A commonly dark and dreary day in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge, an area boasting one of the highest concentration of waterfalls in the world.
You can learn how I create my images at www.ryandyar.com 👍👍 Thank you for taking a look at this photo.
Tags: Ryan Dyar ruckel pacific northwest northwest oregon Columbia River gorge gorge forest stream creek waterfall
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This area is fairly remote, which is one of my favorite parts of getting out there alone. You can still find a bit solitude. After making the 9 hour drive to this playa on the border of Oregon and Nevada (not the Alvord Playa) in the mid afternoon I was exhausted... as I tend to be during any hour of the day. Like the Nap Champ I am, I crawled into the back of my truck and took a 3 hour snooze.
My alarm went off on my then brand new iPhone (the original iPhone... like the first model that ever came out) and I popped up from my thunderous slumber to find thunderous weather had accumulated in the skies. “HELL YEAH!” I glanced at my phone to silence the alarm and noticed I had only 3% battery left. I jumped back into the drivers seat of the rig, plugged my phone into the charger, shoved my key into the ignition, twisted my wrist and.... nothing. “Hmmm.” I turned the key again... *clickclickclick* “Oh come the fuck on.” Twist *clickclick* Nothing. I quickly assessed the issue and found the problem in about 4 seconds because I’m a talented mechanic... my dumb ass left the headlights on.
Slight panic set in and I quickly went into problem solving mode. Scenario: Dead car battery, a 24 hour walk to find civilization, enough food to last about 3 hours (36 hours for a normal person), enough water for a day, enough layers to keep warm, a book, and a cell phone with 3% battery left. I established my first priority aloud to myself “fuck walking 30 miles in the desert.” So my safety had to come via the rapidly dying cell phone. Who should call and explain my scenario to with a battery that might die in 1 minute of talking? Of course 911. The phone call went like this: “911, what’s your emergency?” Me: “my cell battery is about to die, so I’ll be quick. I’m stranded in my vehicle at *insert coordinates I looked up on my in-car GPS* and need a jump start. I’m not injured, just need a jump start.” Her: “ummmmmmmm. Well the nearest tow truck company is located 3 hours away, so I can try to ca...” *phone dies* Lovely.
So maybe someone will show up, or maybe not and I’ll just walk out tomorrow. With not much else to do, I decided to grab my camera bag and shoot this image. After sunset, as it started to get dark, there was still no sign of help. I ate my leftover sandwich from earlier in the day, placed a bunch of flashlights on the roof of my truck pointing towards the rarely used dirt road that was a a couple miles away, and tucked into my book to kill some time.
As I read, I kept checking the time. 9pm, nothing. 11pm, nothing. Midnight, damn, still nothing. 1am and my eyes are starting to get heavy... “ Wait! What are those headlights out there??!!” Like someone who’s been lost at sea for months, I frantically grabbed one of the flashlights and started waving it wildly at the distant vehicle followed by rapidly covering and uncovering the light to signal the morse code for SOS, which at that point meant “save our stomachs” more than anything else... I was still hungry after my sandwich. Sure enough, the headlights turned toward me, grew closer, and in a couple minutes revealed themselves to be attached to a tow truck. The driver jumped out “You that kid with a dead battery?” Me: “yeah, didn’t know if anyone was gonna show up!” Driver: “Boy, your coordinates were WAY OFF! I been looking for you 20 miles in the other direction for hours. You know Thais ain’t gonna be cheap, right?” And that, my friends, is the incredibly boring story of how I once paid almost $1000 to take a nap in the desert. I’m sorry if you read all of that.
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You can learn how I edit all of my images at the link in my bio. 👍👍
Tags: Ryan dyar lightning thunderstorm storm sunset nevada Oregon playa desert
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An autumn evening in the mountains of northern Norway.
You can learn how I create my images at www.ryandyar.com 👍👍 Thank you for taking a look at this photo.
Tags: foliage sunset Ryan dyar Lofoten Lofoten islands mountains mountain lake color fall autumn arctic norway
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Fun fact; the rocks in this area of Namibia contain a somewhat significant amount of iron in them. Significant enough that if you tap on one it sounds like a hollow piece of metal. Another fun fact, it’s this same iron that makes your compass go bat shit crazy when you’re trying to walk out of this area in the dark and you can’t find your way so you kinda laugh it off at first and then you start to get scared because you’re kinda afraid of the dark so you start to worry and you don’t have cell phone reception so it’s not like you could call anyone for help so you get even more worried and a little panic sets in then you start hyperventilating and then you see the parking area and you’re ok. That didn’t happen, I’m just saying.
You can learn how I create my images at www.ryandyar.com 👍👍 Thank you for taking a look at this photo.
Tags: Ryan Dyar night moon dawn sunrise astro quiver trees quiver tree desert Africa Namibia
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Sunrise over one of the many chiseled buttes strewn throughout the deserts of Utah. You can learn how I make my images at www.ryandyar.com 👍
Tags: aerial drone Ryan dyar storn sunrise factory butte butte badlands desert utah
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