Leavenworth is the second most visited tourist destination in Washington, only Seattle pulls more visitors.
Nestled in the eastern foothills of the North Cascades, Leavenworth has created itself as a Bavarian Village.
For myself the draw of Leavenworth last weekend was fall colors.
The east side of the Cascades has generally bluer skies and wonderful trees and autumn explosion of bright color.
Here are images from the trip!
Two years ago I scored a 5 -day permit for the Enchantments, in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, near Leavenworth, Washington.
The hike up Aasgard Pass to the Enchantments Basin was brutal, but infinitely worth the sweat and pain!
The Sub-alpine Larch turn colors in early October, to a bright electric orange.
The result is unbelievable!
Diablo Overlook
I led one class for the North Cascades Institute on Thursday to the Diablo Overlook and on Saturday took 3 new night sky photographers to Washington Pass Overlook for a photo shoot.
Diablo Overlook
Liberty Bell
Liberty Bell
Just back from a trip to the North Cascades National Park, 2 nights, 3 days, visited my favorite camp, Sahale Glacier Camp.
This morning I awoke at 5am, got some sunrise shots and then the camp got a visitor.
This goat was pawing the ground and I was nearby, snapping away, then he got a bit interested in me and the camera!
I was shooting with a 24-105mm lens, set to 30mm (on a full frame camera) so my furry friend was a bit closer than he looks on the pictures!
I began using Flickr to showcase my images in 2007. It has been a successful site for me, I have sold many images to web site and publishers that they discovered from the Flickr Page.
Last week I surpasses 2,000,000 views!
The first million views took 7 years, the second million, only 2!
Flickr is easy to use, uploading is fast, and I can create albums and galleries to gather groupings of images for submissions.
Flickr also has a cool feature called Explore, where the best 100 images are culled each day.
I have been lucky, more than 30 of my images have made it into Explore. here is the one that pushed me over the 2,000,000 mark.
The big noght for this years Perseid Meteor Shower was last night. I headed up to the Diablo Lake Overlook, on the North Cascades Highway.
It got dark at 10:30pm, the moon set by 12:30am or so, This was my best shot of the night!
Perseid Meteor Shower, Aug. 11, 2016
I hiked the Lake Ann Maple Pass Loop om Wednesday, Aug. 3rd. The wildflowers are almost at peak.
As always, a fantastic trip!
Over the past 3 weeks I have visited the Pasayten Wilderness, the Glacier Peak Wilderness, Winchester Mountain Lookout (twice), Artist Point – for a North Cascades Institute Class and the Diablo Overlook – for a North Cascades National Park class.
The Glacier Peak trip was not during ht e new moon, but I was able to get a few good shots early in the night, before moon rise. I was out working to capture an image of the tent at Upper Lyman Lake, with the Milky Way behind, over Spider Gap. I could clearly hear and animal sniffing around. It was a deer, come to find place where anyone peed, to lick the spot for any lingering salt.
I decided to see if I could capture the deer in the image, and it worked pretty well!
The Winchester Mountain Look out is a perfect place to spend the night and shoot night sky images…
The Night Sky Photo Class that I lead though the North Cascades Institute was held at Artist Point. There were 14 of us, we parked at the Artist Point rest area and started to hike to Huntoon Point. There were more than 50 other night sky photo enthusiasts there, all out along the same trail! We asked and were told that they were all from Vancouver, BC! The skies got cloudy, but we managed a few shots.
The last class was on Aug. 1st, another Night Sky Photo Class, this one through the North Cascades National Park, as a part of the NPS Centennial. About 15 people arrived and we hung out at the overlook, trying to learn the basic tools of night sky capture.
There are two New Moons in September, on the 1st and 30th! If you’re interested in a Night Sky Photo Tour, here are the details!
