Mount Hood National Forest

• Agnes Repplier.

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One more shot of the beautiful fairy falls. For this shot I got in real close and used a longer focal length. I am a big admirer of this particular type of falls as they come our really pretty in photographs and this one is one of my favorites. I wanted a shot emphasizing the details of the moss on the ricks and the flowing water.

Hope everyone likes it, Happy Tuesday!!

• John Singer Sargent.

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Here is another sunset shot, this time from the beautiful Trillium Lake in Oregon with a great reflection of the mighty Mt Hood. For some reason I forgot to process this earlier, so I wanted to post before it fell off my radar again.

This shot was taken on a July morning so days were hot but there was still some fog up in the mountains before sunrise. There were a bunch of ducks nearby, playing along the shoreline and thus removing any hope of me having any chance of the perfect reflection shot.

It is an awesome experience to spend an early morning here watching the reflection of the sunning mountain the way morning light reflects off snow and granite. Thanks for visiting have a nice weekend..

Also known as Ponytail Falls, in the Columbia river gorge, Oregon.

Many thanks to Gary Randall for taking me there.

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The White River lies east of the Cascade Range and south of the Columbia River Gorge. Originating on Mt. Hood, the river flows for approximately 53 miles to its confluence with the Deschutes River just above Sherar's Bridge. All but the 0.6-mile-long section at White River Falls is designated wild and scenic. The uppermost area hosts an active fumarole field named "Devil's Kitchen" at the White River Glacier and immediately below a mixture of andesite, dacite flows with pyroclastic and mudflow deposits, known as the "Old Maid" flows. These flows occurred about 260 years ago and buried a forest on the slopes of Mt. Hood. Recent downcutting by the White River and its tributaries has exposed portions of this "Ghost Forest" along with several of the Old Maid flows in a sequence of terraces along the valley edge upriver from the Highway 35 crossing. I am shooting this very near the parking lot on Hwy. 35. In fact I am standing under the bridge. I probably should have come out in April to have photographed more water in the river.

• Robert M. Pirsig.

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While continuing with the sunrise theme, today's shot was taken just a few minutes after the shot from yesterday’s post. The ambient light got a whole lot brighter with colors getting a lot less vivid. Ambient light change means the shutter speed is a lot faster making the motion in water more pronounced. At this stage, I used a 2-stop ND grad filter to balance the difference in light.

Another important factor for a good sunrise shot is the post-processing. When I started, I used to heavily process my images, trying my best to make HDR images look realistic. Then I got introduced to luminosity masks and it truly changed my post-production workflow. Another change I adopted was to embrace the shadows, HDR processing lightens the dark parts of the image. The shadows and the dark parts of the mage make the bright vibrant colors stand out more.

Tamanawas Falls is a popular waterfall on the east slope of Mount Hood, along Cold Spring Creek. The falls plunge a sheer 109 feet over a columnar basalt in a broad display that can stretch to 45 feet across at times. Tamanawas Falls was originally known as Giffords Falls, after photographer Benjamin A. Gifford, whose photos documented the falls in 1909 - whether he should be properly credited with discovery or first documentation of the falls is not known. The current name, derived from a Chinook (shin-nook) word which means "friendly or guardian spirit" was officially adopted in 1971.

• Plutarch.

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One of the coolest events that you can see as a landscape photographer is the morning glow on the peak of a mountain. Not being a morning person, I used to completely ignore sunrises when I started in favor of the more comfortably timed sunsets. I reasoned that both are golden hours with warm side-lighting, so I was not missing out on anything by choosing to forego sunrises. That plan lasted until I saw the first light hitting a mountain peak. The first time it happened was in the White Mountains of NH. While it is true that both sunsets and sunrises have warm golden side lighting, it’s a whole different atmosphere during sunrise. Somehow it's quieter, purer and more intimate.

The challenging part for me was to capture the mood and feeling of a mountain sunrise. I struggled quite a bit with the post-processing as well. First, I tried the HDR route and it did not work at all, the images looked artificial ad forced. Then I happened upon an article about Ansel Adams and his processing techniques. It was interesting to learn that Ansel meticulously processed his images, and one of the key elements from the article was that Ansel stayed away from global edit and preferred treating highlights and shadows differently. Until then, I thought the fault was with my photography technique, but I realized the problem was with my editing process. I started watching tons of processing videos online and adjusted my processing workflow to include the usage of luminosity masks. Luminosity masks helped me in isolating my processing for highlights and shadows. And the images started to look better. The last step of the change was to take the images that will work with the processing technique to get the result that I had in my mind. The approach changed from getting a perfectly balanced exposure to getting shots that collected the correct information that’s needed to create the final image. Now, this might seem too mechanical, but the tricky part is picturing the result while you are frantically trying to capture the stunning that lasts a few seconds.

