First things first, though. I started out the week in Seattle, where I presented my online class on Photoshop retouching & collaging at creativeLIVE. This class is part of a larger “Photoshop Mastery” series that I’ve been teaching once a month for the past few months. Next month, I’ll be returning to teach “Creative Explorations” in Photoshop. If you missed the recent classes, or want to enroll (for free) to the next one, visit my instructor page here.

On the set of my creativeLIVE class.

My friend and fellow photographer Rick Friedman was teaching a creativeLIVE class right after mine, so we got to meet up in Seattle!

After leaving Seattle, we returned to the bus in Eugene, Oregon and spent one night there before hitching up and heading out. We headed north through Portland, where we made a quick stop to pick up my new, custom-made hat! I’ll post pics of that soon. We then headed east along the Columbia Gorge, on the Oregon/Washington border. We had spent several days exploring the gorge area before, but there is lots to see there, so we spent a few nights near the town of Carson, which is right on the gorge, on the Washington side.

This area is just beautiful, and there’s lots to photograph. I am currently working on an e-book for shooting waterfalls, so that’s what we focused on. There are so many waterfalls in this area that you could literally spend weeks shooting them all. We had heard good things about Panther Creek Falls, so that’s the first one we hit up. It was about a 45-minute drive from Carson and a really short, easy hike to the falls. It was pretty spectacular, and we actually returned twice to shoot it in different light.

My shot of Panther Creek Falls. This is just a detail shot. The whole falls is shown below.

Karen got this shot of me near Panther Creek Falls. The red light on my camera looks so bright because it was actually the brightest thing in the scene. This was pushing 8:30 at night and it was actually quite dark. 

The entirety of Panther Creek Falls.

Some of the rapids leading up to the waterfall. 

I got this shot of Karen shooting near the falls.

We also drove out to see Lower Lewis Creek Falls, which was a longer trip from Carson (1.5 hours) but totally worth it because of the scenic drive and the beautiful weather. The waterfall was great, expanding a wide area. It was, however, in direct sunlight so it was hard to get any really nice shots of it. This is one of those waterfalls you really need to shoot on a cloudy/foggy day. It was still nice to see, though, and we enjoyed the exploring aspect of it. While we were driving to Lower Lewis Creek Falls, we also got several great views of Mount Saint Helen, which was an added bonus.

Karen’s shot of Lower Lewis Creek Falls. It would have been much better on a foggy day, but it was still nice to see.

After exploring the gorge area a bit, we continued eastward toward Walla Walla, Washington. We’ll spend a few days here visiting some vineyards (this is wine country) and celebrating my birthday! More to come.

The vehicle is a 1938 Ford COE (cab-over-engine) that has a whopping 85 horsepower (my vintage bus has more like 400 for comparison). It was the first Ford truck to use the COE design. I just love the art deco/streamline moderne design of trucks of that vintage.

If you’re a photographer or photo enthusiast, know that there are only three things preventing you from making an image like this one: 1) time, 2) patience, 3) technical knowledge. I can only help you with #3. If you want to get started painting with light, check out my e-book on the subject. You can even download a free starter/sample pdf to get you started.

This is one of my mega light paintings… I shot no fewer than 120 exposures! But some of those where as short as one second long just to light the hood ornament for example. When it’s a big and complex object like this one, I tend to be excessive with the number of exposures I capture… if I miss something, it’s going to be just a black hole… so I better light be sure to light everything… and often from more then one angle. My main complaint about this image is the lack of shape in the near front fender. The far front fender is lit from light reflecting off the white wall next to the truck. If I were to do it again, I would have lit the ceiling to get some light to reflect into the near front fender.

While I was in the Salem area, I toured Gordon house, which is one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s usonian homes. I’ve always been a Frank Lloyd Wright fan, and whenever I’m near one of his buildings, I try to pay a visit.

