About Me

Kathy Hayes specializes in High School Senior portraits, families, children, weddings and sports in the Central Oregon area. e-mail k_hphoto@yahoo.com or call me at 541-410-7379

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Columbia River Gorge trip - Friday

On July 31 my friend Jenny & I headed over to the Columbia River Gorge area to photograph a wedding. Since we both LOVE to take pictures, we made many side trips to see what photo opps might arise. WELLLLLL we found LOTS of things to take pictures of! Jenny is much better at these scenery/detail shots than I am and I can hardly wait to see what she posts on her blog. So here are some of my shots that I thought were decent enough to share, and even if they are not that great, I had fun taking them and I can't wait to go on some more side trips!


This first one is Mt. Hood, this was our first stop. I was amazed at how huge this mountain is and the fact that there was still snow on it when we were suffering in the 104 degree temp. that day!
We took a side road that led us into a little town called Parkdale where to our delight we found lots of wonderful orchards, here's my attempt at a pear shot.

Also in Parkdale, in fact just across the highway we had a great view of Mt. Hood with the orchards as foreground.
On our drive back out of Parkdale we spotted this farmer with his team of horses cutting the hay in his pasture with old time equipment. We asked him if he minded if we took some pictures and he told us to go ahead, these animals were used to being photographed as they are in all kinds of competitions, he even told us we could gets lots of great shots at an upcoming event in Dufer, Oregon...but unfortunately we had other obligations for that weekend and couldn't attend the event. Maybe next time!




Next we took a very quick trip onto part of the Hood River "Fruit Loop" and found several great barns to photograph. We are planning to go back and visit again in the fall when all the colors are changing.




Next stop was Hood River and the Columbia. I was fascinated with this bridge and waited for something of interest to cross over it, the semi showed up and I took way too many shots :) then the sail boat showed up and I started shooting again!


These windsurfers were amazing to watch! We got as close as we could to try to get some good shots and finally realized we were getting close enough to get hit by a kite if we didn't move on lol.


So when I first learned I was going to make this trip, I was SOOOO excited about getting to photograph all the waterfalls along the Old Historic Hiway....welllllll waterfalls IMO are not the easiest or most attractive things to try to photograph, in fact I threw out more waterfall images than I kept. I was not impressed with my skills(lack of) at taking waterfall shots. And yeah, I see the girl in this first one, I was going to clone her out, but decided I think she adds to the image! And THANKS to the man on the bridge (have no idea who he is) for raising his arms in his victory pose and making my shot more interesting!

This is the restaurant at Multnomah Falls, I loved the flowers and the busy window. We wanted to eat there but had to get going so we would make our check in time at our overnight accomodations!

And another couple of attempts at taking some water shots, I really think I need some practice at these. A little Photoshot fix up helped these next two a lot!


Another waterfall, and I think I may have this one posted out of sequence. I think this was the first one we saw this day and I also think that this is where my friend Jenny wandered down by the water and got a shot of some poeple swimming.....one of which she rushed up to show me, she called the subject Tarzan, I sure hope she posts it!

These next two are of one of the many old stone bridges that adorn this highway. I loved how the light was filtering through the trees, this is truely such a beautiful place to visit.



It was getting pretty close to sunset when we came to this corner in the road and I stopped because I saw these wonderful white flowers. While I was busy taking pictures of the flowers, Jenny was shooting shots of the curve in the road....so I coppied! hahaha THANKS Jenny! :)


I acutally got a shot with the bee somewhat in focus! I can not even begin to count the thousands of images I have taken of bees on flowers only to throw away most of them because I just can not seem to get the darn little buzzers in focus!




Our last photo stops for the evening were at Vista House and a scenic viewpoint. This place was amazing and at sunset it was stunning with colors. I have seen this place in pictures but never paid a lot of attention to it, but I will stop here again on another trip this direction.












Last but not least, these lovely lillies were some of the beautiful showings that graced our wedding location for Saturday.


Jenny & I went to Shari's restaurant and had a wonderful dinner, then headed back to our cottage to relax and sleep before our big wedding coverage (Joy & Johnny) on Saturday. Next post I will share the wonderful place we spent the weekend at.




































1 comment:

Jenny B. said...

Hey Kathy, love the road picture and on the vista house how you got the colors in the windows to come out, I almost got it in one of mine but not quite. The cute red barn looks way neater with the background cleaned up, I was too lazy to do that to mine.