Prusik Peak

A few minutes' walk from our campsite on Lake Vivianne I found this view of Prusik Peak. There was just enough of a breeze to break up a nice smooth reflection, so I located a boulder with a lot of texture as a foreground instead. Not long after I made this photograph, we packed up our camp and headed back toward the trail head.

Though I wish that I had a color version of this, I find the black and white image has a texture and timelessness that appeals to me. I actually did expose two sheets of Astia (color slide film, for the non-film folks reading this), but the first one I lost because the clasp on the Quickload envelope jammed in the film holder, and the second came back from the lab black... I probably neglected to reset the shutter when I put the second sheet in.

SoFoBoMo: DONE!

I finished my book!

True, the layout is very simple, and there aren't any nifty interactive features, video, music, or that sort of thing, but since it's my first book, I don't mind that.

I may go back and create another version that includes actual photo essays, but for a first book, I'm pretty happy with this effort, because I succeeded, a day early.

For those of you who take the time to check my book out, I hope you enjoy it!

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: Thoughts

Since it's nearly time for SoFoBoMo 2009 to start, I suppose I should start thinking about what I'm going to do... 

As far as software goes, I'm using InDesign. I used it to create the one edition that I handled of the newsletter for the North Bethesda Camera Club in Maryland (I ended up moving to Seattle shortly after publishing it), so I've been through the learning curve already.

I would like to have a physical book as well as a PDF, so I'll probably get some prints done; since I'm most likely going to be hosting my web site on SmugMug, or at least using SmugMug as my back-end, I'll give their partner a try to see how they do.

These pictures are of flowers around my condominium complex. I suppse these are further signs that spring really is here at last.

I used my 105mm Nikon Micro lens with a Nikon 2x teleconverter. There was a bit of a breeze, so I used 1/250th shutter speed and aimed my Metz flash into the silver side of my reflector to get enough light to freeze their movement.

Spring is here at last!

One of my friends organized a trip up to Mount Vernon on Friday. I left Seattle at around 4:25am, met up with the crew, and arrived in Mount Vernon at around 6:15. We puttered around a bit, looking for the "best" daffodil field, and parked.

The "best" daffodil field is a tough one to determine, because they don't look that different from each other. The one picked had a bit of a hill, and more space for us to park than the others. :)

The first shot here is an attempted HDR, showing the sky, the flowers, and one of the farmhouses in the area. I merged the HDR in Photoshop CS4. It seems to work fairly well; I'll have to keep experimenting. I have a lot to learn about working with HDR images.

Although I did do come up with some wide-angle shots like the one above, most of my images are, as usual, close-ups.

I found this bug while setting up a close-up on one of the many daffodils in full bloom. The insect didn't move while I set up the shot, so I had plenty of time, one advantage of being out there so early in the morning.

I don't know whether the insect was hiding there, or feeding. Possibly both. I need to learn more about daffodils and insects, I suppose :)

This was some dew that I found on one of the daffodils. I like seeking out little details like this, there's always something new to discover if you look closely enough!

The hard part is setting up the shots, more than just finding them. With the magnification that I was using (Nikon 105mm VR Micro + Nikon 2x teleconverter), there was very little depth of field available, so I couldn't get all of the dew drops in focus. Instead I had to pick one, and attempt to arrange a composition around them that that didn't require that the rest of them be sharp. Even then, it wasn't an obvious setup, and it took several tries to get it to this point. I'm still not entirely satisfied with this image, because I think it needs to be sharper.

I'll get a second chance when we go back to the Mount Vernon area in search of tulips. :)

Photography Books

I have signed up to do SoFoBoMo 2009. For more information on it, look at:

http://sofobomo.org/2009 and for my specific page, http://sofobomo.org/2009/books/RakeshMalik/

During the February ArtWalk in Pioneer Square, I showed my prints to the folks at the National Parks Conservation Association (http://www.npca.org/northwest/) and they liked them enough that we started discussing the possibility showing my work there in fall. They interested in a show focussed on Mount Saint Helens, because they are working to raise interest in getting Mount Saint Helens promote from the status of National Volcanic Monument to National Park, to improve its budget and to provide more protection for its environment.

So when I spoke about this with the friend who is helping me design my web site, he suggested also writing a book about it. Since I thought that was a good idea, I mentioned it to the NPCA folks, and it seems that they might be interested in helping me out with it. So I'm going to work on putting together a book about Mount Saint Helens this year.

The photograph above is one that I took tonight at Golden Gardens Park near sunset.

Kitty Portraits

A few days ago I purchased a set of Elinchrom SkyPort radio triggers, a Wescott double-folding umbrella, a Justin clamp, and a Manfrotto Nano light stand. Naturally, that meant that I had to play with my new toys, and who better to try my first portrait lighting setups on than my cats? :)

They're not really camera shy, more camera curious; they like to investigate the gear when I pull it out, especially when I turn the lens in their direction.

So, I set up the light stand, flash, and umbrella, and waited. In case you're curious, I put the flash, with a hot-shoe adapter, on the ballhead on the Justin Clamp, bolted the Justin clamp onto the light stand, and used the clamp to hold the umbrella.

