A Very Lucky Photo Excursion
Hello all,
This post is in part to say hello to the lovely people I met earlier this evening. While I was doing this shoot a couple happened by and gave me some history on the area I was photographing. I learned about the winery that used to be where we were, and some of the trails in the area. It was very pleasant talking with them.
This evening I drove up to Snoqalmie Point, a small park not too far off I-90, about 30 miles from Seattle. I had known about the park from having read an article in the paper several months ago about how the park was being developed, and that it afforded excellent views of the mountain. I decided to go up there to check it out, in part because I'm scouting for a good place to do 45 minute long night star trail photos. It was fairly cloudy while I was there, so I was playing around with photographing the green and grays that are so often seen in the Northwest, and got the following shots:
I spent about an hour there, but I had parked in the lot that clearly had signs around that said that the lot would be locked at 9pm, so I needed to get my car out of there. After spending an hour there I more or less felt that I had gotten what I had come for, and so I made my way back to my car, got in, and started driving back towards the Interstate. Once I got there though, I got curious about where else the road that I was on might go, so I kept driving. About 5 minutes later, the setting sun dropped beneath the cloud cover, and suddenly the tops of the trees near me were an incredible bright orange color. I turned around, and drove as fast as I could back to the park, skidded into a gravel parking place (on the outside of the gate), grabbed my camera and tripod and ran as fast as I could to the lookout point.
I was in luck. The sun's rays hit the side of the mountains for only about 10 more minutes. It was just enough to get these beauties. Keep in mind that there has been no photoshopping of color on these at all, they're only cropped a bit and shrunk for display on the web.
If I had left a few minutes earlier, or if I had gotten on the interstate, or if the clouds had been slightly different and the sun had never hit the side of the mountain, I would have never gotten these shots. They say that part of being a good photographer is being in the right place at the right time, and also that photographers must have patience, that eventually the scene will turn into something interesting. I lucked out on both of these counts this time around, and while I'll probably edit these photos to bring out the impact of the color even more, even in their unedited form I'm still surprised that I managed to capture what I did. I feel extremely fortunate.
The last thing I did for the evening was drive over to West Seattle and take a few shots of downtown. Getting these shots didn't require as much drama as did the previous shots, still, I feel they're pretty nice.
-Rafe
This post is in part to say hello to the lovely people I met earlier this evening. While I was doing this shoot a couple happened by and gave me some history on the area I was photographing. I learned about the winery that used to be where we were, and some of the trails in the area. It was very pleasant talking with them.
This evening I drove up to Snoqalmie Point, a small park not too far off I-90, about 30 miles from Seattle. I had known about the park from having read an article in the paper several months ago about how the park was being developed, and that it afforded excellent views of the mountain. I decided to go up there to check it out, in part because I'm scouting for a good place to do 45 minute long night star trail photos. It was fairly cloudy while I was there, so I was playing around with photographing the green and grays that are so often seen in the Northwest, and got the following shots:
I spent about an hour there, but I had parked in the lot that clearly had signs around that said that the lot would be locked at 9pm, so I needed to get my car out of there. After spending an hour there I more or less felt that I had gotten what I had come for, and so I made my way back to my car, got in, and started driving back towards the Interstate. Once I got there though, I got curious about where else the road that I was on might go, so I kept driving. About 5 minutes later, the setting sun dropped beneath the cloud cover, and suddenly the tops of the trees near me were an incredible bright orange color. I turned around, and drove as fast as I could back to the park, skidded into a gravel parking place (on the outside of the gate), grabbed my camera and tripod and ran as fast as I could to the lookout point.
I was in luck. The sun's rays hit the side of the mountains for only about 10 more minutes. It was just enough to get these beauties. Keep in mind that there has been no photoshopping of color on these at all, they're only cropped a bit and shrunk for display on the web.
If I had left a few minutes earlier, or if I had gotten on the interstate, or if the clouds had been slightly different and the sun had never hit the side of the mountain, I would have never gotten these shots. They say that part of being a good photographer is being in the right place at the right time, and also that photographers must have patience, that eventually the scene will turn into something interesting. I lucked out on both of these counts this time around, and while I'll probably edit these photos to bring out the impact of the color even more, even in their unedited form I'm still surprised that I managed to capture what I did. I feel extremely fortunate.
The last thing I did for the evening was drive over to West Seattle and take a few shots of downtown. Getting these shots didn't require as much drama as did the previous shots, still, I feel they're pretty nice.
-Rafe