Mostly a great photography weekend at Pateros Washington and the Columbia River

Mostly a Great Photography Weekend (2-26-16 to 2-28-16)

I’ve been trying to get away one weekend a month.  Last month it was a cabin near Dayton, WA and this month it was going to see the Sage Grouse and their Spring Lek.  Feb 26th was early for a Lek, but the weather had gotten warm the last few days and I hoped that meant it might be a good first weekend.

Normally I go with my friend Mike as he introduced me to the Sage Grouse, but he can’t get away this year and I don’t want to miss out.  The lek is near Coulee Dam and we stay in that town usually, but a little further way from the lek in the other direction are some towns downriver on the Columbia.  Pateros is a small town on the Columbia River between Chelan and Brewster.  Wiki says it had a population in 2010 of 667.  One thing it does have is a great city boat launch, park and two hotels that look out over the river.  I stayed at one a few years back in the winter and found the river view amazing and the hotel empty.  This time I wanted to stay at the nicer hotel ($99/night off season) which offers a river view from every room.

My goal was to leave work, pack my camera gear and warm clothes and head out by 5pm.  I didn’t leave till 8pm, but still went.  Its 4 hours from Redmond and just a hint of bad weather on Snoqualmie Pass and none on Blewett Pass.  I pulled in just after midnight and got a room on the second floor of a sparsely occupied, but nice looking 3 story hotel.

Pateros

The moon had risen a few hours earlier and the view from my balcony over the river was great.  The other great thing about Pateros is that there are almost no lights and no building or houses on the far shore of the river.  You have a great eastern view and at night nothing to spoil the view.  But one problem did exist, the great room with a gas fireplace, frig and microwave and balcony with two metal chairs and a metal coffee table also had an Always On Bright Sodium Light.  No way to turn it off.

The sky was overcast, but the moon lit up the thin cloud layer and gave a pretty nice glow to the river and landscape.  Before going to bed I setup my Niko.

1) Nikon 5200 35mm F1.8 shot at F2 from 1am to 2:30am.  ISO 450 2.5 sec exposure taking 1 shot every 5 seconds.

To shoot the Sage Grouse, I had to drive an hour east and be there before sunrise at 7am.  I woke at 5am after 4 hours’ sleep.  Before leaving I setup a second shot.

2) GoPro Hero3 with the external battery shot from 6am to 10:45am 1 frame/second until it filled the 64GB memory card.  Amazing what the external battery will let me do.

Sage Grouse

I was late getting to where I needed to go, but no biggie.  I was wrong.  The dirt road that is the only public viewpoint to the distant lek was not plowed and deep in snow.  I put my Xterra into 4WD, but soon was worried I would get stuck and backed out.  They wouldn’t be out anyway in the snow.  They need bare ground.

So instead I drove back to my hotel, had breakfast in their nice restaurant (and good prices) and was in bed at 11am.

Sunset and Astrophotography at Steamboat Rock

Before leaving my hotel, I setup two cameras to shoot while I was gone.

3) Nikon 5200 and an 8mm F3.5, ISO-100 first shooting 1/125 and then right before I left I adjusted it down to 1/25sec.  One shot every 3 seconds.

4) The Hero3 shot from 5:15pm to 11:45pm this time 1 frame every 2 seconds.  Oh, I got smart and unscrewed the balcony bulb so had a clear dark base to shoot from.

I woke at 4pm and was on the road to Coulee Dam by 5:30pm.  I ate there at a pizza place and after sunset drove to Steamboat Rock State Park.  As you enter the park, there is an old road, paved but going nowhere that cuts across the driveway a 100 yards in.  It makes a great place to turn off and setup cameras.  It’s well over a mile from the park and cars are 100 yards away and only every so often.

While it had been cloudy and then clearing, it was really clear and nice.  I had not planned it, but I decided to shoot some tripod based Astrophotography; picking a few objects and shooting 100 shots of short exposures to practice stacking.

5a) My Modified T3i I shot with my 85mm F1.5 (at F2) at Orion, a couple of nights’ shots of Steamboat Rock and the Beehive Cluster.  The 100 shots at M101.

While shooting M101, I started to notice something weird.  I was a mile from the lake sure and could not see the lake for the grass around the unused road I was on.  But above the grass in the distance it looked like someone was shining a spotlight around.  After M101 series was done, I pointed my camera in the direction and took a few shots.  I realized that several miles away on the far shore of Banks Lake, someone was driving a boat along the lake shore and shining a bright spotlight up and down the cliff bank (maybe 800 ft high) searching for something.  It was super weird and the boat made its way along the lake sure on the far side for miles till it was out of sight.

5b) I continued with the T3i shooting Andromeda, I then shot a series of Flats with the Lens cap on at two different ISO to help in the stacking.  Lastly, I shot the Pleiades at 100 shots. 

6) When I saw the weird boat thing, I pulled out my 60Da and shot the boat and what it was doing, I shot with a 24mm F1.8 at F2.  I then shot 100 wide field of Orion.

I left soon after around 9:45pm to get back to the hotel at 11pm just as the moon was rising.

The Moon rise and the Moon

The night had just a few hints of clouds as the moon rose in full view from my balcony.  I setup two cameras to catch it.

7) The Nikon 5200 now with a 35mm F1.8 lens at F2.  I shot 780 shots of time-lapse of the moon rising.

8) T3i with the 85mm focused on the moon for 700 shots

9) Lastly and most fun, I took my 60Da and mounted my Sigma 500mm and shot the moon and did a 5-minute moon video.  I then added my 2x Sigma converter and shot some more including 80 in a time-lapse series.  While the moon was low on the horizon and atmosphere make it pretty wavy, the lens showed they could provide a clear photo at this setup.

Last night and Sunrise

10) At 1am I setup the Nikon 5200 to shoot till the battery died with a 14mm lens.  I was still up after the first 1000 shots, so I replaced the battery and got another 1000.  It stopped around 4am.

11) GoPro Hero3 with my best external battery shooting 1 frame every 2 seconds. 2:24am start, 10:34am finish.  8 hours and 10 minutes of sunrise time-lapse.

Heading home and the Xterra Door

I slept pretty good, packed up and found I could not open the passenger door to my Xterra.  It was binding someplace.  After pulling and wiggling it opened.  Then I shut it and it was harder to open again, but I got it.  I shut it and tried a 3rd time and now it was stuck.  It would open about 1 inch and bind someplace. I could hear metal bending, so I tried to shut the door and forget it was a problem.  Yikes.

Decent drive home from 10am to 2pm.  After unloading I tried the passenger door again, this time I tried to lift up on it thinking it would help.  I broke off the door handle. I could also see that the inside part of the door that was binding was starting to come apart.  Oh well, a body place can work on it and I’ll pay.

Summary

• 11 Shooting sessions
• Just under 300GB of unprocessed photos.  Over 50,000 pictures taken.
• I’m doing this every year.