January Adventures

Well…it’s been a while.  I got pretty caught up in homework and teaching near the end of last term, and the blog definitely took a back seat to other priorities.  Not that I’m any less busy now, probably the opposite, but I wanted to put up some pictures.  Unfortunately, I haven’t had a whole lot of time for photography recently, and the weather hasn’t been very cooperative for weekend explorations.  However, the first day I was back in Eugene at the beginning of January, I didn’t have anything else to do, so I went out adventuring with one of my really good friends here in Oregon.

It was quite the trek, through various poorly kept and even more poorly marked forest service roads, but well worth it.  We stopped at one spot (near some scenic logging operations) on the way to look out over the valley, which was completely covered in low clouds:

Eventually, we made it to our destination: Kentucky Falls.  It was a beautiful hike that followed a stream through the Siuslaw National Forest. After about half a mile, we came to the lip of the upper falls, and about ten minutes of switchbacks later, were rewarded with this great view of the falls from the bottom:

The trail followed the stream from here past a series of rapids, and eventually brought us to the lower falls, which were truly awe-inspiring. We found ourselves down in a canyon, with fairly steep cliffs on three sides. Ahead, there was an outcropping that stuck out from the cliff. The stream here apparently breaks into two flows, each of which comes around one side of this outcropping and falls into the canyon. Unfortunately, the spray from the falls was so strong that I was only able to take a few shots before my lens was coated in water droplets, even about 100 feet away from the falls itself. This is probably the best shot I got (right half of the falls), including part of the viewing platform along the trail in the foreground:

After standing around admiring the falls for a while (and getting pretty soaked), we made the trek back to the car, which was almost entirely uphill in this direction. The trip back was mostly uneventful, except for a brief encounter with some snow flurries at higher elevations. Round trip, and including stops to get out of the car to look around and getting lost in the woods once, it was about a 5 hour trip there and back. It made for a long day, followed by dancing later that night, but it was definitely worth it.  This hike is definitely on my short list of things to do again once the weather turns nice.

-Ben

Still Water

This is another shot from the trip to Acadia earlier this summer.  This is Eagle Lake, near the middle of the park.  Polaraizer came in handy here to get the reflection.

-Ben

Snow in the Hills

After spending most of Saturday working inside due to the rain, I decided to go for a drive through the mountains Sunday afternoon.  Somewhat surprisingly, I ran through a snow shower up in the higher parts of the Cascades, plus some giant trees:

-Ben

Mountaintop Blossom

I haven’t had as much time for photography recently as I might like, so here’s another older shot.  This one comes from my adventures this past summer.  This photo was taken on the top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park in Maine.

Kind of an interesting division in both color and focus in the photo between the plant itself taking up most of the left side of the shot and the blurry background to the right.  I also like the water droplets on the flower petals.  They are probably left over from the extremely dense fog that was covering the mountain that morning.

Things are still busy here.  Lots of work to do, but I’m still making time to do fun things when I can. Last night, especially, was a lot of fun.  I ended up going out to dinner in downtown Eugene before going out to salsa and had a great time.  Good food, good music, good dancing, and good company

-Ben

Phantom Dancers

This picture comes from last spring when a couple of us were fooling around after a salsa lesson in Squires.  I had been playing around with different shutter speeds creating a nice blurring effect, when I decided to add the flash in as well.  I had to put on both the polarizer and the neutral density filter to lengthen the exposure to two full seconds.  This was taken using a 2nd-curtain flash, which means it went off at the end of the two seconds instead of at the beginning, which led to somewhat of a freeze-frame at the end of the dip, with a nice blur leading into it. It took four or five tries before we got the timing down and the dip actually corresponding to the flash firing.

Overall, it was a really cool effect, and I think this was pretty good for my first time trying it out.  Ideally I wouldn’t have been shooting straight at the door, which would get rid of the flash starburst in the center of the picture.

-Ben