The Portland Photographic Society

The Portland Transmission’s Spring Classic auto show is one of the longest running car shows in Portland.  It is a free show held the weekend before mother’s day, and is mostly on the street near Portland Transmission’s headquarters.

On Sunday morning, we showed up at the Wooden Shoe Tulip fields right before sunrise and took shots of the sunrise, hot air balloons, kids, boots — all with tulips.  As you’ll see, we had beautiful blue skies, and the fields had very few puddles to distract us.

The all-day trip to Silver Falls State Park went well, with great weather, and opportunities to capture some excellent images as well.  The eight-mile hike provides access to ten waterfalls, as well as many other scenic opportunities.  We started early, leaving Portland at 6:00 AM, and didn’t return until 6:00 PM.  Tripods were a necessity for creating a smooth water effect from the falls, but also are helpful to maintain low ISO levels with deep depth of field under the fairly dark forest canopy.

We had a great day Saturday.  There were ten of us who, with cameras in hand, strolled up and down NW 21st and 23rd shooting along the way.  Some of us shot objects, some shot scenery and some shot people.  Over all, it was a terrific outing and you will see by the photos attached, just some of what we did.    Afterward, some of us met in Dick’s Diner for burgers.

In January we headed to The Lumberyard, Portland’s indoor bike park.  The owner was nice enough to let us hang out and flash the riders for a few hours on a Friday night, and grab a few beers as well (the Lumberyard has an on-site pub with a great food and drink menu selection).

The conditions for photography at the Lumberyard are about as challenging as it can get – fast moving subjects and relatively low available light mean that autofocus systems will struggle to keep up.  If you want enough depth of field to get a decently sharp image (and allow for some autofocus error), you will have to close down the aperture, which means letting in less light.  Even with an external flash, fairly high ISO levels (800-1600) were required to use smaller apertures of f/4 to f/5.6.

Despite the challenges, and the relatively low success rate of keepers/missed shots, we came away with some good images.  Thanks again to the Lumberyard, and the riders, for letting us take some photos.

Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge is a beautiful location, with many inhabitants, but it can be very challenging photographically.  Visitors are not allowed to leave their cars except in a handful of designated areas, so very long lenses can be required to get close to animals.  In addition, while cloudy weather creates soft shadows, it also gives us less light to work with, necessitating wider apertures, higher ISO levels, and/or higher shutter speeds.  Despite these challenges we were able to spot quite a few animals, including:

Here are a few photos from the Oregon Rail Heritage Museum field trip on Nov. 23rd.  This trip resulted in some great photos of antique steam locomotives.  You can learn more about the museum here: http://www.orhf.org/

On November 10, we were able to visit Oregon Horsemanship in Wilsonville, OR and take a few photos of the horses!  The lighting turned out to be quite nice and the horses were quite frisky despite the cold weather.

These are photos from the hiking trip up the Old Salmon River Trail near Zig Zag.