Images and comments from Toadflax Lane

Photos

Click on the picture below to see the entire album

Mt. Rainier

Amazing, hiking on August 25th and the wildflowers are just coming out. There were still snowbanks to navigate though the weather has been warm. I don’t know all the names, but have marked the ones with which I am familiar. Mt. Rainier had a lenticular cloud on the top which folklore claims form before an eruption. They must form often and not simply for eruptions as it was as calm as could be. Best of all, we had ice cream on the way home; a treat for the weary.

Kokanee Spawning

The Kokanee salmon are bright red with touches of green. When they gather to spawn, they are a spectacular sight. There is a spawning creek just north of here, in Canada. We took a trip up to see them and the album above is the result. Later, we checked a spot at Sullivan Lake but there were not nearly as many fish as the Canadian run. There were signs warning of bears and lots of evidence other animals took advantage of the dying fish as an excellent source of protein.

Calendar Submissions

Each year the local Public Utility puts out a calendar using photos submitted by locals. It is fun to see if any of the pictures you think are good will make the cut. The last four years I have had a picture accepted, though this year they picked what I considered the least of the photos I submitted. The album above contains the pictures I entered for the 2011 calendar. Can you guess which one made it?

HDR attempts

My husband gave me Photomatix for Xmas to help me with doing HDR photos and I need all the help I can get. He also got two books to explain the process step by step. It is wonderful fun and these are the first of hopefully many more.

Chasing Fall

There is this one tree that I have been trying to catch for two years and it is still alluding me! I figured now that I have a telephoto lens, I could get the shot I wanted. I tried on Saturday but was late getting started. It didn’t look too bright at 8 AM but all shots were washed out, perhaps I should have decreased the exposure time. The best of the 192 attempts are in this album and I will appreciate any hints on how they could be done better. I will be trying again but the clock is ticking; the leaves will drop anytime! Oh, and in the picture of Jack, it really is just water.

Post Falls

Sara and Diane found this park on the outskirts of Post Falls, Idaho. It is part of the Post Falls Hydroelectric Dam and has all kinds of different nooks and crannies. Sara set up a date for anyone interested to meet and do a photo shoot so we met in Spokane and caravan-ed to Post Falls. These are my best for that day. It was raining cats and dogs the day before and we were a bit apprehensive about the weather but though it wasn’t sunny, the overcast sky gave some interesting light. This also accounts for several of the black and white pictures. There were some kids fishing in the pond but I did not want to violate their privacy so did not take their pictures. I need to figure out how to take photos with people in them without being obnoxious as there were other interesting people shots. It was a fun jaunt; thank you for setting it up Sara!

For Melissa

Melissa likes Black and white so I put together this album for her with the few shots I felt were good enough to share. Alright, so I cheated and slipped two from Jack in there but he handles B&W so much better I just had to do it. I am just learning and can only get better – right?

Palouse Falls

Palouse Falls, Washington
The hiking season has started, perhaps a bit too early. We went to Lyon’s Ferry Park for the start of an hike through some Great Flood terrain. The hike ended up at Palouse Falls, a spectacular sight. The day was cold and windy, with a bit of rain, not much in the way of spring flowers, birds or fauna. This is in the middle of the channeled scablands, remnants of the ice age flood that occurred when the ice dam at Lake Missoula gave way. Amazing stuff.

Day in Spokane

What can be more fun that a cold spring day in Spokane, Washington? And what is more fun than a trip to Costco. I suppose it is pretty pathetic when this is the center of the day but one has to stock up sometime. The weather was freezing and windy, not a good combination or one that invited lingering.

Pend Oreille River Cusick

Once a month I drive to Cusick, Washington for a county library board meeting. This last meeting I was early and took a walk along the Pend Oreille River for as far as the trail was plowed. On the river, a boat was headed for the pier. The guy had been unsuccessfully duck hunting; the item in the front of the boat is a small fiberglass boat for retrieving the ducks. It wasn’t until I got home and was editing the photos that I saw there was an eagle sitting on one of the pilings.

Ice Fog

I spent one week in Cheny, Washington in January, taking a Cisco CCNA class. The class was held at the top of one of the rolling hills you see in that part of the country. Almost every day was fogged in, no sun except for a few hours on a couple of days. This produced an ice encrusted terrain. These four shots are from that week.

Words

Thins are slow in the winter. There are a limited amount of “snow” pictures available around the house. It has been a bumper year for snow; Spokane has been shut down with the record amounts. Very few sunlight or blue sky has been seen in the last two weeks.

Our informal photography group is still going, albeit more slowly in the holiday times. We have expanded the “Word” theme to include projects – black and white and body parts are the two latest.

Birds and their Habitat

So far it has been a wet beginning to summer but Sunday was fairly clear considering it started out at 40 degrees. I went on a bird walk along a levee at the Cusick Flats with a small group of birders. Some of these photographs could be better but they do give a sense of the area and a sampling of the birds found there. It also is the first time I have used my husband’s telephoto lens with image stabilization. What an improvement!

Palouse Scenic Byway

Several of us decided to take a road trip down the Palouse Scenic Byway Memorial weekend. The weather was much better than expected and we didn’t hit any heavy rain showers. We just did the north end of the Byway, starting at Spokane and turning around at Oakesdale. The goal of the trip was to reach the Joseph Barron Flour Mill, now owned by Mary Jane Butter’s Farm. Joseph Barron’s flour was the best ever, stone ground very fine with water run stones, but it is no longer functioning. Since the mill is closed, we were only able to take pictures of the outside. The other towns visited were Latah, Rockford and Tekoa; hitting the cemeteries in three of the towns. All the cemeteries were spiffed up for Memorial Day; all three were located on the top of hills so there were spectacular views over the Palouse.

Skateboard Park

I arrived early for a library board meeting and wandered around behind the building with my camera. There is a beautiful skate park there, about a year old. It is plunked down between the river and the town and was in use by a group of teenage boys. They agreed to let me take pictures and I had a good time trying to catch them in action. Because there is a lot of “background noise” it was impossible to get some action shots without power poles and old cars but that’s life! I am going to print some out for the guys and take a different lens next time (meetings are once a month and I’m hoping they will be back again).

A Day in Spokane

Jack and I met Sara and Sharon at Felts Field on Sunday to see what we could find of interest in the area. Yardley always hold an appeal, but all we shot was over the bridge and one small section of rail. Someday we will get closer to the railroad yard. The most interesting photos were of a house going through renovation – something you rarely see in this area as old houses are usually torn down. The Knipparth Winery is in the neighborhood but doesn’t allow photographs to be taken inside. We did, however, buy two bottles of port!

February 20, 2008 – full eclipse of the moon! We live surrounded by mountains so it was a wait before the moon crested the top of the hill. Jack was shooting at f5.6 and 2 seconds exposure. He caught the trees silhouetted on the moon. This is my favorite of his. My were too slow and the movement of the moon made it a blur.

February 2008

Classes are over for us for the season and now it looks as if Spokane Art School may close. The only bright side to this is that we have made many friends in our classes and the friendships will continue. Since we all enjoy the camaraderie that the classes give us, we will be getting together to have our own “Locations” shoots.
Winter has been especially hard this year, snow like we haven’t seen in years. It has been a challenge to find (and get to) interesting shots. I have been trying some black and white photography and will post some when I feel satisfied with the product!ted, maybe a bit too