Kevin's Weblog

I haven’t posted a photo in a couple weeks, not because I didn’t have a good one, but because I have a great one and I can’t show it to you. I got my last roll of slides from the summer developed and was thrilled to find that it was possibly the best roll I’ve ever shot. There’s a series of images which are just stunning. That’s on my light table. Unfortunately, apparently my scanner sucks. It’s a Canon Pixma MP 760 if you’d like to not buy one, and it’s made gorgeous colors and textures into something flat and boring.

I’ve been stuck for a couple weeks, not posting photos because I want to show this photo, but I don’t want to show this scan. And, I’ve decided that I need to just post the damn thing and move on. But first, context...

The last day before OSCON started, I put the family on a plane back to LA and then took off to the Columbia River Gorge to hike and take some pictures. I was hoping to go by Bridal Veil Falls, but the trail was under construction. Instead, I picked, more-or-less arbitrarily, to stop at Wahkeena Falls. This was a good choice. In the Yakima language, “Wahkeena” means “most beautiful”, which is entirely accurate in my opinion.

It’s a quick walk from the parking area to the observation desk at the bottom of the falls, and that’s as far as most people go. I took a couple pictures there, but it’s hard to capture the whole falls, plus there were all these people in the way. After a few minutes, I continued up the trail, leaving almost all the crowd behind. For a bit, the trail is steep and fairly uninteresting, but it eventually gets you up above the top of the falls and follows the headwaters. Apparently, almost no one makes it to this point, though, because I was completely alone for most of the next hour or so that I spent rambling along, sitting by the side, or at one point in the middle, of the river and taking pictures.

The light was somewhat low at this point, and I was using slow film (Velvia). I seem to have gotten lucky and hit a sweet spot in the exposure times, because the effect on the water is pretty magical. At the same time, the vegetation is all that lovely, brilliant Pacific Northwest green. Neither effect comes out in the scans. So, if you are prepared to be disappointed, here’s the picture: