Hood River County

Apple trees starting to bloom and snow covered Mt. Hood in the background.

Hood River Valley is the river basin of Hood River in northern Oregon . It is bounded by the Columbia River to the north, Mount Hood to the south, the Cascade Range crest to the west and an apparently unnamed ridge system to the east which contains Hood River Mountain and Snyder Canyon. Mount Hood National Forest surrounds the Hood River Valley west, south, and east. It is entirely contained in Hood River County.

The only city in the valley is Hood River. The major unincorporated communities are Odell, Parkdale, Mount Hood, and Dee.

The valley is known for its tree fruit agriculture—including one of the world's largest pear growing areas—farm tourism, and recreation related to its evergreen forested mountains providing opportunities such as hiking, mountain biking, whitewater sports, camping, and 31 fishing lakes. On the Columbia River is one of the top rated water sports areas in the world, particularly for kite boarding and wind surfing. On Mount Hood, snow sports draw thousands daily primarily at Mount Hood Meadows, but also Cooper Spur ski area on the east side of Mount Hood. Alpine hiking and mountain climbing are popular as well.

• 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..

• Isaac Bashevis Singer.

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Couple of years ago, during our annual summer roadtrip, we visited the beautiful state of Oregon. I had seen many great photographs of Mt Hood from the north and wanted to take a shot of the mountain from the north in good light. The problem with traditional Trillium Lake and Lost Lake locations is that they do not get the best light during a summer sunrise. In my search for a summer vantage point we found out that the northern plains near Mt hood is amaze of small farms and county roads and can get very overwhelming.

I had heard about this farm that has a red barn and provides a nice composition of the mountain, unfortunately we visited during summer when the plants in the farm were at their full size, so we couldn’t see the farm but the light just before sunrise on that day was just fantastic. So, I found a small clearing from which th mountain was clearly visible and took a straight forward landscape shot. I used a 1 stop ND grad in this image and cropped the image into a square crop to exclude some distracting elements. I metered the brightest element in this image, which is the snow on top of the mountain. I dialed up the ISO to 400 for and aperture to 11 for enough depth of field.

• George Edward Woodberry.

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The fourth day of the trip was mainly taken up by travelling across the historic Columbia River scenic byway and visiting all the wonderful waterfalls along the way. And the major hike we did was the Eagle Creek to Punchbowl Falls hike. This is one of the shortest trails along the gorge and is about 5 miles long with pretty steep elevation gains, so little tough for an out of shape guy with a heavy camera bag. I sure am thankful that my wife agreed to carry the tripod.

After you've walked about a mile and a half, watch for an obvious spur trail off to your right. The path drops down to an overlook with a view of the magnificent 100-foot Metlako Falls, which seemingly shoots straight out of a cliffside into a large pool below (Source: www.portlandhikersfieldguide.org).

Once you reach Punchbowl falls there is a steep descent that will take you to a direct view of the Punchbowl falls, and you will have to get wet to get a good shot of the falls. There is also a fallen tree which slightly obstructs the view and to get an unobstructed view one has to swim in near freezing water to get closer to the falls. While we were there one swimmer had done just that and could not return as he had hypothermia and the fire rescue guys had the get him out in floating stretcher, just shows you how quickly the water can dispel body heat even in July. While I was setting up this shot, these two sisters walked into my frame shivering and clinging on to each other. Usually I burst a blood vessel when someone walks into a shot (my wife’s comments) but this time I just chose to be calm and include them in the shot. I like the way it came out hope you all like it.

Small waterfall along the trail. Update this trail is now closed due to the Eagle Creek fire Sept 2017.

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 :-)

• 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.

Along the Columbia River Gorge

Lavender Valley, which is the name of this farm, is a beautiful 6 acre hidden gem just 30 minutes south of Hood River, Oregon. The farm is located in the beautiful Hood River Valley within view of the picturesque Mt. Hood, standing tall at over 11,000 feet. The farm has a 360 degree view of the surrounding landscape and farms. The farm is free to anyone who wants to walk through the beautiful lavender field or take some amazing photos. If you want to make an amazing bouquet of lavender to take home, it is only 4 dollars to pick your own.

On my own photo preview program this didn't seem as saturated with color. Not the first time my images' colors looked different after posting on this site.

They have several varieties of lavender at the farm.

• Meister Eckhart.

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Todays shot was taken on our third trip to Oregon. Our first venture into Oregon was basically to visit its only national park, Crater Lake. Our second focused on the popular spots in and around Portland and Bend. And this trip is when we properly explored those little-known gems of the state. I have seen this beautiful view of Mt Hood a couple of times and often wondered about the location. From the angle of the photo and the shape of the mountain, I kind of guessed that the view is from the east side of highway 35 near the town of Hood River. And on a beautiful cloudless afternoon, my wife and I drove around the backroads until we found this stunning view of Mt Hood towering over the nearby farms. There were not many clouds so we got a tobacco tone during sunset.

I used a 2 stop ND grad to brighten up the foreground a bit and cropped some of the distracting plants from the foreground. This shot was taken just after the sun went behind the horizon. Due to the Sun's position and location of the mountain, the last light was coming from behind the mountain, so we waited until after sunset to take the image.

• 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..

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.

Along the Columbia River Gorge, Oregon

• 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..

• Frederick Douglass.

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During our first visit to the beautiful state of Oregon, almost as soon as we reached the outskirts of Portland, we realized that Mt Hood is going to dominate a lot of our shots. While planning, we actually hadn’t thought much about the mountain and most of our hikes and days were planned around Columbia River Gorge and its stunning waterfalls. We only had trillium lake as a view point for Mt Hood

So we made some impromptu changes to our itinerary and searched for some viewpoints to get some good shots of the most picturesque mountain that I have ever seen. Two notable spots came up, one was Lost lake campground and the other was some roads in Hood River Valley that led to Panorama Point. This shot was taken at Panorama Point park which has an amazing panorama view of the Mt Hood and the rolling hills at its base. This shot was taken just as the first rays of light warmed up the south west slopes of Mt Hood. This was before more light began to spread in from behind me and started to light the whole valley in golden light. I think I like the way this shot shows the effect of first light of golden hour contrasts with the cooler blue hour tones.

• Abraham Lincoln.

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Actually I think I skipped the order. The day we left to Palouse falls we started out by shooting the sunrise at Hood River Valley capturing the beautiful light as it hit Mt hood with the beautiful valleys in the foreground. We went to a lavender farm the day before on my wife’s request and we happened across this vista park which provides a stunning view of the Mt Hood.

I used this great app called the photographer’s ephemeris and realized this was an amazing sunrise location. As usual we were a bit late but the sky was pretty cloudy and didn’t have much pre dawn color. But we got to see a great sunset and the amazing hood river valley before starting off to Palouse.

along the Columbia River Gorge

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.

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).

Located in the same area as the Hood River orchards.

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).