July 2018 Adventure - Hell ain't so hot! Part 2

We woke up early the next morning refreshed from a good, cool, night’s sleep (Gee, it's amazing what a couple thousand feet of elevation can do to cool things off!).  After coffee and a light breakfast, we broke camp and headed down river to continue our exploration into these parts unknown.  What excited me the most was that I was going to get my first glimpse into Hell along our way to the day’s ultimate destination - the Painted Hills!

One of the problems with traveling this way is that you never quite know if you’re going to wind up being in a place that offers you photographic opportunities.  Opportunities for photographs, not pictures.  Especially when you’re trying to just figure out a place to camp your rig for the night - often you’re not in an area where you can quickly access great photography locations to take advantage of lovely morning light.  That’s why planning for the fall trip is so detailed - trying to maximize the proximity of where we can photograph and where we can sleep.  When you’re making it up on the fly, it’s hit or miss.  And this time it was miss.  Yeah, I know, Edward Weston told one of his sons that he should be able to pick up his camera, walk to the end of the rocks and make a photograph - and then did it.  Sorry, but I’m no Edward Weston, try though I might.  

It didn’t take long for us to get to the turnoff that was the basis for the title of our trip.  Not only were we on the edge of the Wallowa Mountains, we were on the edge of Hells Canyon and we were headed up to the Hells Canyon Overlook!

Now, I’m sure that in the middle of the day in the blazing sun it may feel like hell, but on a cool, slightly breezy morning before the sun builds up its heat, Hell ain’t so hot!  But it sure is beautiful.  

Ann and I spent quite some time there just admiring the landscape.  I’m sure it’s quite different floating the river, or driving along its route for much, but not all (a good portion of it is wilderness area) of its route.  Or even hiking into it.  I’m sure then there are photographs galore.  But that morning I was content with just experiencing Hell and taking a snapshot with my iPhone.  Oh yeah, and getting the hell out of there before it decided to get hot!

One of the things I found online as we were waiting for Beast to get delivered and built was a map company called Butler.  The Butler folks are motorcycle maniacs and their focus is mapping and rating both scenic routes and interesting off-pavement routes for motorcycle riders.  I’ve bought a whole slew of their maps for the western part of the US because a scenic route is a scenic route and because Beast can do most of the off-road routes as well.  

Our strategy for the day was to go from the Hells Canyon Overlook to the Painted Hills using as many colored (Orange = best, Red = very good, Yellow = good) roads as possible, and picking the better color over a lesser rated color or no color when necessary.  That led us to a bit of weaving in and out on our way to Mitchell and beyond.

As we headed south out of Baker City the route took us through a tight windy road that offered an amazing, intimate landscape with formations that occasionally came right to the road.  At one point the road opened up a bit with a couple of turn-outs that we took advantage of to make some photographs.

The road had begun to follow a stream and I had to get on top of Beast to clear the brush along the river and photograph a wall that had late morning light streaking across its face, with some incredibly colored rocks and vegetation.

We then drove across the street to set up looking down a narrow ravine.  The photograph gives you a real idea about how tight everything was through this section of road.  No wonder the Butler maps rated it so highly.

We drove onward and eventually we headed northward, then westward to turn into the open landscapes of Grant County.

Which looks as if it could go on forever, even though it quickly didn’t.

After passing through Monument, Oregon we turned southward, which took us into Wheeler County.  There we started to see rockier landscapes and colorations that told us we were approaching the greater John Day Fossil Beds National Monument area.

By that point it was still mid-afternoon and . . . hotter than hell!  So we stopped off where we could to cool off and stall for time.  That meant a short stop at the Condon Palentology Center at the monument’s Sheep Rock Unit, as well as a quick early dinner (who wants to cook in those temperatures?) in Mitchell.  I swear, the blackberry milk shake had nothing to do with us stopping in Mitchell!

We wound up pulling into the Painted Hills just as evening was starting and the sun was beginning to take on some color.  After driving through the monument, we returned to a part of the park where the sun was streaking across the face of the hills.  I pulled out Ann’s super zoom lens and, while I started out trying to maintain some semblance of a sense of place in my initial imagery . . .

I quickly racked out the zoom to 400 mm to concentrate on details . . .

and eventually worked on achieving the most abstract compositions I could.

I guess my studying of Brett Weston last month got me thinking I should try to be a bit bolder in my compositions and use of shadows.

We eventually returned to the main viewing area and decided we should spend the rest of our time scouting out where we should start in the morning.  Ann mentioned hiking to the end of the trail to see how that might be in the morning because we haven’t really done that before.  It was a good idea and that settled, it was time to swing by to see if our favorite camp site was vacant.

We were in luck, though I’m not sure it’s luck - I don’t think most folks think camping when it’s been 100 degrees  during the day is a great idea.  That worked for us!  It never really got cold that night, but it didn’t matter, I was sleeping in the fragrance of Juniper and I was happy.  

We got up very early the next morning with no problems, quickly made coffee and closed down camp.  We drove over to the main area and, after a few last swigs of coffee, began the half-mile hike up to the end of the viewing area.  We arrived well before dawn, so we were able to spend quite some time photographing in that mysterious pre-dawn light.

Again, I tried starting out  making traditional landscape images,

but I quickly fell into seeing more cleaner abstract images, so I started building on the types of photographs I made during our last trip here.

Though I went at it in a more experimental mode than last time, making a lot of images that I wasn’t sure would work out.  

And quite a few of them didn’t.  Though I keep telling myself that it’s through that type of experimentation that one learns.

One of the things I started thinking about was the fact that often the Painted Hills offers you many layers of different slopes, textures and colors.  The question is, how to make an image of it?

Eventually the sun topped the ridgeline and pasted the hills to the west in golden sunlight.  That gave me a whole new range of opportunities.

It even drew me back up the hill a ways to work with the same subject matter I had earlier. 

Try as I may, and I did try a few times, I couldn’t make a compelling grander landscape image.  Even when I started off with a broader, distant view, I would swap out lenses and get closer and closer, until the image became a thing in itself rather than a landscape. 

And then of course there were the purely graphic images.

All in all, it was a fun morning of photographing, experimenting and, hopefully, learning.  

It was late morning before we called it quits, but home was beckoning and we had 5 days of traveling to start cleaning up, not to mention getting ready for the work week. That, and it was starting to warm up.  It was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

All in all, a mighty fine, productive, July adventure!