The San Juan Mountains are finally off to a good start after a dry fall. Just a few days before the mountains were nearly bare making this a much needed storm.  I went up last night with my faithful beagle-mix companion and ran through knee deep powder at 10K.
This second shot was taken well after sunset at the magical hour when the belt of venus takes over with it’s vivid violet and deep blue colors. It was bitter cold which made for nice crisp colors on the horizon.

 With frozen fingers, I couldn’t feel the shutter button but managed to get some shots off but paid the price on the way home during the thaw. I really need to bring a butane burner along…

Wishing everyone a wonderful, blessed Thanksgiving!

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Canon 6D, 70–300 f/4L, f/14, 1/60 sec, 320 ISO, 70mm, Dolica carbon tripod, Manfrotto monopod, Lowpro flipside backpack, and Abobe lightroom 6 for editing.

Continuing from my last blog, my visit to Artist Point didn’t stop there.  The last day of my trip I decided to pack it in. I was staying across the boarder in BC, Canada and planned to go salmon fishing. The local rivers were full of large 20-30 pound Springs (or Chinook) but I was after the Coho.  The Coho run had just started so fishing was pretty tough.  By late afternoon, I was finally able to catch one.

 This only left me a few hours to make it up to the Artist Point area in hopes of catching a sunset as well.  The traffic was terrible as most of the Canadians were coming back from there long Thanksgiving weekend.  It took forever to get to the US border crossing and thankfully it wasn’t busy.  Long story short, I made it in time to hike up to a nice vantage point. I was pleasantly surprised to see a half moon rise over Mt. Baker just before sunset.  Unfortunately local low lying clouds were obscuring part of Mt. Baker so I had to wait for a while until it cleared.  The picture shown was taken well after the sun went down but the beautiful Belt of Venus more than made up for it.

It was quite spectacular to witness this massive glaciated volcano with the moon above and all the brilliant fall colors surrounding it! This will definitely become an annual pilgrimage.

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To continue from my last blog, I arrived home late and had to get ready for my trip to the Pacific Northwest. I didn’t really know anything about that area. We only had a few days there as we would meet up with my wife’s family in BC, Canada for a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner.

The next morning came early as our flight departed at 6:00 a.m. Long story short, we missed our flight but somehow, after a few hours wait they found us another one. We were very thankful!

We arrived later than planned at a remote cabin located in a heavily forested area completely unknown to me leaving no chance to find a spot for a sunset. It was raining anyways so nothing was lost. The next morning surprised me as the overcast sky had completely cleared but unfortunately, it was too late to catch a sunrise. Instead, I took my time searching for a spot. I  ended up going to Artist Point at midday where we were met with a crowd of tourists. Fortunately, I met a husband and wife photography team at Picture Lake who lived in Washington State. They were very kind and knowledgeable of the area. Funny, I just now found out that I followed them on Flickr and haven’t informed them yet as of this writing. It’s a small world.

Later that evening I decided to go up to Artist Point. After scouting out the area I realized I needed to hike higher up to get at least a somewhat original shot. The higher I got, the more the crowds dissipated but I was quickly running out of light. The sunset began before I could get set up so I scrambled as usual. Mt. Baker took on a beautiful gold streak in the clouds so I took a couple of quick shots to stitch later.  Mt. Shuksan, the star of the show, took on some beautiful saturated color as it was facing the right direction for a sunset. It only lasted for a moment so I only had time to shoot some quick handheld shots. By the time I set up and found some nice fall foreground the golden tones had mostly disappeared into the night leaving a nice reddish highlight on top of the peak.  Everywhere I looked were gorgeous, glaciated volcanic peaks,  an outdoor enthusiast dream…  I was so thankful to get this shot because moments later it was all over.

Landscape photography is definitely an action, adrenaline sport!

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Canon 6D, 24-70 f/4L, f/14, 1/20 sec, 200 ISO, 26mm, Dolica carbon tripod, Abobe lightroom 6