On a plateau formed by lava flows eons ago, the Nature Conservancy’s Tom McCall Preserve at Rowena sits several hundred feet above the Columbia River. The preserve and surrounding oak woodlands are one of Oregon’s best locations for wildflowers, with the bonus of outstanding views of the Columbia River Gorge. Showy balsamroot bursts into bloom each April, with the bright yellow flowers attracting photographers from far and wide. As the balsamroot fade, lovely lupine blossom; in some years the peak bloom of the two species happens almost simultaneously, creating a colorful sea of complementary yellow and purple.
When wildflower season starts in spring, I make it a habit of checking weather forecasts and online reports of bloom conditions. With a promising forecast and prompts from friends’ Facebook posts, I made the drive to the Gorge and spent an afternoon scouting, having in mind a sunrise photo of balsamroot and the sun popping over the Columbia Hills on the Washington side of the river.
I knew I wanted to position my lens very close to a large clump of flowers, and from past experience, I knew it was going to take some looking to find a group of blossoms that were all, or at least mostly all, at or near their prime bloom, and that were accessible without damaging the surrounding vegetation. I firmly believe that we photographers need to be careful not to trash the very things we come to photograph. As the saying goes, wildflowers grow by the inch and die by the foot. Unfortunately, I saw plenty of evidence that some photographers had trampled balsamroot, lupine, and other flowers just so they could position themselves for their shot. That is anathema to me, and totally unnecessary in this location as they are plenty of trails and established footpaths winding through the fields of flowers, and plenty of places to compose beautiful photos without squashing plants.
After wandering the Rowena Crest area for an hour or so I located this beautiful clump of balsamroot and made note of the location using the Gaia GPS tracking app on my iPhone. Well before sunrise the next morning I hiked back to the spot and got set up. As the sky lightened, I finessed my composition, moving the camera up and down, fore and back, side to side until I was satisfied I couldn’t get it any better. Then I dialed in the focus, zooming in on Live View and then on test shots to make sure would get both the nearest flowers and distant mountains in focus. And then, wait. Wait until just the moment the sun pops over the hills, hoping the horizon holds clear enough to get the sunburst effect.
But, hold it, what’s that blob of red that suddenly appeared in the lower right corner of my frame!? Looking up from the viewfinder I see that another photographer has moved into my shot. My first reaction was not one of kindness and understanding. Then I realized that maybe he wasn’t a clueless jerk but just didn’t realize how wide I was shooting. No way I was going to change my composition so that he wouldn’t be in my photo, and I realized that I could relatively easily remove him from my final image thanks to Photoshop’s Content-Aware Fill. So, let it be. And, having scouted where he was shooting from, I smugly felt that he wasn’t going to get as good a shot as I was. And given the quality of the bloom and the weather, I was surprised that there weren’t many more photographers out that morning.
Finally, the moment I’d been waiting for. Sol crested the distant hill, the flowers said hello and the wind was calm. Knowing that the extreme contrast between the horizon and the shadows at the base of the flowers was too much even for the excellent sensor in my Nikon, I quickly snapped a series of bracketed exposures to merge in processing. It’s so good when it all comes together.
For more information and locations for wildflower photography in this area, see the Columbia River Gorge chapter in my guidebook Photographing Oregon.
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