Olympic National Park

• Francis of Assisi.

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Another shot from the spectacular sunset we experienced at the second beach in the Olympic Peninsula. The main challenge of taking shots here is the incredible change in lighting that happens in a very short while during sunset.

This shot was taken just before sunset when the sun was creating an extremely high dynamic range scene. About 5 minutes after I took this shot, the sun went down and we had beautiful pastel low dynamic range scene that I posted before. This one required about two graduated filters to balance out the high tones with the low tones. I also tried to get a Sunstar through the natural arch in the rock but got a sun portal instead. Hope you all like this image.

A clear sky and incomming tide. Not the best conditions to shoot this wonderful beach but still better than the next two days where it was just fog and flat grey skies.

Although I didn't find tide pools at the beach I found an interesting foreground near one of the larger sea stacks at the beach and with the sun lighting up the scene I found this to be a very nice composition. I waited for the right wave to complete the middleground and had my picture.

Start2Finish Post Processing Tutorial

• Aesop.

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Sunrises are hard for me to shoot. As early as I can remember, I have always been a night owl and never a morning person. In fact, I still vividly remember my first sunrise experience, I was maybe 4 or 5 years old when we visited the pointy bottom end of India. This spot (Kanyakumari) has a lot of religious and cultural importance in India as a place where three oceans meet. So my parents were very excited about waking up early for sunrise, me not so much. There I was, groggy and irritated, on a rooftop being battered by cold morning breeze and the sun broke the horizon. To put it mildly, I was wide immediately wide awake, I have not before seen something that beautiful when warm golden light lit the rocky shore of the coast in perfect light. I’d say I got addicted to sunrise that day and since then never had any issues waking up super early for sunrise.

This shot was taken on our trip to Washington last summer, I miscalculated my distances and it took forever to get back to our hotel after sunset at the second beach. We were late to wake up for sunrise at hurricane ridge. As we were driving up the predawn light start to color the skies. I made a call to jump out and get a shot, even though there was no good view. Thankfully we came across a spot on the road where there was a gap in tree cover. I was specific to expose this shot just for the colors in the sky and wanted to silhouette the trees on either side of the composition.

A view from behind the waterfalls. The light made it possible to get a good photo from this side. Else the contrast at the edge of the falls would have been to harsh and the drop of to abrupt.

I used some manual blending here for dynamic range and then my usual postprocessing for colors and contrast. Came out quite well I think :-)

• Blaise Pascal.

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COLOR version of this image

One of the coolest places we got to visit during our road trip to Washington was the hall of Mosses trail at the Hoh rainforest. The trail is pretty short and even but the trees are quite magnificent and at the same time little intimidating. We were there on an afternoon and pretty much had the whole section of the trail to ourselves.

One of the challenges in my photography is taking compelling images of trees. I have precious few images in my stream where single trees are the mail subject. As I was at the Hall of Moses trail and among some of the most majestic old temperate trees including bigleaf maples and Sitka spruces, I had pretty much no idea regarding how to capture them.

This image is a stitch panorama shot of about 3 images that were later cropped to a square crop. While I was processing the image, I noticed that the image felt rather bland with strong green tones overpowering every other visual element in the image. So just for kicks, I desaturated the image completely and I felt instantly great about the shot. Add in some minor contrast adjustment and I feel like the image looks way better than the original. I am curious to know what everyone else thinks about the image.

• Khalil Gibran.

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One of my favorite shots from our trip to the beautiful state of Washington was taken at the second beach just as the sun was setting and lighting up the few sea stacks that were close to the shore. I waited patiently with a wet hiking shoe to get the waves just right. The best part about the second beach is that to get here there needs to be some commitment from the photographer. There is a hike and a bit of scramble over accumulated logs that the ocean deposited by the beach. So, it's not as crowded as Rialto beach which is located just off the parking lot.

The light that was falling on these sea stacks were coming in perfects once the sun was behind a cliff which had a natural arch in it. The delicate light rays falling on the sea stack illuminated the rock perfectly with the red and golden light and shadows to provide depth to this amazing rock formation. Add to that gentle waves and the pink hue in the sky, all the elements came together for a perfect landscape shot. All I had to do was do justice to the scene with my technique and timing and I hope I nailed both.

I have just returned from an awesome 2 week trip to the west coast of the USA. We started in the Olympic National Park and then went down all the way to San Francisco. So there are a lot of photos I'll have to show you over the next weeks.

I'll start with a picture I took in the Hoh Rainforest. Well I expected a lot of this place and it is really beautiful. But during sunshine it's just awefully hard to capture it's magic. I had hoped for some rain there but got only clear blue skies. What made this even worse was the fog at the coast. We were staying in La Push since I wanted to shoot the awesome seascapes of the olympic national park, especially second beach. From the morning of day two fog rolled in and had the whole coast there in it's grasp.

I was fooled twice by the thick cloud cover and headed to the Hoh just to arrive there for the sun to blast all fog and clouds away, leaving only clear blue skies and harsh direct light. This photo I took in the 5-10 Minutes of shade we had there. I used some condensation technique on the polarizer to further emphasize the dreamy look of that place. Soon after the sun ruined all further photography.

If you are ever at the olympic peninsula and want to shoot the hoh make sure to go there early in the morning. Don't get fooled by fog or clouds at the coast, this all changes very fast further inland.

Hope you like it anyway :-)

cheers

Another of my tilt shift panorama images from my short visit to the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park. It was such a wonderful place to...

I spent some time in the Hoh Rainforest last week, and it felt like such a prehistoric place, I kept expecting a dinosaur to come out from behind one...

Quite simplified comp here. Not tide pools, no clouds ... So I put my wide angle lense aside and looked for some closer shots.

Hope you like it!

cheers

• Anton Chekhov.

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One of the star locations of our summer road trip to Washington state was the accidental discovery of the Second Beach near La Push. Our original plan was to spend the sunset at Rialto Beach and we reached the beach parking lot with hours to spare. But the problem was the high tide that ruined any decent photo opportunities. So, on a whim, we decided to drive to the second beach which looked like only moments away from the beach. It turned out to be a pretty long drive and quite an exhilarating hike to get to the beach.

Once we were at the beach we found an amazingly scenic beach with stunning haystacks, lush green forests, and even a natural arch. I took this shot just after sunset when the color in the sky became even. This is a panorama shot made of 5 shots with a two stop ND grad filter to balance the light. The challenge was to do the panorama quickly to get a continuation in the waves. Thankfully this came out perfectly while combining in Photoshop.

• Honore de Balzac.

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One more shot of the wonderful Sol Duc Falls at Olympic National Park. This one is a more straight on shot of the falls. As we were walking around I saw some amazing beam of light on the leaves above the falls and set up my tripod to compose for a shot. I had to wait a bit for the clouds to pass through and diffuse the light a bit and the water spray at this location was brutal on the camera but very refreshing after the hike. After about 5 minutes of waiting the clouds obliged and blocked the sun for enough time to take the shot. This is actually one of my favorite shot from this location.

• Aesop.

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After a rainy morning at Moulton falls we drove straight into the Olympic Peninsula and to the beautiful little town of Port Angeles. Here we kind of underestimated the sheer size of the peninsula and had a tiresome couple of days. The problem of summer road trips is that days are super long and landscape photography road trips can tire you out as you get very little time to sleep in between locations.

One of the first spots I wanted to visit for sunset was Rialto beach but unfortunately, it was high tide and we couldn’t get close to the sea stacks. So we decided to get to our backup spot which was the second beach, now this location is even more spectacular than Rialto beach but there is about a mile of hike plus some sketchy hops over fallen logs to get to the beach. I had a feeling that we will not enjoy scrambling over wet logs and a hike through a dense forest after sunset and that was the only reason for this spot being plan b. But after the quick hike, we reached the beach without many issues and the logs turned out to be way easier than the ones at the beginning of Oneonta Gorge. We reached just in time for sunset and to add to the plus side the waves were much gentler than the battering surf at Rialto beach. Hope Y'all like the images from the stunningly gorgeous second beach of the Olympic Peninsula.

• Henry David Thoreau.

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One of the main reasons why we included the Olympic Peninsula into this road trip was the beautiful location of Hurricane Ridge. There is quite an unparalleled view of the stunning Olympic mountains from the visitor center itself. Another added attraction is that the meadows which make the ridge famous are usually carpeted with wildflowers in summer. From my past experiences I have learned that sunrise and early morning is usually the best time if stillness is an important factor in your photos.

So after visiting the Hoh rainforest and abandoning a sunset venture at Ruby beach, we headed back to Port Angeles to get a little shut-eye before waking at 4 am for the 30 min drive to Hurricane Ridge. We were the only people there and I was truly excited thinking about finding my prime wildflower shot before anyone else joined us. But unfortunately, I realized soon that the reason why it was not crowded was because the wildflowers have not yet started blooming. So, all I had was a beautiful meadow in the for ground and a part of orange flowers close to the horizon if squint and zoom.

I still came back happy because the light was just gorgeous, and we have quite many elk and deer’s that were grazing by the meadow. Some even come close and checked us out. This is a must-see place if you are in the Olympic Peninsula or the beautiful towns of Port Angeles or Sequim.

• Bhumibol Adulyadej.

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One of our absolute favorite places from the Washington trip is the Hoh rainforest. It was a pain to reach as the entry point to the forest is located all the way on the other side of the peninsula from Port Angeles. This made the drive to the forest brutal and so we had to limit our hikes to the small trails. But once we started the hike, we realized how amazing this enchanted forest can be. We were in love with the greenery around us and rejuvenated just wandering around.

This panorama shot was one of my favorite shots from our short incursion into the forest.

• David Douglas.

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Today's photo is from Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. This shot was taken while hiking to the Sol Duc falls along the hiking trail. The forest there is just enchanting with the amazing old trees with moss hanging all over them. I was so focused on finally getting a shot of the Sol Duc falls that I concentrated on keeping my pace up to get to the falls and getting the shots I came for. On our way back from the falls, we took a more leisurely pace and I started to notice how wonderful the forest is and started to take some shots of the many interesting views.

• Yogi Berra.

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On our first day at the amazing Olympic peninsula, we decided to hit the beaches. First, we went to Rialto beach but due to high tide we couldn’t find a good composition and decided to bail early and get to second beach. Now this required a decent hike through a rain forest and traversing a bunch of fallen logs all the while carrying a camera bag and tripod. But we prevailed and reached the beach, the views were stunning from here and the surf was much tamer. I was happy and soon set about find a good composition near the water only to have a rogue wave completely drench me in ice cold water.

To say I was not in a good mood would be the understatement of the trip. After the usual bitching and moaning, I settled back to the business at hand and started taking pictures. As we were nearing the tail end of the shoot, I looked away from the setting sun and we found the breathtaking scene. It looked something out of the Caribbean rather than the cold summer beaches of the Pacific northwest and it one of my absolute favorite shots from the trip.

• Lao Tzu.

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Another shot from our recent summer roadtrip through the beautiful state of Washington. This one was taken at Hurrican ridge of Olympic National park. I didn’t take this shot just a bit after we completed the short hike around the ridgeline. We were actually about head back when I noticed that there was still some color in the mountains and the clouds. To add to that we had some deer that were grazing by the horizon, so I quickly set up a panorama shot of the Olympic mountains and the beautiful meadows in the foreground.