pjf photography

This time I nearly killed myself on the way out – climbed a dirt / rock conglomeration just to the left of the waterfall that was a bit too loose for comfort and got pretty well freaked now and then. So, good times as usual. Had a flash with me this time so I could prove my presence.

Say cheese.

If you repeat that mantra often enough, and in the right tone, you just might catch a fish. Got it right for the first time this year yesterday.

Near Monse, WA, is the largest satellite dish array in the western hemisphere. If you like large items that look out of place among apple orchards, this is the place for you.

A pentagonal array of dishes.

This is one of the NRAO dishes. It’s a radio telescope and I got a great tour, including walking around in the giant, 25m dish! Hope to get photos of the inside, etc. soon. The Okanogan river is in the background.

There is much to explore out here in North Central Washington. Small farming towns dot the tributaries of the Columbia and now and then something catches the eye.

This is a very large stack of apple crates in a very large orchard above the Okanogan and Columbia rivers near Monse. I like the way the scale of the trees doesn’t seem to fit with the scale of the boxes. The main thing is to realize just how big that stack of crates really is.

Some housing for the fruit pickers. I had a circular polarizing filter on the lens to make the sky oh so blue.

Near the end of the winter a waterfall above Alta Lake starts to flow. It’s pretty hard to reach due to the steep slopes.

This waterfall is just below the main falls. The tree branches are covered in ice.

The main falls from the bottom:

The falls from above. This vantage point is scary to reach – lots of loose soil and rocks to traverse!

It seemed like a good idea to get up really early and try to catch the seasonal waterfall on Goat Mountain above Alta Lake in the morning sun. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like that area ever gets direct sunlight at this time of year. Then it turned out that I didn’t know how to get there without risking my life (sketchy loose rock abounds due to regular freeze-fracture of the rock). Still, the three hour hike was not a complete wash, I did spot a coyote making it’s way down a steep slope towards the creek bed. Even though the mountain is really steep in this region I was still surprised at how slowly the coyote moved.

Above: 1:1 crop from the original. I was quite far away (a good thing) and shooting with a 150mm Sigma lens.

Below: uncropped pic

Hiked up the mountain through rain and clouds. Shoes and socks got wet but feet stayed warm.

If you trigger your off-camera flash right it will sync with the camera shutter and you can shoot at 1/6400 to kill some sun and get a nice exposure of subject and background. Yeah, something like that. There’s an SB-28 with a beauty dish camera left and sun coming in from camera right.

this is how it looks around Alta Lake this winter. Blah.

Some twilight pictures of Chief Joseph Dam, near Bridgeport. It is so peaceful and nice out there now.