In the next few days, I will be posting images taken a few days apart at various vantage points near Mount Hood. This shot was taken at the perfect moment when the beauty of the light was at its peak. I knew I had to get the details of the very soft light right to get the scene right, so I sacrificed a few shadow details for the final image to work. I could have bracketed the image and made the trees brighter but that would have looked unnatural and distracted from the main subject of the shot.

• Henry David Thoreau.

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After our Oneonta gorge adventure we had planned on going to Lost Lake to get a better side of Mt hood. But we seriously under estimated how far the location was and how difficult it is to find some locations in Oregon. Finally after hunting through some winding un paved forest roads we reached the lake but could not find a good location with a nice enough view of the mountain.

Finally my wife had enough of all my maniacal driving around and decided to ask a camp employee. Interestingly it was his first day on the job but unlike me he knew what he was doing and directed us to a nice location where we could watch the perfect sunset lighting the mountain in vivid colors. We were in a bit of a hurry reaching this location but had an awesome time shooting and enjoying this great sunset. Hope you all like it..

Frog Lake Campground is located east of Government Camp on Mount Hood just off of Highway 26. While it is not far from the highway it is shielded well from engine noise and is named after the many, many frogs that make this area their home. The southside of the lake has a nice little picnic day use area that delivers amazing views of Mount Hood. Frog Lake provides several activities including fishing, hiking and swimming. The lake sits at an elevation of 3800 feet.

It's a mystery to me just how that lavender became so pronounced when I posted it here on Flickr. On my regular photo program on my computer the lavender is more pale.

Trillium Lake, Oregon.

My website: www.danielcheongphotography.com

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I am currently in Portland, Oregon and truly enjoying landscape photography! I also met a long time flickr friend, David Gn who took me to several great photo spots including this one.

This was shot with my new camera, the Nikon D810.

My website: www.danielcheongphotography.com

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• Saul Bellow.

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One of the most interesting things about nature photography is seeing nature’s wonders at its best possible lighting. This is one of those images I made of Mt Hood from Lost Lake, framing wise id did nothing just basically pointed the camera at the mountain at shot the image.

The interestingness in this image is the light and I had nothing to do with it other than capture it with a camera and my wife who shot the same image with an iPhone managed to get an exceptionally great picture too, so it’s not about the camera or post processing. It’s all about finding a good view and sticking with it until nature begins the show.

Hope you all like it have a nice day..

• Arthur Young.

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Another shot from the beautiful fairy falls inside the Wahkeena canyon. The hike towards the falls is pretty steep in parts and it will be a little testing if you haven’t hiked in a while. I don’t know who thought of this but there is a beautiful wooden bench just to sit down and enjoy the falls and its brilliant. We spent an hour here relaxing and enjoying near freezing water spray on the hot summer day.

This was my absolute favorite waterfall from our Oregon trip. Hope you all enjoy the picture as much as we enjoyed these falls. Thanks for visiting.

• Philip Guston.

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Our first foray into Oregon was during a road trip to northern California. I had just moved to the west coast and we planned a week long road trip to visit the famous redwoods of northern California. This trip was the first time we visited the less populous eastern side of California as well. We drove up highway 395 all the way north to Lassen and then crossed over to I-5 exploring the beautiful countryside of Mt Shasta. From there we were to take some local roads to the coast and drive the rest of the way north on Highway 101. Well at least that was the plan when we started from Los Angeles. Near Mt Shasta we learned about how close we are to Crater Lake National Park and decided that such a stunning spot warrants a visit. So, we kept on driving north instead of crossing over to the coast and visited the stunning National Park that’s home to one of the most enigmatic lakes on the continent. At the Park visitor center, we learned more about the Cascade mountain range and about Mt Hood.

Oregon’s sheer natural beauty won us over and the very next year we planned a road trip that covered most of the top locations in the state. And two years later we were back, this time we planned to hit some of the tougher locations like this one, on top of Tom, Dick and Harry Mountain that’s afforded us a stunning sunset view of the majestic Mt Hood and reflection lake. We did the trip in summer and the hike up here was brutal, not due to the trail being particularly difficult, but because of the mosquitoes. We were pretty covered up, but they were relentless up to a certain altitude, thankfully close to the top as we kind of reached above the tree line they magically disappeared. We had the entire spot to ourselves as the sun started to set and light up the mountain in warm golden light. The mosquitoes were tough, but it was worth it for this view. I hope to one day come back here on a beautiful winter morning.

waterfall along the Columbia River Gorge

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

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Mt Hood must be one of the most photogenic mountains peaks around. There are mountains higher and mightier, but Mt Hood had the perfect conical shape with pretty good vertical relief and lots of beautiful alpine lakes around it that provide tons of places to capture the elusive alpenglow.

