©2006 Ed Book


It was my first outing with my 500mm lens.  I went up to Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park and my first subject was a mother black bear and cub (dots).  They were so far away that I didn't see them browsing way up in a meadow above my chosen spot until someone passing my pointed them out... they were so far away that I had to use a 2X teleconverter making the lens effectively 1000mm and they were still bear dots.    I watched them for a while and decided that it wouldn't be prudent to climb the slope to get closer.   If I did, they would have gone over the mountain.  

A little later, this young buck with thick velvet on his antlers came into view and I decided to follow him and photograph whatever he did... mostly to practice moving and focusing the big glass.  It is big glass and takes a hefty tripod and gimbal head to use.   Here's why the deer came over the hill...



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Tags: -print available-, animals, olympic mountains, wa
Current Location: Nika Trail

Big Leaf Maple, Vine Maple, Stinging Nettles, moss
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Tags: -print available-, alpenglo, forest, green, intimate landscape, olympic mountains, plants, trees, wa

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Tags: -print available-, alpenglo, forest, green, intimate landscape, olympic mountains, plants, trees, wa

Barred Owlet (Strix varia) - Duckabush River Valley, Olympic National Forest
©2008 Ed Book

Last week when I was over on the Olympic Peninsula camping with my children and grandchildren, Victoria (my new daughter-in-law) heard an owl in the forest canopy (I consider her an expert in birding) and Parker (grandson) saw one fly. I set up my tripod with 100-400 mm lens and teleconverter to make some photographs of this owlet and it's sibling calling to mom to feed them.

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Tags: -print available-, animals, bird, forest, green, olympic mountains, wa

Mount Constance - Olympic Mountains
©2008 Ed Book

Last week, I spent some time in the Olympics with my kids and grandkids and on the way home stopped a few places I return to again and again to make images. We can see Mount Constance from our home across the Hood Canal but from a distance of a couple dozen miles so details are few. When cold and clear, I'll sometimes set up my Canon 500mm image stabilized f/4 L lens with 1.4X teleconverter and 2X teleconverter to give an effective 1400mm lens on the Canon EOS 1Ds MkII with full size sensor to bring in some details unseen by naked eye. It looks quite different from up close ("up close" as in from about five miles away but up on a high ridge to preclude 'foreshortening' that is involved when looking up across the foothills between when viewing from home)

Although I did set up long lens and teleconverters to look at the mountain up close from up close, this image was made using the 100-400 Canon L lens at 160mm. I might post some of the 1400mm images later if there's interest.

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Tags: -print available-, forest, landscape, mountains, olympic mountains, wa

tumbling water near Walker Pass - Olympic National Forest - Washington
©2008 Ed Book

Before my Daughter and my Grandkids flew back to the east coast, I spent a few days camping with them and my Son, Seth and my new Daughter-in-law Victoria. On the way home, I visited an old friend, this waterfall along the Rocky Brook road that climbs from Walker Pass on US 101 in the Olympic National Forest.

This is one of those places that I keep returning to hoping that the air will be still so I can photograph non-blury Maidenhair Ferns with a long enough exposure to render the water silky. This was the first time the air was still... happy me

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Tags: -print available-, forest, green, intimate landscape, olympic mountains, plants, spring, wa, waterflow

The Brothers - (named for the Fauntleroy brothers, Edward and Arthur)
Olympic Mountains, as viewed from Nika Trail on the Kitsap Peninsula
Puget Sound, Washington
©2006 Ed Book

'taking a short break from printing (getting ready for displaying new images at our Silverdale Fine Arts gallery in 'Oldtown')

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ps 'climbed it many years ago.

Tags: -print available-, alpenglo, blue, landscape, mountains, olympic mountains, sunset, wa

working on something different a little while ' call it refreshing the palette. I've been optimizing and printing images for my 'featured artist' show next month at the Silverdale Fine Arts gallery ... all new prints and in one theme... I'm quite busy getting everything ready... more about it soon.


Hood Canal and the Olympic Mountains, Washington
©2006 Ed Book

I made this image about a mile from our home on Nika Trail a couple years ago and just picked it at random to optimize before checking back into my project.

(no, the theme of the collection of images isn't landscape)

I'll bet some who keep up with what I post could guess... a subject that's gotten good reviews herebouts on LJ.

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Tags: -print available-, kitsap peninsula, landscape, mountains, olympic mountains, puget sound, sky, sunset, wa, waterflow

About a week ago, Gene, and Phil, fellow ski patrollers and I skied out to this ridge to scout a hopefully proposed location for a new temporary Mount Tahoma Trails hut about two miles beyond the Copper Creek Hut. The view included Mount Rainier above the Glacier View Wilderness and Mount Beljica, the Goat Rocks, Sawtooth Ridge, Mount Adams, Griffin Mountain, Mt St Helens, Mount Storm King, Puget Sound, and the Olympic Mountain Range. What a day! What a view!
(the image also has three sets of cougar tracks that course along the ridge).

Mount Tahoma Trails - Ski Trooper Ridge - 360º panorama
©2008 Ed Book

We are calling the ridge Ski Trooper Ridge to honor the Army's 10th Mountain Division who got their start early in the 1940's on Mount Rainier. The location is on privately owned timber company land and so any hut we would erect would have to be stationed in place temporarily being moved after the snow season. We've been thinking of designing some sort of arrangement of ocean shipping containers mounted on trailers. This hut would be crude compared to our (Mount Tahoma Trails Association) other huts which are actually (3) two story cabins and a two story yurt located along our 50+ miles of cross country ski trails.

