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Greetings,
Our summer started out as a warm winter. Now it’s in its full sizzling horridness.
On a high note (really?), I’m turning National-Park-Lifetime-Pass years old this month!! My first act will to be to drive to the Olympic National Park Visitors Center in Port Angeles to claim (actually, buy) my birthday present!
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Olympic National Park workshop report
I recently returned from another great Olympic National Park workshop, co-led with my friend John Barclay.
We started on the Port Angeles side of the park, making trips to Hurricane Ridge, lavender fields, Sol Duc Falls, and Lake Crescent.
Moving to Forks for the rest of the workshop we revisited the Sol Duc valley, concentrating on forest photography along the Ancient Groves trail (above). I’d been there before, but frankly I didn’t remember how stunning it is. We spent a very productive morning there.
We also made a couple of trips to the Hoh area, one inside of the park to explore the Hall of Mosses trail, and another to photograph one of my favorite areas: a Nature Conservancy area outside of the park named The Black Forest. This second growth spruce forest has been a favorite stop for many of my groups. Afterward we had lunch at the Hard Rain Café, a great spot for breakfast, burgers, and souvenirs.
But my favorite spots were on the Olympic beaches. Because Ruby Beach is closed this summer for parking lot and road repairs, we got to spend some extra time at Rialto Beach. But first, we had a rather magical sunset at Second Beach.
All week long we’d been wishing for some more clouds in the sky for our sunrises and sunsets. The night before we had some good clouds at La Push, but they were in the wrong place. This night, on Second Beach, they were in the perfect spot and had great shape and texture. And to top it off, just as the sun was going down, there was, for a few short minutes, a clear spot on the horizon that created a beam of light coming through the hole in the headland at the end of the beach.
Of course, it being summer and all, there were plenty of people there to enjoy the sunset. The original picture above had people in it. But through the magic of Photoshop’s Spot Healing Brush and Content Aware Fill, I was able to non-violently remove those folks from in front of my camera.
 Our two visits to Rialto were both overcast. One so much so that visibility was less than a mile down the beach. That night we concentrated on beach rocks, waves, skeletal trees, and some moody seascapes. The next night at Rialto was still overcast, but there was texture in the clouds. There wasn’t going to be much color on the sky so I set my sites on creating images to convert to black and white.
On this evening we walked the mile down the beach to Hole-In-the-Wall where there is a grouping of sea stacks to play with.
I wore my knee-high Neos overshoes so I wouldn’t need to keep running away from the surf, and managed to come up with some images that I really like.
This kind of photography is a lot of fun and unpredictable. You just keep taking pictures, hoping to get some great movement patterns in the water.
This first picture (above) was shot at about a half second. I used a 2-stop ND filter so that I could get the shutter speed slow enough.
This second image was made closer to sunset and there wasn’t a lot of light left. This was a two-second exposure and after converting it to black and white in Lightroom, I used brush filters to selectively lighten an area in the sky and that streak of white water. I could have brightened up the rest of the image, but I really like the gloomy feeling of this.
I’ll be returning to Olympic for another workshop in mid-May, where I plan on visiting the Ancient Groves trail again as well as trying to improve upon coastal landscapes. Definitely planning on making the mile walk down Rialto Beach as well as hiking to Second Beach.
If you’d like to join me, just send an email and I’ll add you to the early notification list.
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Auroras
Just in case you were thinking about it, John Barclay and I still have room in both of our aurora tours in Yellowknife (yes, both! We just had a recent cancellation). Visit my Aurora tour page for more information.
And if you were thinking of going in 2023, the date range will be between September 7-21. Let me know if you want to be on the early notification list.
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Trips for 2023 and beyond
Cliff Zenor and I have been talking about more workshops and tours we can do together. Here’s the list we came up with. Be sure to send and email if any of these pique your interest.
- Great Smoky Mountain National Park, April 25-29
- North Carolina Waterfalls tour, May 1-5
- Colorado Fall Color, October 1-6
- Bosque del Apache, November 29-December 3
- White Sands, December 6-10
- And in January or February of 2024, Death Valley
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Another project??
I should have another home related project to share soon. It involves saws and nail guns and all sorts of other tools. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, I've got some other things, non-photo and non-project, to look forward to. One is my Seattle Mariners. They've been a lot of fun to watch this season. And the other is the Seahawks. Expectations are low for this season, after the departures of Russell Wilson and Bobby Wagner. But with low expectations come great surprises! Potentially.
And we should have a pretty good defense. So this season could be fun.
I'll leave you with the last of sunset from Second Beach
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