Behind the clicks

Russell Lake at Jefferson Park

2019-11-19T01:19:00.000-05:00

Jefferson Park

"Drive 6 more miles on the gravel road to the trailhead, 4x4 vehicle recommended". I read that..multiple times...and then said to myself, how bad can it really be? I drove over plenty of gravel roads with my car..it will be just fine. Well, this was one of those times where it was not fine. Not fine by any measure. First two of those 6 miles were okay, but then gravel turned into giant boulders. What also didn't help were the deep tire groves on the road..which only meant my non-4x4 with next to nothing ground clearance car was running serious risk of getting its underside ripped off by all the rocks sticking out. Those 6 miles turned into a very long and stressful 1 hour drive. Unsurprisingly, at the trailhead, we were the only non-4x4 people there.

After the adventurous drive, the rest of the 11 mile hike seemed relatively easy; specially when you have a view like that to keep you company. Mt. Jefferson is easily the most handsome mountain in the northwest in my book. There is a ruggedness about it that you don't find in Rainier, Adams, or Hood. Around early summer, it sits right in the middle of monarch butterfly annual migration path. It was like walking through a sea of butterflies..as far as your eyes could see.

There was still quite a bit of snow on the mountain this time of the year. It was just beginning to melt, and that meant only one thing...mosquitoes! I wish we had not forgotten our bug spray. It was impossible to stop anywhere even for two minutes without a swarm around us.

At the bottom of the trail, near the shore of Russell lake. This seemed to be a popular campground (for both humans and mosquitoes)

Russell Lake

Mt. hood in the distance

It was a hike well worth doing..but maybe a 4x4 next time and some bug spray.

Norway Pass

2019-11-12T00:34:00.000-05:00

It is like walking inside a picture frame...that is the best way to describe this hike. What an amazing place! The hike starts with an unassuming view of Meta lake and the surrounding hills before quickly disappearing into the wood for a few miles. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, it opens up to the tremendous view of St. Helens and Spirit Lake. Of all the views of St. Helens I have seen, this from Norway Pass easily ranks near the very top.

Meta Lake

Beyond the pass, the trail opens up with copious views of Rainier and Adams on one side and unreal view of St. Helens on the other side. This is where this place feels a bit surreal. On many other trails, it's easy to get nice views of all the surrounding peaks, but it's rare to be able to turn the other way and see the entirety of another mountain so nearby. This was unquestionably one of the highlights of the summer.

Mt. Rainier

Mt. Adams

Perfect place for a short break

Ramona falls

2019-08-28T00:29:00.000-04:00

Sometimes it's just nice to take it easy. No easier hike than this....Ramona fall in Mt. Hood.

Enjoy!

Cooper Spur

2019-08-24T02:12:00.000-04:00

The immense view of Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams

On a clear day, the view is hard to beat! Cooper Spur is one of those hikes where you get so up close to the mountain that it's easy to lose perspective of how big everything really is. Spectacular view of Mt. Hood always looms large in the foreground making you forget the below freezing wind gust and the burning pain in the legs from climbing the steep incline. But as the saying goes...no pain, no gain..

fellow hikers on the trail

Tiny people at Eliot glacier

Autumn in Paradise (park)

2018-11-15T01:21:00.000-05:00

Any other time of the year, this 13 mile hike in Mt. Hood would have been just another pretty hike. But this time, the autumn colors were spectacular! Probably couple of weeks early or late would not have looked anything like this. I know some of these pictures look almost fake, but I guess you would have had to be there to really believe it. Everywhere you looked, it was just a sea of red and orange.

This is a terrible picture, but just look at this madness..

we can up over the ridge and saw this. Sun rays filtering through the clouds as far as your eyes can see. In about an hour the whole place was covered with rolling fog and clouds.

Looks fake and over processed, but it's not.

A fitting end to an amazing hike. Mt. Jefferson in the distance at sunset. Fog below, clouds above and just enough opening for some color.

Mt. Jefferson at sunset

Rowena Crest

2018-09-27T01:34:00.002-04:00

View from top of Rowena Crest viewpoint

You'd expect to see something like this only in car commercials. What an epic road! This is the picture I really came here to get, but the weather threw in some nice surprises as well. First came the downpour, then the rainbow, follow by bright blue sky and then again the storm clouds. Even without the weather, it's an unbeatable scenery all around. Drive along the Columbia river gorge is away nice, but places like this make it extra special. An afternoon well spent..

