The Tillamook Waterfall

Just off OR Hwy 6, about 22 miles southwest of the junction of Hwy 6 and 26, on the south side of the highway there is a little waterfall and a pool set back into the high hills along the highway. A large fallen log crosses the pool, and two large stumps stand on either side of the pool. It is not easily seen from the road, and therefore it's usually quite private and available for glamour photography.

I found these falls about 10 years ago, when my wife and I were regularly traveling to Tillamook for personal reasons. One day, on a trip back from the coast, we just happened to pull over into the large flat area along the highway and wandered back to find the falls. Since that day, I've used these falls to shoot various glamour and fantasy scenarios.

It's a dark, cool place, so you I have to shoot there during the middle of the day, when enough sunlight streams through the surrounding forest to light the area such that reasonable ISO settings can be used. And, because it's cool, it's best to shoot there during the warmest summer days, as the models can get cold quite quickly given the temperature of the water and the way the mist from the waterfall is trapped by the surrounding trees. Still, it is a beautiful place to shoot and one of my favorite locations.

I suspect I'll be shooting there for many more years to come, and if anyone else would like to use it, I'm sure you can find it from the directions I've provided about. So far, my models have loved shooting there, and it's always a fun place to shoot with lots of opportunities to experiment with light, water, and mist.

Nymph in the Waterfall (NSFW)

I was driving out toward Tillmook today and I decided to stop and do some photography at a little waterfall I know of that sits quite a bit off the highway. It's easy to get too and is quite beautiful. As I started to shoot, I noticed this lovely creature just in the edge of my vision. If I tried to look at her directly, I simply couldn't see her, but fortunately I had my infrared camera with me and a round of wide exposures caught this image.

Of course, this is the lovely model Holly posing for my Waterfall Fairy. We had quite the fun shoot today at this little secluded waterfall, and Holly was quite brave, even to the point of braving the very cold pool of water at the base of the waterfall and getting quite soaked in the process.

We got a lot of great photos and I look forward to processing them when I get home from a short business trip. In the meantime, I'll just have to settle for downloading them and viewing the thumbnails. The image above is a very quick edit. The final image will look much better.

New Photography Article

Just added a new article about the Columbia River Gorge, one of my favorite places to visit for photography. You can read it here.

You can read about it here.

Feedback is always welcome.

Not much else is happening photographically recently. I did help a friend last night with the flooring in the studio he's putting together over his garage. He has a great space for it, and I've got some gear he can use once the space it all put together. It will be fun working with him and show him how to set up and use studio strobes once we get everything going.

I also ordered a couple of new backdrops from B&H photo. These will come in useful when shooting in limited space as they are the Botero Collapsible units. I'm hoping they'll be just the right size for location shooting and for a smaller studio space.

I had been saving for a couple of new lenses, but unfortunately, the furnace went out on Tuesday, and had to be replaced today to the tune of a little over $2400. That, along with the new garage door openers and the repairs my truck is going to need, will set back my plans for a while. Fortunately, the money for the repairs is available, but it would sure have been nice to hang on to it for a while longer.

I'm getting a bit of the winter photographic blues, so I've been trying to work around them by writing more articles for my website. That's been fun and interesting and it allows me to put my photos to good use by helping others, I hope, learn more about photography, equipment and places to shoot. Still, I'd rather be shooting. Having a read day job puts a crimp in that during the wintertime, since by the time I get home, it's already too dark for outdoor shooting and I don't have any new models to work with right now. But, soon, I hope, there will be more shooting for fun and profit.