Willamette River Flooding Adventure

by matt on January 26, 2012

We’ve had a lot of rain recently thanks to some late winter storms that finally dropped some snow in the mountains.  But the rain and now rising snow lines has created an excess of water that quickly finds it’s way into the river basins.  I took my boys down to Alton Baker Park in Eugene to check out the Willamette River and see how high the water was.  It’s pretty incredible to see the amount of water flowing right now.

While we were there we bumped into a photographer for the Register Guard who was sporting a sweet 300mm Canon lens and a monopod.  I’ve never used a monopod but I can sure see that they would be handy with that big 300mm.  I was using my Canon 7D with the 70-200 f/2.8L IS II attached and took a few photos of ducks that were enjoying floating down the now submerged bike path.

Duck floating down a flooded bike path

The regal head of the mighty mallard.

 

I’m still getting used to the focusing on the Canon 7D.  It’s quite different from my Canon 5D Mark II and I haven’t spent nearly enough time trying to figure it out and practice with it more.  I’m not sure I nailed the focus with these duck photos due to my inexperience with the 7D.  I will say that the 70-200 f/2.8L IS II is an incredible lens that is worth every penny of it’s high price.

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Tulip Tuesday – From the Archives

by matt on January 25, 2012

Every year the family and I make the 1+ hour drive north to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival in Woodburn Oregon to take in the acres upon acres of colorful blooming tulips.  It’s really an amazing experience and one we enjoy as a family.  If you find yourself in Oregon around March and April go check it out.

I’ve been sitting on literally hundreds of photos I took at the tulip festival for several years now.  From time to time I will go back through them and process and re-process a few.  Today it dark and dreary and raining all day long so I thought why not cheer myself up with some colorful tulip photos to remind myself that it won’t be long again until the tulip festival kicks off again.  I post a few now for your enjoyment.

Blooming tulips at the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival

Tulips come in every shade of color imaginable.

I can’t say that I am ever really happy with an image.  There are many that I really like and enjoy but I always seem to be tinkering with them, processing them in different ways, playing with different crops, experimenting.  Often my original vision will change and an image will transform into something completely different.  And I’m OK with that.  I like being able to create different versions.

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Macro Photography – Canon 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro

January 24, 2012

Last month I purchased the Canon 100mm f/2.8 IS Macro lens.  Previously the only macro capability I had was the macro setting on my Tamron 28-75 f/2.8.  The Tamron isn’t bad at macro shots with a minimum focusing distance of 13 inches but it’s not in the same ballpark as the Canon 100mm which is [...]

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Making the Print – New eBook Available

January 17, 2012

One aspect of photography that I’ve always struggled with is printing my photographic work.  I would love if the image I see on my screen matched the image that gets printed but far too often that doesn’t seem to be the case and it’s frustrating.  I’ve really noticed the difficulty in matching up the two [...]

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Conquering Foreign Languages

January 10, 2012

As a photographer that loves to travel and photograph people, cultures and landscapes it’s important to me that I am able to at the very least speak a bit of the local language.  Not only is it helpful in getting around and making sure that what you just ordered isn’t going to blow your socks [...]

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Hiking Spencer Butte at Night

January 10, 2012

We never intended to be walking the trail in darkness so how did we now find ourselves blindly stumbling down the now barely visible path? Late in the day on Sunday we had decided to do a family hike up Spencer Butte in Eugene for some well needed exercise. We pulled into the parking lot [...]

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Help Support Bali Animal Welfare Association

January 7, 2012

My sister who is President of Decipher Inc. recently had the opportunity to spend a bit of time on the ground in the island paradise of Bali.  I’ve been to Bali as well back in 2005 and fell in love with the culture, people, scenery and incredible beaches.  Some of my sister’s time in Bali [...]

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Time-lapse Photography

January 5, 2012

I‘ve always liked and been amazed with some of the time-lapse videos I’ve seen so I decided to try making my own.  I thought a bit about what I wanted to create and finally decided to mount my camera in the back seat of my car with a wide angle lens and shoot while I [...]

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The Last Sunrise of 2011 – Happy New Year!

December 31, 2011

On this last day of 2011 I wanted to do something special so I woke up before dawn and got in the car and drove to Mount Pisgah which has nice 360 degree views of the surrounding area.  I wanted to catch the last sunrise of 2011.  I arrived at the parking lot and turned [...]

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My Favorite Photos of 2011

December 30, 2011

As 2011 comes to a close I want to take a look back at the images I shot and pick out and highlight my favorite photos.  These are not necessarily my best photos but simply the ones I like the most.  So here they are in no particular order. Sleep – November 2011 The Farm [...]

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