We’re at the beginning of the annual riot of clematis on the back porch. There’s a literal sea of buds and flowers twisting along and throughout the railing. I’ve been shooting them up close for a few days (well, years, actually).

Today, I was going through some of the images I shot over the weekend, and I kept wishing I had gotten this angle or that one, or a different composition. When I got home tonight, the skies were threatening rain, but there was still a shaft of sunlight coming through the clouds, so I got the camera and the macro lens out and waited for the sun to hit this one flower.

There were a bunch of shots I liked from tonight’s session, but the best ones were when the sun came through, and I’ve posted both of my faves here. I can’t really decide which one of these two I prefer. The first one has a good use of negative space, but the second one, while slightly more busy, I think has a better feel, especially in the crispness of the primary flower. Thoughts? [click the thumbs below to see them larger]

Went out into the Gorge yesterday with Duncan. As has been the case lately, we spent a good amount of the day dodging rain. That said, there’s a lot of green out there — spring will be here in full force any week now — and we found a few interesting places to shoot, both new and old.

This one is from an old standby: Cape Horn, on Route 14 in Washington. It’s a beautiful overlook, and we spent about 45 minutes hanging around, watching and waiting for something to happen.

In the end, there wasn’t a lot, but I did love the overwhelming amount of green floating up from the valley floor below.

see it bigger | where is this?

Shot with the Sony RX1, blended from a three-exposure set with HDR Efex Pro, then finished in Perfect Effects 4.

… when the skies give you nothing but gray, crappy cloud cover, turn to portraits. Use the sky as a big softbox.

Processed in Perfect B&W, using the Gum Bichromate preset as a starting point.

I’ve been shooting this vista for a couple of years now, and have long wanted to get out there at sunrise. I’ve had this mental image of the sun kissing the tops of the trees in the orchard, creating a magical light that would provide a lovely contrast to the river and the sky.

I was also pretty sure it wouldn’t really be like that, and when I finally was able to get out there, it turned out the sun was coming from completely the wrong angle at this time of year. And, there wasn’t much of a sky. Or, at least an interesting sky.

Somehow, though, there was something there to shoot. It still might not be the right shot, but it didn’t turn out half bad in the end.

see it bigger | where is this?

One of the odder “places of interest” in the Gorge is the Stonehenge monument near Goldendale, about 100 miles east of Portland along the Columbia. While I’m in no place to cast aspersions of Samuel Hill’s noble intent — a memorial to the 18 men of Klickitat County lost during World War I — it is rather bizarre that Hill chose to reproduce the 5,000-year-old Druid monument in a smaller scale, cast in concrete and as it was imagined when originally built. I might have tried to reproduce the ruin, not the original structure, but that’s me, I guess. (Hill was an interesting man, as evidenced by his Wikipedia page and his museum sitting out on a bluff overlooking the beginning of the high-desert in Central Washington.)

I’ve been out a few times to this faux Stonehenge. It always sounds like a good idea, but really, it’s simply a bizarre place that’s hard to take with any amount of seriousness. And still, yesterday, Hudson and I did drive out that way during a scouting expedition into the Gorge, so it seemed appropriate to at least pay homage to the strange, quaint little icon on the hill.

We had a lovely time wandering around central Washington and Oregon, but there were absolutely crappy skies pretty much everywhere we went. Like so many other recent excursions, some of the places we stopped by will just get the ‘revisit’ tag. I did salvage a couple of images, including this one, which I probably shot from right alongside Stonehenge. C’est la vie.

see it bigger | where is this?

spring isn’t quite here yet, but I happened upon this tree outside a doctor’s office yesterday, ready for better weather…

see it bigger

a year later, I’m still loving the new kitchen…

see it bigger

It was really more like, “ugly-ass falls”; not a really pretty place — lots of rock and scrub brush. From the looks of the way these falls ran, so close to the ground, it seemed as though there would be an interesting upper falls, but it was hidden in the chasm, and we couldn’t find a vantage point.

see it bigger | where is this?

Processed with Perfect B&W.

Looking westbound, towards Cascade locks. After taking the previously posted shot, I literally turned west, set the tripod down, and worked through a bunch of different ideas. I have a few without the log in the foreground, but I like this perspective best.

This is one of the few shots recently not taken with the RX1 — I shot this with the D800, with the 16-35 mm f/4 lens, at 16mm.

see it bigger | where is this?

Another shot from our jaunt along the river.

Normally, I’d be looking at this shot (click to see it bigger):

… but I loved the lush green of the ground against the storm clouds.

see it bigger | where is this?