This shot was taken at the beautiful Trillium lake campground during a summer road trip of the Oregon State. While Planning for the trip, everything I read about this location mentioned it being an excellent spot for sunrise in spring, fall, and winter. Unfortunately, during summer, the sun rises behind the mountain, leaving most of it in the shadows. This was disheartening to learn, but we had limited options. After toying with the idea of abandoning the location for a sunrise shot, we decided to make a morning of it and visit the lake.

That decision to stick with the original plan turned out to be one of the best decisions of the trip. We drove from Portland that morning and reached the lake well before sunrise and found the right amount of fog on top of the lake surface. As expected, the mountain was in the shadows during the first light, but as the sun rose more, the light started to filter over the tree line. The fog began to rise, and we had in front of us a truly stunning sunrise scene of Mt Hood and the Trillium Lake. I exposed the shot for the brightest light in the scene and let the natural beauty of the landscape take over. The results were better than any image I had in my mind while we were planning the trip.

Another photo I took back in may during my two week west coast trip. This is a little cascade along Gorton Creek in the columbia river gorge. A very green place :-)

• Socrates.

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The beautiful trillium lake, I believe this was the first shot I took when we reached here. The sun has not yet risen completely and there was fog covering the lake bed and some of the forest trees. They looked so soft and beautiful, it never fails to amaze me how good a place looks with beautiful complimentary light.

I have read at many places that summer is not the most optimal time to visit this location as the sun doesn’t light up the mountain properly. I can’t wait to visit this place again when the lighting gets better.

• Henry David Thoreau.

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Another panorama shot from the beautiful Trillium Lake. This one is made stitching together about 16 shots. I love how absolutely still the water for this shot, believe me with amount of ducks in the water that was a rarity. I also glad how the clouds came out in this shot and how they form a nice clam shell with the shoreline.

Thanks for visiting, hope you enjoy this shot..

• Voltaire.

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Fairy Falls is a tiny little fall that’s tucked inside the beautiful Wahkeena canyon. And the Wahkeena canyon is one of the hundreds of small canyons created by streams that flow into the massive Columbia River Gorge in Oregon. Now usually these canyons will have a massive waterfall right on their entrance and these waterfalls are usually the more famous than the small ones inside. But there was a reason why my wife and I did the hike that day to the little fairy falls. This fall is a perfect example of a fan-shaped waterfall and its setting is inside the most vibrant green foliage you have ever seen.

When we got to the falls what stood out was how tiny it actually is and I got the image I always pictured of the stunning Fairy Falls. While hiking back from the falls I started to notice the beauty of this little canyon. There was this spot where the trail crossed the Wahkeen creek and the moss covered rocks and trees provided a stunning contrast to the brilliant greens of the foliage. I was not as skilled with the filters back then so the highlights are a bit blown but overall this is one my favorite images from our trip.

Elowah Falls was a very nice 289ft waterfall situated in John B. Yeon State Park towards the eastern end of what we perceived to be the "waterfalls area" along the historical highway detour of the Columbia River Gorge.

• Antoine Rivarol.

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After so many desert pictures in the recent days I wanted to post something green and while going through my old shots from 2014 I came across this beauty which was taken at Trillium Lake in Oregon just after sunrise. The view of Mt Hood from this location is spectacular especially in the mornings with misty Lake Trillium in the foreground.

I had noticed these three rocks in the lake while we were scouting the location and wanted to use it so badly in a shot. Took this one pretty late during sunrise and the light was coming in strong over the mountain. Hope you all like it happy Friday..

• Elizabeth Bowen.

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Punch bowl falls, located at Columbia River gorge, Oregon. This was the second shot I made at the location after our extensive hike. Compared to the drought ridden California, Oregon’s rivers had good water flow so I had to settle for a shot from far away. A bunch of kids actually swam across to the closer vantage point but one of the unfortunately could not swing back due to hypothermia and had to be evacuated that day. So I am quite glad that I didn’t try to get deep into the water.

Thanks for visiting and have a great day..

Trillium Lake is a lake situated 7.5 miles (12.1 km) south-southwest of Mount Hood in Oregon. It is formed by a dam at the headwaters of Mud Creek, tributary to the Salmon River. It was created by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife in 1960.

