
Columbia River Gorgeous
The Columbia River Gorge is located on the border between Oregon & Washington. Views along river’s edge as it passes through the Cascade Mountain Range are lush and green & contains many spectacular waterfalls. The area is beautiful year round, however in the spring months, the hillsides just erupt with wildflowers of all sorts.
The wildflowers in this photo are Arrowleaf Balsamroot. They look like miniature sunflowers, only 2 or 3 feet tall. In favorable years, they carpet the foothills of the Columbia River Gorge. They are like little handfuls of sunshine, especially when the Spring days can be so dark & gloomy. They serve to remind me that the bright cheerful days of summer are just around the corner.
I shot this photo from a ridge top on the Oregon side of the Columbia River. The day was somewhat breezy making it difficult to get a good clean focus on the flowers which were really bobbing in the breeze. Yet the scene was so beautiful and the colors so rich, how could I let a breeze ruin it? Rather than waste it, I decided to roll with it… to portray the scene the way I felt it in my heart, focusing instead on the mood & feeling more than the technical aspects of perfect focus and things like depth of field.
This photo is the result of my creative journey. I used brush strokes to emphasize the movement of the petals rather than to hide it. When printed on canvas, it looks much more like an oil painting than it does a photograph. I am pleased to live in a time and have the tools available to me to allow me to discover new paths & new processes that lead me to my creative goals, even if I am not sure exactly what the goal is when I start my journey.
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