Lyle, Washington

The gorge at sunset, through 9 stop ND filter

Tilly Jane

2018-09-12T02:32:00.001-04:00

Tilly Jane A frame

Best hikes often happen by accident. First snow of the season closed off driving access to all the trails we really wanted to hike and finally we ended up on the Tilly Jane trail. Didn't really know what to expect, but it didn't disappoint. Hiking through wildfire burned forest was unreal, and the views of Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, St. Helens and Mt. Rainier is unbeatable. Highly recommended...

Mt. Adams

Walking through this was tiring..

Remnants of 2008 fire..

Many views of St. Helens

2018-07-20T01:58:00.000-04:00

Undeniably one of the most iconic places of northwest. There is no bad time to visit St. Helens. Show up in early summer to see the whole valley covered in orange and purple wildflowers; or late at night for the glowing sky above. And if you can, definitely climb to the summit at least once.

The weather was fantastic the night we went to shoot the milky way, but it was one of those nights when nothing was really working. After taking bunch of rather uninspiring shots (one below), I was ready to call it a night. The top picture was one of those "lets just try this one last thing and then go home" shots. It was around 1:00 am, the clouds were moving in and the lens was fogging up fast. It didn't help that I forgot to pack my lens warmer. As soon as the preview came up on the screen, I knew this would be the keeper. I actually shot a sequence of 3 shots in hopes of doing some stacking for noise reduction, but the movement of the tree from the wind basically made that impossible.

Early summer...

from the top, looking into the crater..

and sometimes you just happen to run into Elvis in the clouds..

So long Spring!

2018-06-21T02:31:00.000-04:00

Spring always seems so short lived. Always colorful and full of surprises.

Great American Eclipse 2017

2018-01-09T00:56:00.000-05:00

Sun, moon and mercury

I was not excited about the eclipse. It seemed so ordinary...the moon covering the sun, that all. What's so special about it. Plus, I was going to see 99.9% eclipse from my house..so why bother driving for the 100%? I'm so glad to have family and friends who felt otherwise and convinced me to go. Because..it was spectacular! Not only was it visually striking, it was emotionally overwhelming. It was an unexpected feeling and I still find it hard to explain. Maybe it's because we take everyday events around us so for granted that it takes something like this to make us think twice and really appreciate what's around us. And yes, compared to 100%, 99.9% is not even an eclipse. It's totally different.

The plan was to shoot the eclipse over a course of 2 hours as the moon slowly covered the sun. I didn't have a solar filter, but a while ago made a ND filter using welding glass which turns out to be close to about ~14 stops. But it didn't quite work out the way I hoped. The bright sun caused too much reflection off the two sides of the thick welding glass to get a clear picture. So, gave up on that idea after fiddling around for a bit and instead setup to take the corona shots at full eclipse. I think I ended up taking 4 sets of 7-shot sequence during the full eclipse bracketed by 2 eV between each shot. That was enough to make the composite picture.

Post-processing the sequence was a nightmare. All HDR software failed miserably. Decided to blend them with manual layer masking, which took forever, but still resulted in questionable outcome. Finally settled on just stack, align, and opacity adjustment of the various layers with some final curves adjustment (excellent step by step tutorial followed from here). It was significantly simpler and produced the best result.

A final shot of the eclipse before it was all over. Next one is only six year away..2024!

2018 arrives in style

2018-01-03T00:59:00.000-05:00

Full moon over vista house

This was unexpected. No, not the full moon on new years day, although the timing couldn't have been any better, but the clear skies in January in northwest! Those of you who are lucky enough to live in this part of the country know what i'm talking about. There is probably a better chance of winning the lottery than seeing a full moon on a clear night in the winter around here.

Three years of waiting and it finally happend. When the forecast called for clear skies, couldn't resist the short trip to the gorge. However, there was no shortage of regret over my clothing choice as soon as I stepped out of the car. Below freezing temp with 50+ mph wind! It was hard to stand without getting knocked back. Last time I felt wind like this was in Death Valley at Zabriskie point at sunrise. Few of us who were there took shelter behind a rock wall just to get a break. Even then, my whole camera/tripod setup got almost knocked over twice. Took ten times more shots than I normally would have, knowing that most would come out blurry from the wind. And sure enough, most did. It was impossible to keep the camera steady. But all in all, it was an amazing view. Counting down to lunar eclipse on Jan 31st!

Crazy wind at the gorge

Top 10 of 2014

2014-12-25T00:25:00.000-05:00

It's that time of the year again! 2014 has been unlike any other year for many reasons. I hardly had any free time to take photos. But whatever I was able to get, here are the top 10 in no particular order. Enjoy!