The area which is now the lake was part of the Barlow Road, a component of the Oregon Trail. A log road across marshes allowed immigrants to pass to Summit Meadow, which was a toll station from 1866—1870. Trillium is a genus of flowers particularly noticeable in the area.

The lake is popular for fishing, camping and photography, often clearly reflecting Mount Hood. The lake is a very popular Nordic skiing destination from a trailhead across U.S. Route 26 from Snow Bunny.

So the story with this image. I had been to Trillium Lake 3 times. First time it was loaded with people on the lake. Second time I got there early hoping for good light, which there was, but it was also windy and the reflection wasn't as good. Third time no people and calm across the lake but the sky was nondescript. So I have combined the second visit sky onto the third visit lake.

• John James Audubon.

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The first time we visited Oregon’s beautiful Columbia River Gorge we were spellbound by its beauty and by the sheer number of waterfalls. We went on so many hikes the week we were there that we got our 10k steps in without any effort. This photo is taken at the stunning Wahkeena falls. This hike started out as just a trip to Fairy falls but we ran into this beautiful fall on the way. Later I learned that this fall is tough to photograph and while I took 3 – 4 images I didn’t get a composition that I liked. So, I didn’t post the image at the time. Recently I was going over some of my old images as part cleaning up my storage when saw this image. I decided to process the photos and see if I could get some interesting images.

Processing wise I boosted the contrast a bit and cropped out some of the bottom parts that were too distracting. I wish I had spent some time here looking for some more interesting compositions.

We are at the peak of color change here in Oregon. Got to Multnomah Falls at sunrise. There was a light mist but the leaves where glowing. My camera isn't quite enough to encompass the full falls so I stitched together the top and the bottom of the images I took.

The waterfall is accessible from the Historic Columbia River Highway and Interstate 84. Spanning two tiers on basalt cliffs, it is the tallest waterfall in the state of Oregon at 620 ft (189 m) in height.

The falls were noted in the journals of explorers William Clark and Meriwether Lewis during their expedition through the Columbia River Gorge in 1805.

• Nelson Mandela.

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One of the few characteristics of mine that surprises my wife is how I transform myself from complete couch potato to hyperactive outdoor person the moment we are on one of our photo trips. In our last trip to Oregon, we averaged about 5 miles of hiking a day with at least 1000ft in elevation gain. One of the pains of hiking after not being active is that you increase your chances of getting hurt, add to that about 6-7 lbs worth of camera gear and you are really pushing it. So during the Oregon trip, my wife made me buy a lightweight hiking bad and I wrapped my trusty old D800 and Nikkor 24-70 f2.8 in a shawl wrap for our hikes. And boy am I hooked, the lightweight bag was a breeze to carry on my back and if you don’t consider the damn mosquitoes trying to lift you away, provided a quite enjoyable hike to the Tom Dick and Harry Mountain.

You can see 5 mountain peaks from the top of Tom Dick and Harry Mountain and these are the main four, the fifth one is more to the south and is diametrically opposite this view.

• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

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One of the most stunning views of the beautiful Mt. Hood is from the top of one of its foothills, the Tom Dick and Harry Mountain. This had to be one of the hardest hikes we have ever done not because of distance or elevation gain but because of the damn mosquitoes. They were everywhere constantly buzzing and hovering over our heads and biting as they please. Plus the added weight of the camera gear didn’t help either. Thankfully my wife convinced me to ditch my full gear and just hike with the bare essentials and a use a lightweight hiking bag, which made it a lot easier. But the constant presence of mosquitoes kind of robbed the fun off the trail a bit.

We forgot all that though once we reached the top and saw the view of the 5 peaks which are visible from this summit, bathed in golden light. The sunset gave us an unbelievably pretty light show before we hurried back off the mountain. One of my favorites from the trip.

Lost Lake is a lake in Mount Hood National Forest. We have to identify it as the one in Hood River County because we have more than one Lost Lake here in Oregon.

The lake is bounded on the east by 4,468-foot (1,362 m) Lost Lake Butte and on the southwest by 4,556-foot (1,389 m) Preachers Peak. The lake is fed by three unnamed intermittent creeks from Lost Lake Butte, and Inlet Creek from Preachers Peak. The lake maintains a very consistent level via an outlet at the north tip, the source of Lake Branch Hood River, a tributary of West Fork Hood River. It is the second-deepest lake in Mount Hood National Forest after Wahtum Lake at 167 feet (51 m).

I am saddened to discover this tunnel was destroyed in the Eagle Creek fire in Sept. 2017. I am glad I got to see it before the damage.