FS|Photographers

After 3 weeks, 6 states, and over 3,000 miles of driving today is the second time we have seen rain. The first was last night as we camped in the Redwoods of northern California, and today a storm is pummeling the Southern Oregon coast as I write this huddled in the van with an awesome view of some rough surf. We have been lucky to experience different stages of fall throughout the west with beautiful weather! Today’s storm not only welcomes in the month of November but marks a decided change in the season. We will be home this afternoon, so this is my last “official” blog post from the road. I will definitely be posting more photos after we have settled back in and I can get to editing all of the 1700+ images we have!

To see our route, drag and zoom the map above. By my calculation (and google’s), we will have traveled about 3,500 miles in the last 3 weeks. We have really enjoyed the relaxation and sense of discovery that the road provides. Below is a small list of trip highlights we compiled while driving yesterday:

• Early fall snow on Steens Mountain, OR
• Spontaneous cattle drive on the highway
• Listening to Coyote’s howling under a full moon in Nevada.
• Hearing the hoot of an owl outside our tent bouncing off canyon walls at dawn.
• Clear view of the milky way and other stars at night in Utah & Arizona.
• L-O-N-G Arizona sunsets (including over the Grand Canyon).
• Sunrise hike through Bryce Canyon.
• Finding and soaking in a hot spring in a ditch in the Nevada desert.
• Finding numerous ancestral puebloan ruins on a dayhike, and scrambling over slickrock ledges to get a closer look.
• Seeing a herd of wild burros and horses.
• Driving the winding road through Jerome, AZ at dusk.
• Fall colors in Oak creek near Sedona, AZ.
• Cooking various meals over the fire, such as polenta with mushrooms, onions, sweet peppers and buffalo sausage; fresh picked corn on the cob; and fire-roasted chiles.
• Lots of seafood in CA and OR: scallops, fish tacos, sturgeon, smoked tuna, calamari steaks.
• Dodging a falling tree branch after a wind gust blew through our camp under the redwoods.
• Almost stepping on a rattlesnake while wearing sandals. (mere inches–no joke!)
• Visiting old friends and soaking up the sun in Southern CA.
• Beachcombing anytime we were close to the ocean–finding a bunch of minature sand-dollars was Joelle’s favorite.
• Driving the Big Sur coastline very slowly at sunset.
• Seeing Stella run, jump, climb, and explore every area we visited.

Of course, what would a trip log be without the obligatory road-trip self portrait? Here we are at Bryce Canyon.

Downtown Ely, Nevada.

Tempting price on those Margaritas! Unfortunately, I cannot report on their quality as we still had a few hours of driving after taking this shot.

Our camp this morning.

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Can you find the tent? Hint: look for yellow. Clicking on the photo to make it bigger will make this a lot easier! (It is worth seeing large even if you aren’t into playing this little game.)

After a chilly-yet-beautiful pre-wedding shoot with Josh & Stephanie in Bend, we hit the road for Eastern Oregon and the quest for solitude. There is something completely relaxing about driving into vast, open space, and that was exactly what we were looking for. Our first night found us headed towards the Steens Mountains. The Steens hold a huge amount of Aspen groves (fairly rare in Oregon), and we were hoping to glimpse some fall color. It turns out that we were greeted with snow instead! It was really cold camping at about 8,000 feet, but it was worth it to experience snow in October! Plus, it added wonderful texture and contrast to the fall landscape.

 Looking west into Lake Creek Canyon at sunrise.

An aspen grove at the bottom of the canyon.

After one night up in the Steens, the desert sun of the Southwest started sounding better and we decided to head towards Nevada en route to Utah. A few hours into the drive, Joelle startled me when she noticed a mirage of cattle seemingly stampeding toward the car. This turned out to be our favorite moment of the day, and the cows were not stampeding, but were being driven to a new pasture down the highway! We did pull off the road in time, however, and gave our regards to the cowboys as they passed. Pretty crazy for a state-highway!

Here they come . . .

. . . and there they go.

We are super-excited to be hitting the road for a little rest, relaxation, and adventure! We will be out through the end of the month, and the loose “plan” is to head to the Southwest (Utah, Arizona), on to San Diego to visit friends, and then take a long leisurely drive all the way up the Pacific coast back to Portland. We will be posting as much as possible along the way, so stay tuned on our Adventure page for all the updates!

Hood River, OR

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This week, I had the opportunity to shoot with some Naish team riders in Hood River. Like last year, we had a great time all the way past sunset playing around with strobes and the glowing sky!

I’ll be posting my favorites here soon. Until then, here’s a shot of Sam Medysky popping over the bridge for one of his crazy inverts:

Yesterday the esteemed Mr. Merle and I headed up to Mt. Hood for some skiing and catching-up, and we couldn’t have asked for a better day full of sun, corn snow, and mild temps. Since we only get the opportunity to hang out a few times a year, it usually involves some sort of snow and/or mountain travel when possible. We were not planning on summitting (considering we left the parking lot after 9am), but that didn’t stop Justin from reaching the top quite quickly! We climbed the first 1/3 up from Timberline together, and then he turned on the juice and climbed to the summit and descended to the Hogsback before I could even get there. Basically, he was moving about twice as fast as I was! It didn’t help me any that he just returned from successfully guiding Everest for the 2nd time (congratulations on that, by the way!), and I have been hanging out at sea-level. I was just glad to be there and kind of keep up. Thanks for getting out there with me, Justin!

Justin’s descent through the Mazama Chute.

Ripping it up down low.

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Here I come!

After a wedding shoot in the Bay Area, we will be road-tripping through Northern California &amp; the Sierras, spreading the Oregon Love for a few days. If we don’t post a long the way, we will get some photos from the trip up soon!

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Here’s to long days and warm temperatures!

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Hood River, Oregon.
For more photos from this session, see this post.

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