Lunar Eclipse 2014

2014-10-15T23:38:00.001-04:00

Lunar eclipse 2014

If you missed the eclipse this year, you have one more coming next year in April. This is a combination of 6 shots taken over a course of 1.5 hours. I wanted to capture the full sequence from beginning to end, but at 3:00 am in the morning, 1.5 hours is all the patience I had. Enjoy!

Super moon of 2014

2014-09-13T12:14:00.000-04:00

Supermoon above Mt. Hood

Last of the four supermoons of 2014 and finally was able to get out and take some shots. Taken from Pittock Mansion overlook, which turned out to be quite the popular spot for doing this. Needless to say, I was not alone there.

Getting exposure right for moon pictures is one of the toughest things. Right exposure for the surrounding blows out the moon; and right exposure for the moon makes everything else too dark. This picture is a composite of the two shots below, combined using Jim Mcintyre's excellent luminosity masks and then slight final adjustments made using Google's Nik Collection. The luminosity masks works way better than many other methods I tried before on similar challenging composites. I would highly recommend them...(and they are free!)

Original photos (-2 eV and +2 eV)

And finally a downtown panorama..

Downtown Portland, OR

Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes

2014-02-22T00:51:00.000-05:00

Death Valley is unlike most national parks. The first day, I was questioning why this whole place is even a national park. It made absolutely no initial impression on me. But it's one of those places that slowly grows on you. At first, it looks like just a vast empty place. Give it a few days and you will realize that it's anything but. The variety of landscape is just amazing, although not all of it jumps out at you instantly. All three of these pictures are taken at the Mesquite flat sand dunes. The ancient dry lake bed that it sits on is still visible in some places. If you want to get a nice pictures of sand ripples, be prepared to walk a while. Majority of the easily accessible areas are just completely covered with footsteps. It's not until to you go about a mile into the dunes that things begin to look more pristine..it made for a nice early morning walk.

Lake bed

Counting stars at Death Valley

2014-02-06T00:33:00.001-05:00

Zabriskie Point after dark

If you want this whole place to yourself, come here at night! We planned this trip to coincide with new moon, and it worked out perfectly. Faint moonlight to light the mountains with Milky Way as the backdrop. Enjoy!

Badwater Basin

2014-02-04T01:43:00.002-05:00

Badwater Basin at sunset (Jan 2014)

If you ever find yourself at the Badwater Basin (hopefully not in the summer), just walk. Walk until you can no longer see anyone when you look back. Close your eyes and feel the silence. It's an spectacularly strange landscape, and the vast emptiness is made all the more special with total absence of all sound. It lives upto your expectation and then overwhelms you. It makes you feel small, puts things in perspective. The dichotomy of simplicity and the complexity of this place makes you realize that nothing man-made can ever match this.

Stick around till sunset and you will see the salt color change from white to reddish brown to blue. On a more practical note, wear shoes with thick soles. The salt crystals look delicate, however they are anything but. Walk on it for a while, and your feet will feel it soon enough.

Many views of Zabriskie Point

2014-02-01T02:24:00.000-05:00

Early morning at Zabriskie Point

"This is not what I expected it to be like." That's the main thought that went through my head the whole time I was at Zabriskie Point. Getting up at 5:00 a.m. and driving 45 minutes to get there in hopes of some solitude in the middle of this spectacular location didn't quite live up to the mental picture I had. It was Monday morning, so I figured the usual weekend crowd would be gone. Oh..how wrong that turned out to be. Just as soon as I got there, I was joined by "that guy". Yes, that guys who shows up with a bag full of gear, giant tripod, five different lenses and ten different filters and has to try them all one after another. It was super windy, so I hope he at least ended up with a few good shots. Ignoring him wasn't that difficult, but then came another guy with an even bigger tripod and plopped his giga-pan setup on there, and proceeded to control that with a wireless joystick looking thing. So now, along with various beeps coming from his remote, I had the wonderful soundtrack of motorized rotation stage to keep me company. Even that was bearable to some degree until the older Asian couple showed up. The husband promptly walked straight out to the edge with his tripod and camera. And just as he set everything up, the wife, from a safe distance away, started yelling at him, which didn't stop for the next half hour. It was all in Chinese, but i'm pretty sure it was about how he was too close to the edge and should step back and if he doesn't, the wind may knock him over the edge. He was too nice to say anything back. So occasionally he would look back at her, say a word or two in a very quiet voice and give a nod to the rest of us with a smiley face. Finally came the twenty something year old with his Sony NEX-7 with its machine gun like burst mode. Every few minutes I would see him do a 180 rotation while holding the camera in front of him going "click-click-click-click-click-...-click" at 10 fps. So much for seeking silence...
Despite all the craziness, it's amazing how the look of the whole place changes with changing light. It's beautiful any time of the day, but early morning is simply spectacular. The colors change from blues to reds as the sun comes up and then slowly fades to grey as the light gets harsher. After spending better part of the morning here, I was back here the next night to take some night sky pictures...to be posted soon...

