I’ve been goofing around with making star blur images for years and finally came up with one that I’m as close to satisfied with as I’m probably going to get. This is from a camp on Mount Hood, actually, it’s only a few hundred yards up from the uppermost chairlift leaving out of Timberline Lodge. Looking down I could see the massive snow machines grooming the glacier for the next morning’s crop of brightly clad skiers, quite a contrast with the other direction, home to only rock, snow and sky. I’m often surprised at the flattening effect of a wide angle lens. I shot this image at twelve millimeters, and the vertical presence of the mountain is greatly diminished because of that. It as though the mountain was soft plastic and the ends of its ridges were pulled on until it became low and wide.
It was cold up there, well below freezing,
but aside from the fantastic view of old Hood, at sunset, eastern Portland and the Columbia River could be seen as a cozy cluster of lights (they really look that way while in the snow) and dark orange ribbon of water.
