366 - Duncan Creek
Now THIS was an interesting photoshoot. This is probably one of the most beautiful, lesser known areas of Washington. It's called Duncan Creek.
It's literally right on the border of Washington and Oregon, but it's surrounded by so many "famous" waterfalls that I think it gets heavily overshadowed. Which led me to an interesting realization...
A technique to find "undiscovered" locations could be to go to areas where there's lots of famous locations, and read between the cracks. The geography is obviously set up to make epic scenes, so that must mean there's other magic lying around.
Probably doesn't work in all situations, but it's some food for thought.
OK, now let's get to the adventure.
This is actually one of my first COLLAB adventures in a long ass time, I met up with Instagram friend @skiblulga, who showed me the area. He'd been following me on YouTube since I had like 300 subs, and one if of my OG fans. It was awesome to finally meet up!
The area was basically and endless flow of mini waterfalls down a HUGE gorge. I actually got overwhelmed- which was a first for me in such a intimate landscape. Nothing about the scene was GRAND- it was like an endless sea of small and abstract photo scenes.
It took me a little while of shooting around and experimenting with weird angles to finally end up with a solid shot. Lately I've been OVERTHINKING compositions, which has been a weird thing for me. I think I'm getting bored with standard compositions because I've been doing this for awhile now, and I'm trying too hard to get weird.
I need to figure out a balance of weird but also minimal.
Finally I got warmed up enough to snag this baby...
I enjoyed the creepy trees in the backdrop, and the way to log almost looks like it's balancing. I've been digging the green/yellow lit trees vibe lately.
We continued on to the top of the trail, where we arrived at one of the weirdest waterfalls I've ever seen in my life- Railcar Falls. It had these massive curves in it, which were completely natural to the rock. It blew my mind- I just started at if for awhile at first.
But it was a FUCKING challenge to shoot. There was one massive tree jutting right in the middle of the shot, so you had to be in front of it to actively capture the whole waterfall. Which meant a limited amount of compositions and being forced to work with an extremely wide angle lens.
Here's what I ended up with, which I'm pretty happy with, given the tricky circumstances.
Super fun shoot in an unknown area! Plus a workout. I think the hike was like 3-4 roundtrip miles with 1000ft elevation gain.
Ok that's all for today. YEET.
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
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