After setting the gear up I waited until the cats got over their curiosity and started napping. Loki took up his usual spot on the back of the futon, and I took the opportunity to get some shots. He didn't seem to be bothered much by the flash. I used my 105mm VR macro lens and my D300. The SkyPorts triggered the Metz flash flawlessly once I set it to manual mode, and gave me plenty of light.

Usually Calypso is the easier of the two to photograph, because she's more placid, but last night she was being either frisky, or in my lap. Even so, she did pause long enough to let me take a picture or two, and I realized that I should have turned down the power on the flash even more; her white fur is very white :)

Mount Baker

It has been much too long since my last post. I haven't been doing as much landscape photography lately either, so it was about high time I did some.

I had planned on doing the Boulder River hike today, but it's not accessible right now; apparently not many of the Darrington area hikes are. So instead, plan B became a trip to Orcas Island.

When we left Seattle, the fog was almost thick enough to cut with a knife. It stayed with us for the entire drive to Anacortes. About five minutes after the ferry pulled out of the quay, the fog cleared and gave us great views of the island we were passing. It also gave us a nearly crystal clear view of Mount Baker.

It seemed like a promising start.

At Orcas Island, we headed for Moran State Park, and followed the roads toward Mount Constitution. There some snow on the road, but not much... until we reached a closed gate. We parked there and walked the remaining 1.2 miles or so; it was a pretty easy jaunt up the road.

When we arrived, we found a dazzling view of the North Cascades. Though it was almost lost in the haze, we could even see Mount Rainier in the distnance, and one peak that we think was Glacier Peak.

The layer of clouds over the straight was also interesting; throughout most of the afternoon, it broke up as it passed Orcas Island, but as the evening progressed, the ragged edge started moving eastward, eventually filling the strait below us, yielding the sight I showed above.

In other semi-related news, I now have six prints up at Energy Cafe in Ballard. Printed by Neil Buckland at Luemars, coated with a protoctive and glossy coating material and glued onto 24x30 inch pieces of plexiglass, they look very detailed and very vibrant. If you get a chance, head over and let me know what you think :)

I hope that the sheets I exposed today come out well, so that I can add some images of Mount Baker to my small but growing collection of prints.

My FIrst Print is UP!

Although this image is not new, the print is. Neal Buckland at

www.mimeosquare.com printed it for me on canvas at 42x50 inches,

coated it, and had it stretched onto a frame for display.

It's now hanging at Energy Espresso in Ballard, and it looks

quite impressive, better than I had anticipated.

It was expensive, but hopefully someone will like

the results enough to buy it :)

White Mountains

The rising sun over the ridge, seen from an overlook in Bear Notch, in White Mountain National Forest.

I spent most of last week in the White Mountains with Tony Sweet's photography workshop. The group consisted of ten students, with Tony Sweet and Susan Milestone as our instructors.

In the mornings, we went out to the overlooks to photograph the magic light on the mountainsides, so we were out bright and early. We headed over to a second location after the dawn to shoot some more, and then broke for brunch. In the afternoons, we showed some our images for critique, and then we went out and did some sunset photography.

The critiques were great, because in addition to getting some feedback on our images shown on a big screen, we also got a chance to see what everyone else in the group had come up with in the same places.

The other photographers in the group were quite talented. Seeing their work was very inspiring.

The shot above is from the second morning. While shooting the hillside as the rising sun cast its soft morning light on the hillsides with the developing color, I saw the sun beginning to crest the ridge to my left, and quickly swung the camera over and captured it, intentionally leaving the aperture at its smallest (f/22) and letting the foreground fade to a silhouette.

A leaf closeup, shot through
a frame of reddening maple leaves.

This was from the first day. Tony and Susan were showing us how to do a "shoot through" where you use an extremely out of focus foreground to frame the subject with washes of translucent color. Susan got us started framing white birch trunks with coloring leaves, but I wasn't having much success with that. Instead, I started framing green leaves with colored leaves, and ended up with this, which I was quite pleased with.

Naturally, I have quite a few more images to sift through, so I will be posting more of them over time.

Phantom Ship

The Phantom Ship is a remnant of Mount Mazama's original cone before it's cataclysmic Plinian eruption 7700 years ago. Whent he dome collapsed, some of the magma dikes survived, and this is one of them. The water immediately around it is only around 20 feet deep, but only 40 or 50 feet away from it, the depth increases drastically to over 1000 feet.

It really looks like a tri-masted square-rigger, and it's even about the right size, and its spires are nearly the right height for the masts.

The only way to get close to it is to take one of the ranger-guided boat tours around the lake. The park service only allows its tourboats, one research vessel, and a their skiff in the water, so there aren't that many options for exploring within the lake. Around it of course, you can explore to your heart's content, and there's a lot to explore in that park.

Watercolor

The water in Crater Lake really does look that blue. Since the walls of the caldera are so steep, it the gradations in color are suprisingly sharp. Some of the overlooks near the Crater Lake Lodge give you a view of such an area, and that's what caught my eye here. Since the deep, blue color is from a combination of reflected sky and scattering in the water, the deeper the water, the bluer it looks.

