Heidi's Hotspots: Olympic Peninsula: The Hoh Rainforest

Admittedly, the Hoh Rainforest is one of my favorite places on earth.

That's a BIG statement!

I have been to all manner of sights and locales and yet I can right now, right here tell you that my favorite place on earth is a big wet temperate rainforest just miles from the Pacific Ocean.

Yes. For me, the Arizona deserts, Utah Canyons, Canada's mountains all hold special places in my heart and dreams but my go-to happy place is the quiet yet frenzied world that is the Hoh.

Here you can be lost and found in the same breath. Exalt in the openness of nature and feel an overt claustrophobia. You can listen to the flute-like voices of elk with a percussion of dripping from moss and here is where you'll find the quietest inch. You can spend a lifetime visiting yet find something new tucked away among the most familiar. When you are lonely, the moss laden trees become fast friends.

Come here on an overcast day. Even with the thick overstory, sunlight streaming through the leaves can create harsh light and shadows on the scenery. An overcast day gives you soft light, no harsh shadows with blown out highlights. But finding a cloudy day shouldn't be too hard. With rainfall as much as 12 feet a year, there are plenty of grey days. So also bring something to protect yourself and your camera from the wet elements. Even when it's not raining, water drips off the curtains of moss.

If photographing in a forest is a little intimidating, try focusing on small forest vignettes. The Hoh is filled with so much life that the idea of simplifying your image at first mind boggling. There are huge trees everywhere you turn. How do  you create simplicity when there is so much in your viewfinder?

Well, start small with mushrooms and moss.

Look to your feet for tiny things growing and living there.

Find the patterns in the understory.

Point your camera straight up into the top story.

Use a wide angle to get as much in as possible but then use a telephoto to compress the elements together.

Set up your tripod for multiple exposures then blend them later.

Hand hold your camera with a slow shutter speed for a more impressionistic image.

I other words, play. I give you permission to just play with your camera while in the Hoh. Maybe you'll see why this place has become my favorite place.

To get there: From Forks, drive south on Highway 101 to the Hoh River Road. Follow the road to the end. There is a National Park Entrance Fee to access the Hoh Rain Forest.

For more information on visiting the Hoh and Olympic National Park, please visit their website.

Photo Presentations that Work

Last week I shared a story about attending the last straw in a long line of ineffective photo presentations where the speaker wasn't prepared, was disorganized and really all he wanted to do in the end was sell his workshops.

I wrote a bit of a tongue-in-cheek blog post on how to lose the attention of your audience in 5 easy steps. I am here this week to help you understand how to keep your audience in rapt attention and win the admiration of your peers through your presentations.

We'll go through the steps as we did in the previous post.

#1. Your presentation isn't about you at all - it's about your audience. let them know you care about them and their goals by showing up with a prepared, organized and rehearsed presentation. This tells your audience that you care enough about them to take the time to create a great presentation.

#2. You get to name your presentation so give something snappy and information - this is what tells your audience what to expect and attracts them to come listen to you. It helps to write you title AFTER you write the presentation.

#3. You have techniques that work for you so let your audience know what works for you and why. Give them a little background to your workflow from conception to end and why you added or subtracted elements in your process or image.

#4. Do you have workshops? Well it's ok to mention them, but it you are able to give a well rehearsed and organized presentation, show the audience that you care about them and desire to help them become the photographer they want to become then guess what? Your prospective clients will come to you without much prompting.

#5. During the question and answer period, answer the question asked. Do you want to demonstrate a concept with an image? Then use an image already in your presentation. The cool thing about using an image in the presentation is that when you rehearsed your speech, you'll know exactly where the image is and can go directly to it.

Like this? I plan on expanding on each of these topics in coming weeks, there's so much to talk about. But if you want to present a talk that is well-received then this is the way to go.

And again, just though you might like to see another pretty picture. Enjoy!

A Northwest Winter

It's been a pretty sucky winter here in the Northwest. I am sure there are folks out there who are loving the warm and sunny days, but let's face it. Warm and sunny days do not bring snow to our mountains. Many of our ski slopes are bare - embarrassingly bare. The type of bare that makes your eye's pop wide as the guy in the next campsite swings his trailer door wide open to let his dog run free as well as his parts.

