Gorge Cascades (I know, boring title...)

I spent yesterday shooting in the gorge with Ned and Darren - really nice folks who, like myself, were eager to shoot some less photographed areas. We arrived at 6am and had a productive day hiking and shooting until it finally cleared off around 2.

Turns out, it was my last trip for a little while, as my car's transmission died after arriving back in Corvallis Well, I need to catch up on a lot of stock stuff anyway. And the repair should only take a week or so. But geez, those things are not cheap!

Here is one of my favorite takes from this day. If the centered rock bothers anyone, I have a different perspective also.

Very nice Marc.It leads me in to the image quite nicely.
I just learn I can get down there for awhile as well. I got a lot off work to catch up on stock, and on friday off to Utah and Arizona.

The centered rock doesn't bother me at all particularly since there is water running on either side of it.

At least your car's tranny died once you got back home and not out in the middle of nowhere.

Exactly what I was thinking, Mark. For all the middle of nowhere stuff I do, it was nice of it to die within 5 miles of a repair shop.

I just had the tranny rebuilt in my 91 Trooper Photo-rig... $2500. OUCH.
Marc.... Did you use any filter here? Polorizer?

Yep. Polarizer was used here.

Glad you got home OK, Marc.. I should have gave you my number to call in case you had issues on the way - I would have pulled your vehicle down there for you, no problem. Looking forward to the next time! This looks great, by the way - the light was sure cooperating for us there..

It's very mystical, Marc. Really nice comp with those logs going left and the stream flowing right. I'm back for a couple of weeks before I head back down to the SW with Peggy and Ellen, give me a call if you're up this way again.

I will. I might be up that way again next weekend. Thanks.

This is awesome Marc! Your recent gorge stuff has been exceptional, I love the beautiful soft light.

Marc, this shot is amazing. The rock doesn't bother me at all, the dark bottom of it works perfectly. This image rocks.

Update on car: Turns out it was a transmission fluid filter that failed - Whew! $300 not $3000. That would have really hurt.

Whew, dodged a bullet there, grats

Nice shot Marc! Good times and great water yesterday....thanks for the "tour"

I actually have a picture of you taking this picture....I did not realize you were in the shot until I got home and looked at them.....

looks good Marc. the rock doesn't bother me at all. I sure miss the Pacific NW.

You're killing me man. I love Seattle, but damn, sometimes I wish the Gorge was closer.

Hey, I'm not from Portland. I live a full 2 hours each way from the gorge, but it's worth the trip! What is it, like 3 hours from Seattle?

Love the amosphere you caught here. Just lovely. Glad to hear you didn't have to shell out $3,000!

Awesome - rock works. Glad the car isn't hitting the pocket so deeply. Ya gotta get a better final title for this one, it deserves it

Now accepting suggestions for better titles:

Bryan, let me tell you, I'm really glad that the Gorge is not closer to Seattle!

Typically stunning. I never have anything else to say about your work.

With the degree of driving you seem to do, I have always wondered what kind of shape your vehicle was in, or how many times it had collapsed on you. Thankfully you won't be out of action for too long.

The image is great. The greens are spot on. It skillfully displays an area teeming with life right now. I like the rather large-moss-shrouded log. The way the movement of the water moves to greet the lrc, is a compositional plus. The water is really "flowing through green."

Marc, its a 3-hour drive assuming I don't get stuck behind 3 consecutive massively hulking semi's hauling aircraft fuselages down 205 and 84 doing 45 mph.

Its not a long drive, just a monotonous drive. The only stretchs of road I loathe more than I-5 between Olympia and Kelso is I-5 through the Excramento Valley and I-5 between Portland and Eugene.

Other Mark...you think we're worse off with the likes of Rainier, the Enchantments and North Cascades NP in our backyards? The Gorge would so completely be my poison because its so developed. At least with the aforementioned locations, you have to work to earn the shot (for the most part).

Bryan, I don't think Mark is saying you're worse off up there - you're not. He's just saying he wouldn't want the gorge to be more overrun than it already is. Seattle is 3 times the size of Portland in population. Just look at Rainier in the summer. But yeah, the Enchantments and North Cascades are just my style. Love both those places. Nowhere in this country outside Alaska makes you work harder for images than the North Cascades. But with that said, a hike to remote off-trail locations in the gorge is more difficult than any area in the NW. You can work for new spots you want to.

Marc is right. I'm saying that if the Gorge were closer to Seattle it wouldn't be "The Gorge" (and I would live somewhere else). Seattle, for a city, has some really good points, but, it is a city and I don't do cities.

Ah, I thought you were heading down the "I'd be skipping work every day if the Gorge was closer to Seattle" road. FWIW, I don't necessarily think the difference in size between Seattle and Portland would have that much of an impact on the area. Seattle Metro is about 4 million, Portland is what, 2.5-ish? What I've observed is that 90% of all visitors to the mountains (anywhere) don't stray more than 500 feet from the roads or paved paths, with an additional 9% not going more than 2-3 miles from the road. And lump on top of that the significant downturn in outdoor recreating in the past 20 years (thank you video game generation) Still leaves plenty of wilderness untouched. But I get where you're coming from.

Bryan, I agree with your assesment of tourist habits. Portland is 1.3 million, metro. And the entire state of Oregon has less population than Seattle.

Huh. I thought PDX was over 2 mil for sure. Ah well, enough drift. Back to basking in the mello-yellowy goodness of this image.

You're actually pretty close, Bryan - it's nearly 2 million when you include the six-county, bi-state area. Add another million over the next 25 years (as is currently forecast), and "Seattle" will arrive near the Gorge soon enough...

My first post here - followed a link from the Portland Hikers site. Beautiful photos! The image at the top of this thread looks so familier, but I don't quite recognize it. What creek is this? Gorton, perhaps?

I'm new and have been cruising around a lot of older posts here -- and keep coming back to this one. That's partly curiousity over the location, of course, but mostly I just really like this image, Marc! I like that you kept the image in the "yellows" realm, since that perfectly captures the combination of blooming bigleaf maple and the true color of the mosses in early Spring. It's a very faithful image to what the Gorge looks like before the "green jungle" phase of May and June, and in that sense brings a somewhat different view than the most common calendar shots.

I also really like the lines in this composition -- how the beautiful logs in the lower left continue in a nice diagonal with the log that leads from the stream up the cliff to the upper right corner. Obviously, the stream draws your eye up to a really well placed focal point, where the stream emerges from the rocks, but what I like about this aspect is using such a subtle bit of stream (where it emerges) as the focal point. The crop in the foreground is also nice - my tendency would have been to overbound this area of the photo, and lose the focal point in the process.

Very nice! This one belongs in a frame!

Tom

Good to know, Tom. Thanks. Especially because I'll be using this one as the April image in my Northwest Wilderness calendar this year.