processed as well. Now I just have to start working on the book layout. I'll most likely keep the layout fairly simple for my first crack at making a book. Maybe my second effort will be more ambitious, but that's for another time, after I'm done with this one.

SoFoBoMo: Point of the Arches

My first SoFoBoMo photo safari was quite succesful.

My friend and I went out to Neah Bay, 

and hiked out to Shi Shi. We

walked along the beach and found 

a camp site near Point of the Arches.

After setting up camp, we spent some time 

wandering about the tide pools

while the tide was nice and low, which 

kept us busy until the sun set.

The haze kept us from seeing the moon rise, 

so we just went to bed and

awoke at 4am hoping to see the moonset. 

The overcast took care of that

though, so we couldn't see the moon in the morning, either.

The rising sun burned off enough of the 

cloud cover to give us some nice soft

morning light, so we got some good 

photo opportunities during that

period. The morning tide was very low, so we 

were able to explore the tide pools

some more, and also get some alternate 

views of the sea stacks from

close up.

We found that little crab early in the morning after the sunrise.

Naturally, I'd left my macro lens back at the tent, so I used

the lens I had on the camera, which was my wide angle. It

worked out better than I hoped.

The waves were picturesque, and the fog layer on the

mountains was beautiful.

This hermit crab was feasting on this, as far as I can

tell. 

This ended up being one of my favorite shots from the trip.

That tree made its way into quite a few of my images, both at

sunset and at sunrise.

So my SoFoBoMo month has begun. It is on :)

SoFoBoMo: Update... starting soon

Now that SoFoBoMo has officially begun, it's about time I got mine started. I'm not going to worry about upgrading my copy of InDesign, CS3 will do the job just fine.

I've been thinking about the scope of my project a bit. I realized that I may not be able to make it out to eastern Washington during the specified time period... and I'm going to Victoria next weekend.

That means that it won't be a full portrait of Washington, not that one could do justice to Washington in a month!

This weekend I'm heading to the Pacific Coast, specifically to Point of the Arches, and so I'm going to start my project with that trip. Next weekend's trip to Victoria should yield some interesting new images, and for Memorial Day Weekend, I'm planning to be at Mount Saint Helens. The first week in June, I'm going to the Enchanted Valley, and on the first weekend in June, I'll be attending a Feeding Crane Kung-Fu seminar with Liu Chang. I probably won't get to do much photography there, but you never know.

Rounding out my photography trips, I'm going to take a few dawn and possibly dusk trips to the Washington Park Arboretum, and I'll probably pay a visit to Kubota Gardens as well.

These are from the grounds at my condo complex. We have a pretty nice display of flowers in bloom at the moment. It just goes to show, you don't have to go far to find worthwhile subjects to photograph!