Vacation Photos from the Pacific Northwest

Whoo-hoo! We are so glad to be home after such a whirlwind trip! 11 days, 8 states, four national parks, one smelly cooler, and 4,250 miles, to be exact.

Photographically speaking, I was SO VERY GLAD for my circular polarizer on this trip! It is the one little gadget I've come to absolutely depend on for outdoor shooting (and even some indoor).  It's a little piece of magic that makes the clouds look 3-D, the grass look greener, and lets you look into water instead of seeing a reflection.  If you don't have one, they aren't super expensive but can really add a lot.

With so many landscapes on bright sunny days, I also felt very badly the need for a graduated neutral-density filter. The top part of the GND filter is dark, and the bottom is clear, with a very graduated level of darkness.  Very often when shooting landscapes, I just have to either underexpose the land or blow out the sky, or try to get something in-between. I don't do much landscape stuff around here and never thought to get that filter before I left. It was pretty tricky business without it.


But anyways...here are a few of the photos I took!  You can see some other ones on my personal blog, Moore Than Fine. 

The famous Tetons.

Here's Old Faithful. I loved how the clouds, far up in the sky, seemed to mirror the mist coming deep out of the earth.

Can you see how turquoise the water is? (Polarizer, I love thee.)

Doesn't it look like flowing lava? It's "bacterial mats." Lovely. This place stunk pretty bad, of sulfur and I think of bacterial mats. :)  But look at the steam...it's rainbow colored!

More psychedelic water. (My polarizer got a better look into the pool, bypassing the reflection, than our naked eyes could!)

Aren't these some good lookin' waterfalls? 

Another hot springs in Yellowstone. It is chalky white powdery stone, and when once upon a time when it was liquid, the trees drank it up and they died. Now it's a very eerie place. (We came here once at midday and again in late evening.)

"Satellite" photos (just closeups of the ground under the very shallow water). Love these in B&W.

See ya later, Yellowstone...


I know this is a lot of pictures.  But let's meander even further across the country...

Here we are in Seattle. (That's not me.)  This was taken in the Space Needle as we ate dinner and revolved around the city. 

Another view FROM OUR TABLE, looking over a beautifully clear Seattle evening.

Somewhere in Olympic National Park...

On the beach (Pacific Ocean) right next to our campsite.

Clearly Justin is favored among men.


A few more beachy photos:

A very foggy coastline.

This is in a rainforest. I didn't get many great photos here, unfortunately.

Love the freckled path.

Now we're at Cape Flattery...

This is quite honestly one of my favorite photos from the trip. Is that lame?

This is also a favorite. 

Now we're in Mount Rainier National Park! This is going so much quicker than the actual trip. :)

Isn't this just one of the best looking mountains you've ever seen?

Well, we are so glad to be home and I'm already jumping right back into photo shoots and finalizing some stuff for my website.  If you made it through all these, a hearty congratulations to you!

Coming soon: senior photos, a family shoot, and a collection of "out the window" vacation shots.  :)