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Last week we met our friends Andy and Elisha (EAPstudios) for a hiking/photo expedition in Silver Falls State Park. I had never been there, despite being an Oregon native my entire life, and it did not disappoint!

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My picture of everyone else taking their pictures

We hiked most of the Trail of the Ten Waterfalls. We had Titus with us in his off-road stroller, and then we used Andy and Elisha's off-road stroller for the camera gear (their 1 year old was home with grandma). Strollering the camera gear was really saving our backs and seemed like a brilliant idea (despite getting a few odd looks from passersby, one lady thought it was so funny she asked to take our picture) until we got to a large portion of the trail that was entirely stairs. There weren't any stairs on the map! After a bit of deliberation, we portaged the strollers down the stairs and soldiered on - which turned out to be a good choice, since there were no other unmarked stairs on the path.

Hiking with fellow photographers is an unusual treat, since they want to stop at all the same places you do, and don't mind waiting while you setup that perfect shot, or scramble around for the best camera position. Here's some pictures from the day...other eyes are always helpful, so leave a comment and let us know which you like best! Thanks!

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New Printer...

Recently our old HP 8450 decided that the HP cartridges we were using were no longer HP cartridges. Despite all my attempts to tell the stubborn device that they were really genuine HP cartridges, it refused to print using them. Frustrated and needing to print some documents, we ran over to Staples to get some new ink cartridges to see if that would fix the issue. Guess how much a new color and black cartridge for that 8450 was going to cost? Shoot high, you'll probably still underestimate, I know I did.

It was $75 for the new inks for an ancient printer! $75!? I can buy a new printer for that, and it comes with ink! So it got me thinking, and searching craigslist...
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Now we still have an "old" printer, but it is a brand new looking Epson R2400.

I found it for $200 on craigslist, and it came with ink! More importantly, it lets Amy and I print our panorama shots at a fraction of the cost from our lab, and at a quality the old HP could only dream of, if it could have even printed that size in the first place. The design student that sold it to us also included a full roll of Epson premium luster paper, so it was a great deal.

Now I am busy learning all about file sizes, color profiles, and tweaking our photos to look their absolute best when we print them BIG! We both love black and white photography, and this printer was designed with black and white photos in mind, so it is great for us.
 

New prints, and a new venue for exhibiting them!

After getting it setup and learning how to make our prints look their best, we printed several panoramas to exhibit at the Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts. We are headed up to the Portland area this weekend to go enjoy a day of looking at other artist's work at the Festival on Sunday. When we were dropping off our images, we saw some great work being entered in the open show, so stop and support your local artists if you've got time this weekend!

Below are the images that we will have on display at the show - the Crater Lake image is our centerpiece being 10" x 30", but the others are also printed big and look fantastic since we had them custom framed at our favorite frame shop,  Affordable Framing.
 

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Some of the best photos happen because you have a camera with you when there's a great photo op. Sometimes the best photos happen because you make a plan, consider the light, and come at the right time and place to take the image.

This collection of images embodies both principles. After church a couple of Sundays ago, we had the camera gear in the car, so we stopped at this patch of blue lupine that we'd seen for a few weeks, everytime we'd driven past on our way to the church. The dew had funneled from the leaves of the lupine into these really pretty jewels that glittered throughout the flowers at the center of each clump of leaves - cameras couldn't do it justice. We took some quick photos since we didn't have much time, needing to get going to meet some friends for lunch. But we vowed to return! We came back around sunset to get some softer light, and were rewarded by capturing the couple of images of the bumble bees busy pollinating the flower patch.

This lead to some reading up on wikipedia about bumble bees, and I never knew that they're one of the few bees  that is strong enough to use sonic pulses to pollinate certain plants. Some of these are pretty important to us, such as potatoes and tomatoes, as well as blueberries and cranberries. Apparently without a strong enough bee, these plants have a much harder time pollinating/reproducing. Almost like the bee and the plants were designed to work together...:-) So next time you're enjoying some fries and ketchup, remember to thank God for bumble bees, who make it all possible!

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