( Here's a larger version of this photo (~600K) )

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Tags: forest, landscape, mount rainier, mount tahoma trails, mountains, olympic mountains, olympic mtns, panorama, photohoop, snow, wa, winter

Christmas Eve morning 2007 moonset
over Mt Constance in the Olympic Mountains
from our home on Nika Trail on the Kitsap Peninsula in Puget Sound

©2007 Ed Book

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Tags: -print available-, alpenglo, blue, clouds, landscape, moon, mountains, olympic mountains, pink, puget sound, sky, snow, wa, winter

©2007 Ed Book

I made this image last weekend after a workshop where I was helping out. The composition was good as was the idea to display the ripples and reflections in the foreground. I used a polarizer to increase the contrast and deepen the color and cut haze but I used it at minimum so the water would still reflect. Although the sun was behind me, there were enough clouds bouncing light around that there was still some effect -- and the sun wasn't exactly in line with my lens.

There's a big problem with this image and the other dozen I made with the clouds moving across the sky was that I set up and chose f/9 for aperture because it's about the sharpest for this lens (about two stops down from full open with the aperture). I focused about a third of the way from the water in the foreground to the mountains so they would both be in focus (hyperfocal distance) but unfortunately, I moved the lens after I last looked through it and screwed up the distant focus.

But, the image is a good example (a good example of what can happen wrong when you don't pay attention to what you're doing).

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Tags: alpenglo, clouds, landscape, mountains, olympic mountains, phot discussion, wa, waterflow

© Ed Book


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Tags: -print available-, blue, macro, olympic mountains, wildflowers

lupine gathering dew at dawn before the breeze washes up the mountainside
© Ed Book

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Tags: -print available-, green, macro, olympic mountains, plant, wa

©2005 Ed Book

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Tags: -print available-, blue, clouds, landscape, mountains, olympic mountains, panorama, snow, wa, white, winter

©2007 Ed Book

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Tags: -print available-, forest, landscape, olympic mountains, pattern, snow, trees, wa, white, winter

©2007 Ed Book

I made this image from the dam on the Elwha River in the national park. This forest is inaccessible from any trail and isolated by the river and Bolder Creek.

Question: How many trees are there in this image?

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Tags: -print available-, forest, olympic mountains, snow, wa, white, winter

©2007 Ed Book

'a photo from a couple weeks ago on the Olympic Peninsula when I was feeling human...

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Tags: -print available-, green, intimate landscape, olympic mountains, wa, waterflow

©2007 Ed Book
Casio EX-Z1000


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Tags: alpenglo, beach, kitsap peninsula, landscape, olympic mountains, puget sound, red, sunset, wa

©2007 Ed Book



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Tags: -print available-, green, olympic mountains, river, tree, wa, waterflow

( Can you see what the problem is? )

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Tags: alpenglo, clouds, mountains, olympic mountains, orange, pattern, sky, sunset, surreal, wa
Current Mood: working

I made this photograph along the road to Deer Park on Blue Mountain. I always have to stop and at least look and marvel at the way trees along a steep slope catch the light of the sun in this way... this time, I took the camera and tripod out and made this composition.

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Tags: -print available-, forest, olympic mountains, trees

one of the reasons I like to visit Blue Mountain in the northeast corner of Olympic National Park is that the cloulds are always swirling over the ridges and no matter what the weather is like during most of the day, there will be clouds forming along the ridges or if cloudy will open up at about sunset and then the cloud alpenglo show starts.

I wonder if anyone noticed where I used this image in an earlier post. (as part of another image)






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Tags: -print available-, clouds, forest, mountains, olympic mountains

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Tags: mountains, olympic mountains

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Tags: -print available-, mountains, olympic mountains

I wanted to be somewhere special to photograph on the bicentennial so I went up to Blue Mt in the Olympics. I thought it would be a good place to watch fireworks from all over (not thinking that the only fireworks display I'd be able to see was from Victoria on Vancouver Island (Canada) duh! I really wanted to just get away from all the hustle and bustle of the lowlands. I spent most of the day at the top of the mountain and had the place for myself because everyone else was down below at picnics and parades and such or so I thought also... so, having privacy, I took a long air bath meditating on what things should be and the way they were and such other clouds and sights... I set up my camera on a tripod with a 450mm lens and tripler to scan the ridgelines to see what I could see. The first thing I saw when I looked through the lens was this:



the lens was not very high quality and when the 3X teleconverter was added the poor quality was multiplied... the combination was good to use as a spotting scope but not for photography as you can see (and I sharpened a lot with unsharp mask and sharpen edges)

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Tags: animals, mountains, olympic mountains

Cookie, Hoodoo, and I took a ride over to the other side of the Hood Canal today to visit a rhododendron garden in Brinnon and then drove up the Dosewallips River road to where it's washed out about six miles before the Olympic National Park boundary.

Cookie and Hoodoo spent some time along the river looking at rocks and I hiked over the hump around the washout...

(the river had changed course and washed out the road and part of the hillside so that one now has to detour about a hundred feet up and over the washout and then back down to the road again--it may be repaired someday but for now, it adds another few hours of hiking for those who want to backpack this drainage on the east side of the Olympics.)

I set up some compositions but was had a chronic problem surface again with lens to camera communication... and I don't have a digital camera so couldn't show photos here today of early spring along the Dosewallips River.

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Tags: olympic mountains