What I'm getting at here is that while it's ok to live your life in the nude - it's the unexpected exposure that can be a bit, well, uncomfortable. And that's how it feel in the Northwest right now. Our mountains are unintentionally bare.

We should have piles of snow covering our plants and hordes of happy snow-frolickers playing to their hearts' content in our winter wonderland. I'm pretty sure while we're looking to the Northeast with envy, they are looking at us with the same longing.

And I think somewhere my mind thought "head east not-so-young photographer lady" to get the snowy photos you want. So east I went, to Mt Spokane.

There I was met with . . . the same bare slopes as I found in the Cascades. Oh well. Time to make the best of a not so amazing situation.

There are approximately 100 miles of trails on Mt Spokane and I hiked a very small fraction - a nice little loop trail through a forest with several stands of larch (look for the beautiful spots of yellow in the fall) and a climb to the summit. Most of the year you can drive to the summit and the lodge that's there, but in the winter it's a hike to the top. A short hike of 4 miles round trip with a little less than 1400' of elevation gain. It's pretty steep though as you head straight up the hill in the snow. And in the winter, watch out for skiers.

Sadly I didn't see many skiers out and about as the slopes barely held any snow. And no snow encrusted trees as I was hoping for. The views were amazing. I was still able to find some small winter vignettes, but as important I began making plans for return trips.

Yep, trips. There are, as I mentioned, 100 miles worth of trail to explore.

This is a park where you can easily spend a weekend or more exploring the trails and views.

To get here: From I-90 take exit 287 for Argonne Rd. Head north on Argonne Rd for 6 miles, Argonne then turns into Bruce Rd continue on Bruce Rd for another 2 1/2 miles to a traffic circle. Take the first exit off the traffic circle (WA-206) and follow the road to Mt Spokane State Park.

5 easy steps to losing your audience

I recently attended a lecture entitled something like The Art and Business of Landscape Photography presented by a photographer whose work I admire. I was hoping he might have some insight on how he has been able to create a business from his photography.

Oh and did I mention there was an entrance fee?

I sat down and excitedly waited for him to come discuss his business. At the appropriate time, he approached the front of the room and announced that he really didn't have anything prepared so he was just going to show us some images and talk about them.

Whah?!?!

That wasn't what I paid for. I thought I was paying for a lecture, not a slide show

But the truly sad thing is, his wasn't the first photo lecture I'd been to where this happened. And as I chatted with friends who also attended the presentation, I discovered that they expected this.

EXPECTED a slide show with no other information except that the photographer can create pretty pictures. I already knew that and so did they.

Even with the title the presentation, they EXPECTED to sit through a slide show of pretty pictures and be told not much at all. If I wanted to watch a slide show, I'd just call up my father for one. At least he would have let me sit through his vacation pictures for free. But alas, my dad is dead and I'm paying for the privilege of sitting through this, for lack of a better word, crap.

So with my communications background, I decided to help photographers understand how to give a presentation that works by pointing out the 5 best ways to lose your audience during a photo presentation.

#1. By all means let your audience know from the start that you care not one bit about them by telling them you have nothing prepared. Let them know that you want to waste their valuable time with your rambling and unorganized slide show.

#2. Title-Schmitle. There is no need to pay any attention to what you have entitled your presentation because you know that all the audience wants is to sit in rapt silence and admiration as you show them pretty pictures that you made.

#3. Because you are such a marvelous photographer and have a room filled with eager slide show viewers, make sure you tell them that you discovered this really cool technique like the Rule of Thirds or photographing during the Golden Hour. That will impress the heck out of them.

#4. As you ramble along make sure to tell your audience that if they want more information then they need to register for one of your workshops so you can teach them everything that you promised you'd teach them in the presentation.

#5. During the question and answer period, go off into unrelated tangents to the questions. Also focus on your computer looking for that one really cool image that exemplifies not the answer to the question, but your ramblings (generally an image you forgot to include in the slide show and you have no idea where you stored it).

We've all been there and did you really feel like you got your money's worth? Or that the speaker wanted to impart some knowledge?

Let's hold ourselves to a higher standard than what has gone before. Let's start giving presentations that are prepared, succinct, organized, and on point.

Oh and come back next week as I explain just how to counter these 5 steps to have an amazing presentation that will keep your peers coming back for more.

(The above image is from Point Reyes National Seashore - I just thought you might like e pretty picture to look at.)