The girlfriend and I grew up just a couple miles apart and we went to the same high school, I’m just 5 years older then her so we never really met until less then a year ago. Well, she was house sitting for her dad and a few weeks ago we had really nice mornings with crazy fog in the valley. So, we decided to have breakfast by sunrise, at 7am, on a water tower in Clackamas. Close to her dads and just a few from where I grew up. It was really cool, and cold. We ate really quick got some photo’s and bounced, back to bed for an after breakfast nap.

Who knows when we’ll see the sun in the mornings again, this is about as close as I’ve seen.

This is by far my favorite picture that I have ever taken. When I went to Washington DC when I was in the 8th grade I took a photo of a soldier at the unknown soldier’s grave and that is a real close second. I love the way it makes the Mt. look angry and evil, even though Mt hood is not, well unless you try to climb it, then it likes to bite back.

After leaving Mt. Hood Meadow’s before you get on HWY 35, this was the view. I couldn’t resist and stop and take many photo’s. The color version didn’t look good. Just like the last couple it’s an HDR “High Dynamic Range” 3 photo’s blended together. But in black and white it just turned out amazing. I think almost every photo from the Mt. Hood Adventure turned out great..It was a lucky day

I recently did a Mount Hood Adventure with the GF and while taking HWY 35 to Hood River instead of driving the way we came, main reason was weather. We came across this perfect angle sunset on a road called Leisure Drive. It came out fantastic. It was the same post processing as the Morrison Bridge photo. “HDR” It was very story. Expect another or 2 from this trip to be a splash page photo in the future.

To keep the trend going of me useing the post processing of HDR I thought I would share a photo of the sunset along the Morrison Bridge last week before it started to get so warm we didn’t want to go outside.

This is one of the best sunrises that I have seen from anywhere, since most are from my living room, It could be in a collection of The Best from Squid’s Couch!!! retail $24.99

I wish, any hoot, i have a good view and it’s the only reason I haven’t moved from my overpriced suck you dry apartment.

here is a timelapse video of a sunrise that i’m use to. Sorry no music, i don’t make video’s I just make photog magic.

p>

 I didn’t get a chance to go to Flugtag again this year. Last time I had to pick up my Harley when I had one from the shop and my ride never showed so I had to walk. And this year I had a wedding to attend of one of my oldest and best friends. A couple years back I had voiced a couple commercials with him for his restaurants La Costita. I say that because I have been asked, are you that guy from the mexican restaurant commercial. Any hoot I did get a chance to make it down the night before. I live downtown so going home I drove by to check it out and was shocked to see how huge it was. So when it got dark we made our way down there and snapped a few shots. From what I saw on the way to the wedding after flugtag had started I felt pretty good that when I was there, it was only me, the girlfriend, a security guard and a kid on a bike. It was quite and calming. To see some shots by other portland people you can check out the flugtag 2008 flickr group.

Tiny Horse

We have a ton of oldtime horse rings around SE and downtown.

You can check out www.horseproject.net for locations and how to’s if you would like to attach a horse to the ring.

The funny thing is this is my first horse that I have seen. I live downtown and walk around a lot to take photo’s and I’m shocked that I hadn’t seen one. I take way over 1000 pictures a month average and that means a lot of walking around. BUT, I finally have seen one so, I guess the next step is to attach one.

So this weeks splash page photo was taken a couple days before the 4th of July and I was trying something different. Their is a process of combining multible photos into one with different exposure to make a super fancy photo, with lots of light and lots of color. It’s process is called High Dynamic Range or HDR for short. This was my fist attempt, kind of scary because you can make this type of photo look very bad and glowing. It’s ugly. So here ya go.

 Here is a more recent HDR attempt from this weekends photo’s I took. I really like the new Dodge Charger and them making it into a police cruiser is awesome. This one turned out good you can tell the HDR’ing by the buildings in the back.
It didn’t turn out as good as the sunset but more shiny things make HDR look goofy at times.

Here ya go.