Anyone who follows my blog knows that my color vision deficiencies can be a tad frustrating at times. Most of the time being “color blind” is nothing at all. Other times, like right now with fall foliage showing their seasonal colors, not being able to see reds or oranges accurately is pretty much a drag. Poor Dianne, I bet she answers me a hundred times a day when asked “how about that one?” or “any color over here?” She fills in the blanks for me and keeps me from posting images of dead leaves that I think look really colorful. I’m grateful for her patience with me.
I was fortunate to be able to visit the Wenatchee National Forest yesterday and the day before. I had a room in Leavenworth, WA and about 4 hours of work to do for the Forest Service on Wednesday morning. The color started for me as I climbed the pass on I-90 coming out of Tacoma. It continued on Bluet Pass as I neared Leavenworth. The larch just seemed to scream at me to stop, climb the hill across from them and take a photo. I learned later that the nifty little lens mount that I have for my tripod has developed into a problem and no longer steadies the camera when I am taking photos manually. Drat… nothing like trying to make sharp photos with a camera that wiggles and rocks if touched. I was lucky to get a few sharp images but I suffered from the goofy lens mount throughout this trip. Many potentially nice images are now digital memories thanks to my lack of recognition of the problem before I got too far along in the trip. Lesson learned but I’m looking for a solution. My son the mechanical engineer may get a parental request when we see him in Bozeman next week.

Larch on Bluet Pass
The Icicle River watershed is a wonderful place to roam around in the evening. The light was fading fast and my stomach was telling me that I should be looking for some food. My head and heart won out and I stayed until dark knowing that the restaurants would still take my money once I showed up. While the light was flat, the colors were great.. if you like yellows… I do.

Icicle River
The next day I spent time with a friend who still works for the Wenatchee National Forest. Matt drew the short straw and got the assignment to take me into an area where a problem road had been decommissioned and turned into a trail. The main goal here was to keep the road from adding sediments to the Wenatchee River and, thereby, screwing up the fish habitat. Salmon were working in the riffles when Matt and I walked in to take the photos. The darn light on the river kept me from getting any decent photos of the fish and their redds (egg nests) but we both enjoyed watching them do their thing.
I said goodbye to Matt about lunch time and headed my car back up the river to where we’d seen some folks doing fish surveys. I figured I’d try again to get some photos of the fish and the redds. Oh yeah, there just happened to be a serious amount of wonderful color along the Wenatchee River as well. Darned if some of it didn’t find it’s way into my camera’s memory.

Wenatchee River above Leavenworth, WA

Wenatchee River
Today woke to fog and “cloudy bright” light. I’d been going to the Japanese Garden to check on colors for the past couple of weeks but had not been terribly impressed. Seems you just can’t hurry some things. I headed back to the garden this morning and was greeted by several other photographers toting tripods and a variety of lenses.

(taken with my iPhone)
Of course I had to play as well. Here’s one take of the tree that I brought home.

Portland Japanese Garden
I continued to roam around the Garden for another hour and decided that my patience had run thin with waiting for all the other visitors to move out of the viewfinder frame. I may come back another day soon during “member hours” so the crowd will be minimized. The following images are all multiple shot panoramas and capture some of the iconic (eg, done before) scenes in the garden.

Portland Japanese Garden

Portland Japanese Garden
