Alkali flies are hatching by the millions on Mono Lake, and they're just starting to form a thin black line around the lake with their bodies. By fall they'll be as dense as 2 or 3 feet wide, but Mark Twain mentioned that they were 6 feet wide around the lake when he visited.
Whenever you're in the vicinity of Salem, Oregon, you're not far from this park, which features many dramatic waterfalls, a couple of which are within quick walking distance of a trailhead. I stop there when I'm driving up highway 5, or when I'm heading from the coast towards Bend.
Layers of mineral-laden volcanic ash and clay create a wide palette of colors in the Painted Hills in central Oregon. I frequently set my sights on central Oregon when the coast is cloudy or rainy.
Given that our itinerary ended up getting reversed due to clouds on the Oregon Coast towards the beginning of the trip, that put us heading towards the coast around Independence Day.
We learned of Depoe Bay's July 3 disply as we sat in a coffee shop in Hood River, so we hopped in the car and made the trek.
That display over the rocky coast was great, but the following night at Seaside was a much bigger spectacle.
In addition to the official display at Seaside, people had brought a significant quantity of their own fireworks to shoot off on the spacious beach. We had purchased a pack of fountains in Montana knowing that Oregon didn't allow rockets and mortars, but we found that many people had purchased the disallowed varieties across the border in Washington.
One of our favorite things to do was to take long exposure shots while we "painted" with the 3' long sparklers we had brought. Fortuantely they lasted several minutes, so we could take several shots with each one!
We stayed on the beach until about 11:30pm, which was good since the traffic getting out of town was a challenge until well past midnight.
This turned out better than my shots here last Summer. I like the leading lines in the left foreground water (bubbles on the surface of the stream?).
Shot with 82mm circular polarizer. Adobe Lightroom adjustments: White Balance: Shade, slight bump in contrast (Canon 0EV RAW results are too low in contrast), Recovery (recover highlight detail), Punch (further detail recovery and contrast bump). See "more properties" in right column of the photo's page on Flickr for exposure detail (click on the photo).
Regarding using "shade" for the white balance "correction" It looks more like what we'd perceive (the waterfall as white), but less like as it actually was and the camera recorded (with a blue tone to the light). Let the debate on what "reality" really is ensue...
It looks like my new 1.5 TB disk drive may be damaged beyond repair. It was the primary storage for images form my most recent trips, and on the road I rarely have access to three power plugs for several hours to perform the backups that I should have been performing, so I may have lost months of work, including the first 9 days of my current trip to national parks with my kids.
I was just about to back it up...
I'll try a data recover service when I determine which ones are most likely to be able to work on physically damaged drives, but the drive was dropped, so it's most likely damaged beyond repair.
I'll only know the extent of the loss when I swing back by Northern California and see what data I have on my next most recent backup drive (I have another 1TB with me, but it contains mostly older files up to 2007).
Don't assume that you can back up your files tomorrow or on your next stop in a trip. They could be lost if you don't duplicate them immediately.
I recently had one of my photos receive over 2000 views due to being recommended to others on the site StumbleUpon.com. Then I saw this photo get a few hundred hits per day from there over the past few days.
Well, the momentum for this photo has just gone through the roof and this photo has received nearly 36,000 views!
It's encouraging to see people enjoy my photos. Welcome, Stumblers, and don't forget to check out my other favorite photos on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffreysullivan/sets/72157603822583160/
