Category: River

Lucky Traffic

Mt Rainier and the Duwamish

Several years ago I was living in Olympia and got up early and drove to Seattle in time for the sunrise. I went to Alki Beach and took a series of photos of the Olympic Mountains intending to create a panorama of the range. Early morning was ideal, since with the sun would be behind my back and the haze would be at a minimum. There was an unexpected problem, however. When I created the panorama, in order for it to be a reasonable height for viewing, the length would be over 10 feet.

But on the way out of West Seattle, I was caught in rush hour traffic. I was in the outside lane on the bridge and traffic was stopped. I have left my camera sitting on the passenger seat with the telephoto lens still mounted. I rolled down the passenger window and took this shot looking over the industrial area. I never processed this image, because I was distracted by the image that was zoomed in on Rainier. Just a reminder to review your past images for overlooked gems.

0

Staircase Rapids

Staircase Rapids

These are the Staircase Rapids on the North Fork Skokomish River just a little above the Staircase Ranger Station in the southeast corner of the Olympic National Park. It was a dark wet day and I thought about brightening up the image … but in this case I decided that it reflected the mood of the day as it was.

11

Running Water: 2 views

Sol Duc Rapids

The top photo shows running water with a slow shutter speed and the bottom photo shows a fast shutter speed. The lower photo is more recent and the shutter speed (1/125th sec) was recorded in the EXIF data (info the camera saves for each photo … things like camera, shutter speed, lens info, aperture, ISO setting, etc). The top photo was taken years ago with my first digital camera (an Olympus E-10) and something has happened over the years and the EXIF data on this image went away. I assume it was between 1/2 and 3 seconds.

N Fork Skokomish at Camp Pleasant
3

Elk in Winter

Elk in Winter 1

The Olympic Elk (or Roosevelt Elk … Teddy, not FDR) are much easier to see in winter when they are hanging out in the lowlands than in the summer when they wander around much of the Olympic National Park and at some high elevations. The first three shots are of the “Dosewallips herd” … in fact, the first two shots were taken in Dosewallips State Park. Number 3 was taken just across the river in the town of Brinnon … in the school yard. Number 4 is of the Skokomish herd, pictured crossing the North Fork of the Skokomish River at the upper end of Lake Cushman.

Elk in Winter 2
Elk in Winter 3
Elk in Winter 4
1

Middle Elwha

Middle Elwha

The Elwha River has been getting a lot of press lately. It is the site of one of the largest dam removal projects to date. Salmon runs are returning in numbers (miles and miles of recovered salmon breeding habitat), the delta is being rebuilt and numerous species (including bears and birds) are benefiting from the decaying salmon carcasses.

The section shown here is between the two dams that were removed (the Elwha Dam below this point and the Glines Canyon Dam above).

3

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