Last week I had the privilege of hanging out with Ryan Engstrom, Tom Bricker, Don Sullivan and Jeff Krause up in the Columbia River Gorge. I had hit the treadmill in preparation for some serious hiking so I thought I was pretty much ready for anything. But by the end of our first full day, I was so sore I could barely move. All of us were out shooting on roughly 3 hours of sleep, and by the end of that first day, we had already been up at 4:30 AM to attempt to shoot a gorge overlook, Multlomah Falls, Falls Creek Falls, and Panther Creek Falls. Ryan wasn't satisfied as we limped back to the cars around 4 PM as we still had some daylight left. There was one more falls we needed to shoot, he said. The light was perfect, he said. It was a short hike, just off the road, he said. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes, he said. Would I need water? Pfft. It's just a short scramble down a slope and boom. You're there.
Well...
I probably should have been more dubious when Ryan started down the "trail" which wasn't a trail at all. It was down a bush covered cliff...followed by a steep hillside of boulders...followed by a steep plunge over another cliff into an abyss. As I picked my way down, wincing in pain with every step, I was cursing Ryan under my breath. How in the world was I going to make that freaking climb back up to the car?
Suddenly I heard the falls in the distance. I scrambled down the last bit of hillside swinging on branches like tarzan...and the falls came into view. And every horrible thought about Ryan went right out of my head. The late afternoon sun was hitting the trees above us creating a warm glow over the azure blue falls which seemed to appear out of nowhere in this lush area of the gorge. There was no "real" trail down here, although I did find a small footpath of sorts on the way back up. After shooting and then staring at these falls for quite some time, I had more than enough energy to make that steep climb back to the car. They couldn't have chosen a better name for this location.
William McIntosh Photography
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It was already going on 7:00 PM as the last of us arrived back at the cars after a very steep climb back from Spirit Falls. We knew the sun would set at 8:30 and we knew the drive to Trillium Lake would be around 75 minutes from our location on the other side of the river.
So off we went. It was a beautiful drive down highway 35 as the evening sun was shining on farms, orchards, and rolling hillsides, but as we looked over to the west, Mt Hood looked like it was completely buried in clouds. At this point, all of us were sure that we were going to be late, and, more importantly, the mountain would be completely covered in clouds and our long drive would be for naught.
Sure enough, by the time we pulled in the parking area, most of us left our gear in the cars as it looked completely pointless. The sky was a flat gray and most of the mountain was obscured. But suddenly as we looked on, the clouds began to to shift, Mt Hood appeared as if from nowhere, and there was color in the sky. We made a mad dash back to the cars and spent the next hour or so shooting madly before the last of the color disappeared in the West.
If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times. When you are shooting sunsets or sunrises, it's not over until it's over. Common sense was telling all of us to keep driving as the sky was blah and we were starving and very tired after hiking multiple trails throughout the day. But if there is anything to learn from my week of shooting up in the gorge it's that landscape photography has little or nothing to do with common sense and everything to do with just being there when the magic happens.
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On our first full day shooting in the Gorge, we were up at 4 AM to try to catch a sunrise from an overlook, but we were fogged in. Bailing on the sunrise, we headed next to Multlomah, and then it was off to Elowah. By the time we were done shooting at Elowah, we were starving, and I, for one, was already exhausted. All of us headed off to breakfast at the Black Bear Diner and had huge portions of just about everything on the menu. It was at this point that Ryan suggested going to the other side of the gorge and hitting 3 falls while we were over there, namely Falls Creek, Panther Creek, and Spirit. By 1:30 PM, we were bouncing along the ginormous potholes in our rental jeep cherokee on our way to the Falls Creek trailhead. Once we had arrived, it was a long and arduous hike to the top. Don and I, being in our 50's, took our sweet time while the young ones scampered on ahead of us.
When I finally arrived, huffing and puffing several minutes behind the rest of the group, my jaw hit the ground. After climbing around the last bend in the trail, the bluff we were on suddenly fell away revealing a huge set of falls careening right out of the trees above us and falling what seemed like hundreds of feet below into a large, cavernous bowl.
I took more than a few shots of these incredible falls from several angles before I left, and I actually returned two days later with Ryan to shoot from a lower location, but I wanted to start by posting this view as this is what hits you in the face when you come around that final bend in the trail.
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OK....so there's the fact that this is one of the most photographed waterfalls in the world...and the fact that you can pull into the parking lot and waddle up the fairly short trail behind the restaurant and gift shop and shoot away without breaking a sweat, and the fact that neither of these facts really do much for the "I want to be a serious landscape photographer" part of my psyche. (The Mossy Grotto was one of those locations. Hike straight up the side of a mountain and hurl yourself over a cliff into a pile of poison oak. Now THAT'S what landscape photography is all about!)
And yet...I'd have to admit that this was one of those locations that I was most looking forward to shooting when we got to the gorge. There's just something about the combination of that white bridge surrounded by lush trees and a waterfall that goes right up to the sky. As with my other shots from that week, I experimented quite a bit with the framing, but with my first post of this location, I wanted to focus on the bridge rather than the entirety of the falls.
After Multnomah, it was Elowah, Falls Creek, Panther, and Spirit Falls, and by the time I clawed my way out of the gorge back to the road, gasping for air at 7 PM, I had had quite enough "serious landscape photography" for one day. I'm hoping to be in shape enough to try some backpacking in the not so distant future, but in the mean time, I'm sure not going to complain when a waterfall like Multnomah is within throwing distance of my car.
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On day #3, we set off up Eagle Creek with Punchbowl Falls as our main objective for the morning. I had seen more than few shots of this particular waterfall over the past few years, and it was one of the main motivations for me to drop everything in the middle of a busy Spring semester and head up to Oregon for a few days.
When we finally arrived, it was clear that we weren't the only ones to have heard of this particular spot. While we were shooting, somewhere between 50-75 people came up behind us and posed for photos, and had picnic lunches while small kids scrambled in every direction. Our timing was pretty good as we arrived just before the mob and I had already fired off quite a few shots before the masses began to mooch in on the thin strip of shoreline that offered a view of the falls. The smart ones in my group hauled the chest waders all the way up from the car, but I was feeling pretty shot from the day before and left mine in the Cherokee.
Punchbowl Falls is usually shot vertically to great effect, but as I began shooting, the wider view caught my eye first. In spite of the fact that hordes were soon descending on us, I couldn't help but wonder which incredibly fortunate human being was the first to set eyes on this location. How long must he or she must have stood there staring? Before picnics, and hordes of photographers, and instagram, and iPads, and selfie sticks. Nothing but that view and the sound of the water cascading down from those rocks. If it was me, I would have sat there for weeks.
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