Blazing Star

At Lava Beds National Monument, my mother and I hiked to the summit of Schonchin Butte, the one cinder cone in the monument that you're allowed to hike on. There is a fire lookout station at the top of the 700-foot-high butte, but there was no ranger on duty when we made the trip.

The view from the summit is impressive. You can see Mount Shasta quite clearly from there, as seen in this photograph. In this view, you can also see some of the Medicine Lake Volcano, which has an enormous 800-square-mile footprint, but not that much height, only around 4000 feet.


And here is an exmple of a blazing star (Mentzelia laevicaulis).

The summit of this cinder cone is pretty incredible. On the one hand, it's not much but a pile of tephra and pumice with a huge lava flow originating at its base, but at the same time, it has a surprising amount of vegetation on it. And yet, to the northeast, you can see the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge alongside the fertile farmlands of Tule Lake.

Aavlanche Lilly

Here is a shot of an avalanche lilly that I captured during the last hike to Van Trump Park. It had become cold and rainy while we ate lunch, so we weren't all that keen on lingering, but I couldn't resist these beautiful flowers. Though I regret not being able to get a good shot of the south summit of Mt. Rainier, known as Point Success, at least I got one of these!

I used my usual macro setup, the 105mm VR macro lens with my Metz flash aimed into my reflector (silver side) that Kelli held for me. Because I was raining, I shot this one hand-held.

Newberry National Volcanic Monument

We stopped at the Lava Lands visitor center on the way back up north from Klamath Falls. It ended up being a very worthwhile stop, even though we didn't have time to explore the whole place; I've heard that Benhma Falls, a direct result of the lava flow here, is very picturesque. This flow is from a parasitic cinder cone, formed on the flanks of the volcano whose summit lies nearly 20 miles southeast. Yes, it's a huge volcano, occupying close to 500 square miles, and littered cinder and spatter cones.

The Lava Lands visitor center is near Lava Butte, which also has a road leading to its summit, with a trail circumnavigating the summit crater, as well as a paved trail meandering through a small section of the lava flow.

These shots are definitely record shots. The light was pretty harsh when we were there in the middle of the afternoon with a nearly cloudless sky.

Here is an image showing part of the lava field, with the Mount Bachelor and the Three Sisters on the horizon.




In the next image, the forked tree trunk in the foreground is framing Mount Bachelor. The other mountains are the Three Sisters, with Broken Top in the foreground.





The final image is of a bush that I have not yet identified, growing in the lava bed, with the same set of mountains in the background.

Back from Oregon

I'm back from a week in southern Oregon, specifically Klamath Falls. I'm a bit behind on blog postings, still needing to post on the trip to Mount Dickerman, and the trip to Hurricane Hill.

However, right since Oregon is more fresh on my mind, I might as well start there :)

The image above is a stitched panorama shot from Garfield Peak in Crater Lake National Park. It's a moderate hike starting at the Crater Lake Lodge, with a total round trip of around 3.3 miles. Garfield Peak is not the highest in the park or even the highest on the rim of the caldera, but it offers great views of Wizard Island and the lake, as well as of the Phantom Ship. The mountain on the right in the panorama is Mount Thielsen, another majestic peak in the Oregon Cascades.

You don't need exotic places

To find interesting subjects. I found this spider perched on a flower right outside my front door while I was unloading my gear from my car, so I took a few minutes out to photograph it, while my cat Calypso kept calling me from inside. She loves attention and does not like to be denied :)
I used my d80 with the Nikon 105mm VR micro and a Nikon 2x teleconverter. I held my reflector above the spider and aimed my flash into it to light the spider.
If anyone reading this can help identify this spider, I would appreciate it. I'm certainly not an expert at identifying arachnids, but I would like to learn!

Mount Saint Helens

We left Seattle at midnight, at the very end of Triskadekaphobia Day, also known as Friday the 13th. When we arrived at around 3am, the sky was very dark, and we marvelled at the intensity of the stars, the fact that we could clearly see the Milky Way while we put on our hiking boots and all that. The sky lightened quickly though, so we didn't get very many star shots.

The sky was very clear, as we were above the thick clouds in the valleys. By the pre-dawn light, we could see the dense layer of clouds that filled the north fork of the Toutle River Valley; normally an expanse of desolation five miles wide, this time it looked like a sea of clouds.

Portrait of a Rattlesnake

I went to the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains over the weekend with a fellow photographer (http://www.flickr.com/photos/27336152@N00/), and he introduced me to this spot in the desert.

It was not a particularly warm day, but the sun came out for a while toward late morning, and we found several rattlesnakes sunning themselves on the rocks. One in particular was surprisingly cooperative, allowing us to take our time to get the shots framed and focussed.

Birds Not in Flight

And sometimes it seems like they know that they're being photographed; this guy kept moving around every time we got a lock on him. Of course, since I was stuck with a shutter speed that ranged between half a second and several seconds, his (her?) constant motion lead to some blur no matter how carefully I focussed.

Oh well... he (or she) was a very elegant bird, even if I didn't get a particularly good photograph that night.