Welcome to Jeff Barnhart Photography's Blog!

Hello, and welcome to my blog!  My name is Jeff Barnhart, and I am an Award-Winning Pacific Northwest Landscape Photographer, High School Senior Photographer, and Wedding Photographer.  Follow me as I journey across Oregon, Washington and Idaho to create art often inspired by my readers!  This is where you can read all about the adventures of Jeff Barnhart Photography, and this is where you can Experience Art!

Return to all posts

Oregon Landscape Photography | August 2015

Tuesday, August 18, 2015 10:17 PM

oregon landscapes

As I was planning for this year’s alpine wildflower season when I ran into a couple pretty sweet images I hadn’t seen before, so curiously I read the caption.  As I usually do for trips such as this, I plan about a month ahead, and with the warmer temperatures I decided to plan a trip 2 weeks earlier than last year, which was 4 weeks earlier than the 2 years ago, and 6 weeks earlier than 3 years ago.  As I read the caption it hit me like a ton of bricks: “If you don’t visit Mt. Rainier this weekend, you will likely miss your chance to shoot wildflowers”.  The time stamp on the photo read 2 days prior, so it was for real.

Wow, so I guess I’m going to Mt. Rainier this weekend, so let me check the weather report… Nothing but blue skies.  Ugh!  I have plenty of images of Mt. Rainier with blue skies!  This leaves me with 1 option.  I’m going to Crater Lake!  Yes, that’s right.  I checked the weather report for several locations this weekend, and Crater Lake seemed like the only place where I’d find any clouds, so off I went!

To find the best composition I drove the entire loop.  My first visit here was on the same weekend 5 years ago, and the loop was closed because the snow hadn’t been cleared yet.  This time I would enjoy a fabulous drive around the rim, and with the cloud cover coming almost entirely from the south, this viewpoint seemed like a solid choice: 

Crater Lake National Park

While I sat here and lined up this shot, cloaked in maximum strength DEET, I was overwhelmed by mosquitoes.  They were seriously out of control, and apparently DEET just adds to the flavor.  I literally had to trigger the shutter, then run away to avoid the swarm!  When I got back my tripod and camera were covered!  It was like they knew I had to come back to my camera, and were waiting!

Once the show was over I went to check out Watchman Lookout, but before I really got started, I saw this, and had to take a few shots!

Crater Lake at Night

The view from Watchman is pretty nice, but wasn’t was I was looking for on this night, so I took it all in and went back to my car and made a bad decision… I opened up more than 1 door.  Immediately the swarm of mosquitoes strapped themselves in for a little car ride, so I finished packing up and drove around part of the rim with the windows open, inviting those who had entered to piss off.  That got rid of quite a few, but others felt it was more beneficial to stay the night and buzz at a high frequency in my ear while I tried to get a few hours of sleep.  In the morning I expressed my feelings to several of them, and I left an example on my dashboard of what happens to those whom feel compelled to reject my invitations!

Crater Lake and Wizard Island

I was excited to get out of my self-made mosquito trap, and take some picture near another nest!  I guess a few mosquito bites are a small price to pay for lighting this good, so drink up, I guess.  J  

0 Comment(s)


Add a Comment

Name
Comment