Sparks

• Virgil.

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On our second trip to Oregon, we got a chance to visit some fantastic spots in the green state of Oregon. One of the amazing towns that we stayed over was called Bend. The name really attracted us on the map plus it was good base camp for our exploration of various central Oregon attractions. On our second day there I noticed a huge billboard outside our motel that advertised about various tourist attractions accessible from Bend and it had an otherworldly picture of a lake with majestic mountains and some spectacular clouds. I tried figuring out where that location was but between the spotty internet connection and our crazy schedule had not much luck.

Once back in LA, I still remembered the place and launched a lot of internet searches until I finally landed on the image. That image was taken at Sparks lake and the mountains visible were South Sister and Broken top. Therefore, on our next trip we spend a beautiful morning there shooting the mountains and the calm lake reflections. We didn’t have any cloud cover on that day, so I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t get the full potential image. So, when our trip to Washington ran into some unforeseen snow storm on the mountains, we decided to reroute the trip to Bend and try our luck at sunset. We reached just before sunset after driving all day and found the day to be extremely cloudy and windy. My wife didn’t have high hopes, but I knew the wind was a game changer. As sunset neared the wind intensified and started to warp the cloud cover into a lenticular cloud. It was cold and windy, but we were in place waiting for the cloud to get perfect, but it was too dark by the time the wind died down and the cloud cover tuned into a perfect lenticular. In the meantime, I took this shot of the beautiful scene while there was still come color in the sky.

• Jean de La Fontaine.

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This shot was taken near Bend Oregon at the stunning Sparks Lake. This Lakes location just so stunning that there are about a million different viewpoints here. Also, the trail covering some of the best views of the lake and the surrounding peaks of the Cascade range is named in memory of the famous photographer Ray Atkeson (more details about his work can be found here www.rayatkeson.com/).

I have a bit of history with this spot as the last time we were there we had witnessed a stunning sunrise and in my haste, I focused most on the light at the top of the peak of South Sister. That resulted in the poor framing of the tree that was growing out of the rocky shoreline as I placed it below the horizon making it lost in the shadows. For some reason that irked me a lot about that shot and when we went back to the lake during this year’s road trip, I wanted to rectify that little oversight. This time though we had some excellent colors and truly unique cloud cover completely engulfing the peak of the mountain. So I used my Lee Big Stopper and slowed the exposure times a bit.