Eastern Washington in early Fall: From wet mountain slopes to arid canyons

Driving east on Interstate 90 past Snoqualmie Pass brings you to the “other side” of Washington I find relatively prettier than the rainforests and the evergreens to the west. Home is where the heart is but home - western Washington, being more accessible round the year presents less interesting and less exotic subjects to me for creating photographs. The Fall season is about to peak in Washington but the foliage was starting to turn yellow and orange around high elevations, so I embarked on a solo road trip last weekend to capture the early season on film as well as digital photographs.

The terrain changes very quickly after driving down the east slopes of the Cascades, from mountain side consisting of densely distributed streams and creeks flanked by perennial trees to gentle hills covered with sagebrush and farm animals. Signs of fall quickly changes to either late summer or early winter, for there is no distinct fall season in these parts.

Many hours fast forward - a sunset and a moonless night sky. The wind stopped briefly for the sunset before changing direction and get colder in absence of the sun.

This was not the first time I have been to these locations and likely not going to be my last trip. With every year adding more photographs of familiar locations the timeline starts to blur and makes it difficult to place a timestamp on a photograph. But there will always be a special place in my heart for these mountains and the wide open land beyond them, not too far from my home.

Tungsten experiments (feat. CineStill 800T)

Shooting with film at night has never been this much fun.

10 sec at f/5.6

13 sec at f/5.6

6 sec at f/5.6

3 sec at f/5.6

1/60 sec at f/1.8

1 sec at f/5.6

15 sec at f/8

20 sec at f/5.6

3 sec at f/5.6

Long exposures with CineStill 400D

Seattle and Port Townsend

The other side

I wanted to shoot neon signs on CineStill 800 but couldn’t really find much around Seattle. The desire faded over time, mostly because of the length of time I researched and then abandoned the project. While looking up interesting places around Seattle, noticed the south side of the city - potentially dangerous to wander late at night, present an array of very interesting old-city looks and “some” neon in it.

There was only one way to confirm or deny this…

I arranged for a scouting trip one of the December weekends and was thrilled to find amazing old buildings and history (I wasn’t aware until then UPS started here in Seattle). The area looked a lot less sketchy than it did ten years ago but, I was still hesitant to venture into the darkness, unarmed. But I knew I had to return at night - these scenes were too good to pass.

I teamed up with two friends (Kiran & Ashok) who were interested in shooting this part of town at night, and we drove over last Sunday evening. The weather was very cooperative: rain clouds were blown east and away from the city around 8 PM and we could even see a few stars along with the Big Dipper in the sky.

It was uncanny how calm, quiet the city was, considering it was a weekend night. Besides few “interesting” human beings (for lack of better definition) on the streets, the restaurants had diners but, from outside under a clear night sky there were not many sounds nor voices.

Once I acclimated to the surrounding I walked into a back alley to shoot the wet bricks catching the lights from the street on the other side.

There is nothing in this wide world that would ever make me comfortable photographing in the city at night. But I guess sometimes it is worth testing the limits, and these rare adventures always yield good photographs.

I’m happy.

The Milky Way over Mt. Baker

Late summer is probably the best time to shoot astro - early nightfall, the temperatures are not below freezing and the skies are void of fall and winter clouds.

A tale of two photographs

Photograph 1: Mount St. Helens

Moonset was around 9:30 pm and it was conveniently dark by that time in the evening, but the cauldron did not cast long and dramatic shadows in the moonlight. Therefore, I used one of the shots I took at sunset when the play of shadows and a beautiful dull orange light spotlighted the mountain, in the final minutes of the sun above the horizon. After the sunset, it was a test of patience - the wait for over two hours for the moon to set and the sky to get dark when it became possible to find the Northstar. Polar alignment of the star tracker took no more than a few minutes when the sky wasn’t completely dark and then another round of waiting game till it was dark enough for the Milky Way shot. Tracked for approximately 1000 seconds.

We listened to a bull elk occasionally but in regular intervals announced its presence in the valley below us and besides a few occasional park visitors the night was fairly quiet.

Photograph 2: The Feathers

One could only hear the bass and occasionally the drums from the Amphitheater where Dave Matthews Band was playing that night. It was the long weekend therefore, the Coulee was filled with cars, campers and visitors but it could not bother me as I was shooting in a direction the car headlights did not touch the basalt columns nor the foreground.

We got there an hour after sunset therefore I did not get a chance to photograph the foreground in daylight. Tracking was not as accurate as during the previous photo, so took shorter exposures. The foreground also shot around the same time (while the camera mounted on the inactive tracker) was a 4 minutes exposure at 1600 ISO, and a passing car (and I am thankful) painted the sagebrushes accidentally, glad I did not discard the shot.

Polar lights over Snæfellsnes

An unexpected clear weather in forecast made me decide to drive north and west of Reykjavik in the night of 12-Feb ‘22 to film the night sky but auroral activity forecast was not so promising. From the sunset around 5 pm local time (UTC) until about 10 pm there wasn’t a lot of polar lights activity in the northern sky besides moderate bands of green that flickered occasionally. Around midnight the intensity changed, with magenta and red light pillars appearing above and sometimes even towards the southern sky. The bright moon lit the foreground, creating favorable conditions for photographing the polar lights.

Light pillars in the lake

It is incredibly beautiful how lights at the edge of a water body form long pillar-like reflections on the water, especially when viewed from the other side of the water body.

The green glow in the sky

Not that long ago, I did not own an insulated jacket. Instead, I’d put on layers and then a rain coat before venturing out in the night during winter photoshoots. These photographs come from one of those trips., a rather family/personal trip where the main focus was to get away for a few days and drink every night till you’re stupid.

I was not expecting Northern Lights that night - it was the day we traveled into Iceland but we were not jet lagged probably due to high levels of adrenaline (and the anticipation of a weekend vacation ahead). We went out of the city only because it was the only night we did not have any other activity planned. It turned out to be one of the best nights to watch the green glow over us - considering winter weather and driving conditions at the time of the year.

The lust for nightscape scenery

“Nocturnal (and some deep sea) animals have tapetum lucidum, a tissue layer in the back of the eye that reflects light back through the retina, doubling the amount of light available for it to capture, but reducing the sharpness of the focus of the image. We humans do not have this reflective layer in our eyes.”

Even though the moon had long gone behind the horizon we could “perceive” the objects in the foreground under starlight. The reflection of the stars danced on the minuscule waves on the lake surface, the kayak was not prominent but the red PFDs glowed in the little light that was available (long wavelength of red render it a lot more perceivable than other colors in low light) but I was determined to set up the camera to capture this unplanned photograph.

The trip was almost over we were heading back home by that time, we were on Highway 20 driving west towards civilization when I recalled stopping at this lake years ago for a cosplay photoshoot. Always wanted to come back after dark, the kayak was a bonus.

Moon over Old Razorback

While filming the sunset over Black Rock desert, I wasn’t expecting the moon to come up behind me. In other words I was not planning to shoot past sundown (being aware of the bright moon) but unaware of moonrise time. The unmistakably bright reddish near full moon over the mountains to the east was a very pleasant surprise and memorable moment to end the day’s shooting.

An obsession with forgotten history

History has its appeal in different ways.