Colorful formations at Zabriskie Point

And the sun finally comes up over the mountains

Manly Beacon

Late evening

Driving through Olympic National Park

2014-01-31T01:44:00.000-05:00

After wrapping up our short tour of Mt. Rainier, we decided to drive through Olympic NP before heading home. Olympic National Park is huge! The variety of landscape is amazing and they are scattered about all over the place. I definitely wasn't prepared to drive as much as I ended up doing. First day, we drove to Hurricane ridge and hiked around for better part of the day through rolling fog with occasional company of local friendly wildlife.

Klahhane Ridge Trail

Next morning we took a long drive from Port Angeles to Hoh rainforest. Finding moss covered trees is nothing unusual in the northeast, but this was at a whole different scale.

The final stop was Sol Duc Valley. Sol Duc falls was gorgeous, and it was worth the 1/2 hour wait for the few people to clear out before taking this picture. And then it was time to head home...

Sol Duc Falls

Arduino based intervalometer

2013-12-30T00:12:00.001-05:00

Let me start by saying that this is going to be a super geeky post. It all started with a rather naive attempt at making a timelapse video with nothing more than just a stopwatch and my camera. Needless to say, that turned out less than spectacular. You can only go so far with manual timing. Rather than buying an intervalometer or downloading one of dozens of apps from the app/play store, I decided to build my own. I had been meaning to mess around with Arduino boards for a while, and this seemed like the perfect excuse.

I wanted something simple, where I could set the total time and the interval and it would keep track of the total number of shots taken, give countdown till the next shot and countdown till the end of the sequence. No fancy hyperlapse or bracketed shot settings, since I rarely ever do any of that. Of course, the program can always be modified to include new things.

Components:
Micro-controller: Arduino Pro Mini (3.3V version)
Display: 16x2 LCD (ADM1602K-NSW-FBS/3.3V)
Opto-coupler: PC817
Other things: push button switches, toggle switches, resistors, etc

Function:
S1: sets the time interval between shots
S2: sets the total time for the sequence
S3: Resets either the interval or the total time, based one whichever one was adjusted last
S4: Toggles Start/Stop of the sequence
S5: Controls LCD back-light (saves a lot of power by not keeping the light on all the time)
S6: Main power
Opto-coupler: Separates the intervalometer electronics from the camera electronics (just to keep things extra safe..)

Program: Download from here

Writing/debugging the program and soldering everything together and get the whole thing working took about half a day, but then came the hard part. I spent days building the wooden enclosure for this thing. I have no woodworking tools, nor did I ever build anything with wood before. So it was all down to my dremel and a hacksaw. What probably would have taken couple hours with proper tools, took me at least ten times longer. But then again, I could have just bought something to begin with rather than building something. So stuffing this thing into a store bought plastic box just didn't feel right. It needed to have some character.. :-)

Hours of sanding and about fifteen coats of polyurethane later, This is what resulted. Generous amounts of hot glue and super glue went into the final assembly to make sure that everything was tightly fixed in their place.

So there it is! The is what happens when you get carried away with something, but sometimes you just have to. The aesthetics are not bad either.... I wish more of my gadgets came in wooden cases. :-)

Few days at Mt. Rainier

2013-12-25T16:18:00.000-05:00

Finally getting around to posting some pictures from the Mt. Rainier trip this past fall. While there, the most striking thing I noticed was how quickly the mountain weather changes. First night, the weather went from bad to super crappy in short order and there was nothing else to do but to sit by the fire and catch up on some reading. Things were decidedly different the next day. All day, the weather was spectacular and it ended with an Amazing sunset!

Each morning we woke up to rolling fog and clouds through the hills, which made for some interesting photos. Can't beat this view while sipping on morning coffee..

One of the days, we decided to take an early morning hike to the 320 feet tall Comet Falls. The trail to the fall is beautiful, and it crosses several small streams along the way.

