Portland Nights

This was taken from the draw bridge. About five minutes after taking this photo the bridge was opened up for a big barge. I took at few photos of it as well, but so far post processing on it is not up to my liking. There are probably better vantage points over down town Portland, but in my one night short stay I didn’t make there.

In travel book about Portland I read that Rose Garden has photographer dream of downtown Portland and Mountain Hood in the background. The following morning I got up super early and drove up to the Rose Garden. Of course no one was there at such early hour, roses were pretty, but downtown Portland was nowhere insight. Whoever wrote that damn travel book should be fired for misinformation.

Click me

Mt Hood and the Mirror Lake

Mirror Lake mountain creek shown in the previous post is just a few minutes away from this lake. We hiked 1.5 miles to get to and see this beauty. Lake is very shallow with super clear water, on one side of the lake you can see over from high and can see the bottom. There are couple spots where you have a view of the mountain and its reflection in the lake. The first spot is right of the wooden board walk, on the west side of the lake. So we got there, I decided to take some pictures and… on the south side of the lake, right in front of me and the mountain there were a few groups of folks running around, fishing and some even attempting to swim. Not a good point to take pictures, especially with hopes of the smooth mirror lake and mountain reflection. I took a few shots with folks moving around there and hoping to mask them out later on in the final image, but I really did not want to do that. So I decided to explore the shoreline to see if I can get another spot. The west and north sides of the lake are very low and somewhat swampy with a lot of brash and many snakes. We saw three during our short visit. So I started investigating other spots and was happy to find a little path on the north side to a little clearance with perfect view. After setting up camera I was about to start pictures, and you can guess, it got a bit windy. That perfect mirror vanished in a split of second. Annoying. So we just relaxed, took some photos of all of us, waited out the windy part and finally was able to take a few shots with some reflections. Enjoy.

Click me

Mirror Lake Creek

Hiking to Mirror Lake to see Mt Hood in its all magnificence is good 1.5 mile hike, all up the hill. I thought it was longer than that, just because it was so long and exhausting. This hike will cross a small mountain creek, probably the same one, in two places. First is right at the beginning of it and another one before you get to the Mirror Lake. This photo is from the second place.

Click me

Under the Hood

Under the Mountain Hood. This photo was taken with 450mm zoom, if you look right above the tree line in the back you’ll actually see the Mt Hood. Pictures of it are coming sometime in the near future.

Click me