Along the Comet Falls Trails

Comet Falls itself is quite impressive. You can walk almost to the base, and it is absolutely towering up close. Being absent-minded, I forgot to turn off image stabilizer on the lens before putting it on the tripod, and it ruined almost all my shots and didn't find out till I reviewed them on the computer later at home. The one below is one of the very few that wasn't affected. Live and learn I suppose...

Comet Falls

Later in the day, I made two trips to the reflection lake to try to get a still water reflection picture of the mountain. First time, clouds rolled in by the time I reached the lake. Even after an hour of wait, it never really cleared. Second time, it was slightly better but it was still windy enough to disturb the calm water.

Reflection Lake

Unquestionably, the best view of the mountain and the glaciers is for the sunrise area. It's more remote, but well worth the drive. I wish I had more time to spend on that side, but unfortunately timing on this trip didn't allow that and we were heading towards Olympic NP soon after. We were doing some short hikes in the area and came across some really awesome views. But by this time I had already packed up all my camera gear and didn't want to pull everything out in the middle of the trail. Figured there would be enough time on the way back, but that turned out to be a bad gamble. Thunder clouds rolled in and hovered over the entire mountain for the rest of the day. One more thing for next time...

Mt. Rainier from sunrise

Top 10 of 2013

2013-12-24T00:45:00.000-05:00

It's that time of the year again! Here they are, in no particular order...

Painted Hills Unit - John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, Oregon

Yaquina head outstanding natural area, Oregon

Cannon Beach, Oregon

Haleakala National Park, Hawaii

Portland Japanese Garden, Oregon

Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington

Portland Japanese Garden, Oregon

Sol Duc Falls, Olympic National Park, Washington

Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington

Smith Rock State Park, Oregon

Milky Way Over Mt. Rainier

2013-11-03T14:21:00.000-05:00

Milky Way from Paradise area of Mt. Rainier National Park

Dark sky is a tough thing to find these days. If you live anywhere near a major city, this is not something that you would ever see. I'v been trying to get a good picture of the Milky Way for a while now, and finally this past summer had the chance to spend a few nights at Mt. Rainier. As luck would have it, on the first day, heavy fog started to roll in early evening. Pretty soon, it was so thick that even driving was impossible. Went to bed that night with a sinking feeling about the prospects of the trip. But things turned out markedly different the next night. Crystal clear sky with the stars out in their full glory.

Trying to take pictures in pitch black darkness has its own challenges. First, every faint noise coming from any direction had me hoping that it wasn't a bear. Then, trying to adjust the zoom, I managed to fiddle with the focus ring and came home with whole bunch of completely blurry shots. The worst was trying to change lens. Try lining up a tiny red dot with another tiny white dot (those of you shoot with Canon know exactly what I'm talking about) in the middle of the night with no light and partially frozen fingers. Yes, I had a flashlight with me, but using it meant having to give my eyes at least 3-4 minutes to get adjusted to the darkness every time. So I tried to stay off it as much as I could. But even with all the troubles, it was worth it.

When it comes to night photography, having a full frame camera rocks! Each picture was shot in raw and then double processed (first for the sky and then for the foreground) and then exposure blended to create the final composite. It's amazing what the camera can see with 30s exposure. To my eyes, Mt. Rainier in the picture below was just a silhouette against the starry sky. Unlike the other two, the last picture is actually a composite of multiple shots. 30s exposure for the sky and 10s for the building with lower ISO. Enjoy...

Mt. Rainier under the stars

Paradise Lodge at Mt. Rainier National Park

Fall at Portland Japanese Garden

2013-10-21T00:33:00.001-04:00

Portland Japanese Garden

Portland Japanese Garden is easily the most manicured place in the city. Anytime of the year is a good time to visit this place, but fall brings something extra special. This is one place where carrying a fisheye lens pays off big time. The view from under these tiny Japanese Maple trees is spectacular. Understandably, this time of the year the park is packed with photographers. Sometimes it gets so busy on the weekends that you have to wait in line to get your chance.

People go crazy over this particular tree in the park. There is always a long line around here. I was probably a week late, because the leaves thinned out quite a bit. It's a cliche shot, but still beautiful. Maybe next year..

Looking for the right angle

Fall colors are not confined to the Japanese garden only. Here are some more from around town...enjoy!

Pittsburgh Fireworks

2013-10-13T02:01:00.001-04:00

4th of july, from West End Bridge

Pittsburgh is probably the most fireworks happy city in the country. There is never any shortage of chances to take some pictures...Enjoy!

First Night, from Rachel Carson Bridge

Pirates game, from in front of PNC Park