Outside of lightpainting, I spent a good part of the week between Portland and Eugene, Oregon. My vintage bus is located in Eugene and the progress on the interior has been really consistent. Up until now, the interior of the bus has been a “mockup,” meaning a temporary interior that we would constantly tweak until we liked how everything was set up. Well, we finally got everything how we wanted it, so the mockup was pulled out, and progress has begun with the true materials. The guys started building our cabinets, and we completed the plans for the entryway design. If you’d like to follow the progress of the bus, I post everything on the Creative Cruiser’s Facebook Page.

 The constantly-changing blueprint for my vintage bus.

This coming week, I’m heading to Seattle to teach the next segment in my Photoshop Mastery series on creativeLIVE. This class is on retouching and collage, and it’s free to watch while it’s live! Of course, if you like what you see, you can purchase the class for a discounted rate while it’s live. The class is Monday and Tuesday, 9 am – 4 pm PST. Check it out HERE.

More to come!

A scene from the vintage vacuum museum.

We also went to another oddball place called the Faux Museum. I don’t even know how to describe it, but some dude (who may or may not have been on a lot of drugs) decided to create this home-made museum based on his “journey to the 7th dimension.” Yeah. It was weird…. on a whole new level. THEN, we went somewhere really cool. Portland has a classic arcade that is full of classic arcade games. You literally walk in and are taken back in time. They have full sized Asteroids, Tempest, Centipede, Joust, Dig dug, Frogger, Donkey Kong, Galaga, and many, many more, plus classic pinball! All the arcade games cost only 25¢ to play, just like the old days. To make it even better, they have a bar that opens after 5 pm. I had a blast in there!

An iPhone shot from Ground Kontrol, the classic arcade in Portland.

This week, I also revisited a shooting location I had scouted before. It’s an old Signal Service Station that has since been turned into a pizza parlor. In order to photograph it, I had to move a lot of benches and other furniture, but hopefully, it will turn out pretty good. As soon as I process the final image, I’ll post it up here.

The Signal Station I photographed in Portland.

This coming week, I’ll be spending a lot of time preparing for my creativeLIVE course on June 10-11. The class is called “Photoshop Mastery: Retouching & Collage” and is part of the Photoshop Mastery series I’ve been teaching once a month. As with all creativeLIVE classes, it’s completely free to watch while it’s live. If you like what you see, you can purchase the course to watch (and re-watch) whenever you want. As I mentioned above, the classes is June 10 and 11, and runs from 9 am to 4 om PST. I hope you can tune in!

More to come…

Here are some of the blocks the hatmaker uses to create her amazing hats. I almost went for 1930′s vintage materials, but ended up with a slightly more modern substrate.

Karen and I then moved down to Eugene, which is two hours south of Portland. The bus (our motorhome) had been staying in Eugene while we were away, and it was nice to get back “home.” We didn’t stay too long in Eugene, though. We took the bus up to Newberg, Oregon… aka Wine Country. Karen and I both have some friends in the wine industry, and they have all given us some glowing recommendations for the Willamette Valley. We had been wanting to spend some time here for a while, so we were especially excited to visit the region over Memorial Day Weekend, when there would be many special events and wine tastings.

I shot this pano with my iPhone at Sokol Blosser winery and vineyard.

We ended up visiting a lot of wineries, and because of the holiday, many of them had special tastings set up, where you move from station to station trying all of the wines. Many of them also had some nice food pairings. The scenery was beautiful, and we really lucked out on the weather, because it actually didn’t rain the whole time! This is pretty amazing in this part of the country. While the whole wine country experience was great, Karen and I did have one main struggle with the area. We both really like big, bold red wines, and the Willamette Valley is Pinot country. If you’re not really familiar with wine, Pinot Noirs are generally more delicate and mellow than the big Cabernets you find down in California. There really aren’t many big reds made up here, but we managed to find some tasting rooms that serve wine from the Walla Walla region, which is way over on the eastern side of Oregon, and is home to more of the bigger reds that we like.

While we were in wine country, we also decided to splurge on a nice dinner. We don’t often go to the spendy restaurants, but we had gotten a recommendation for the historic Joel Palmer House, and when we looked it up, the reviews were all raving. There are set menus that you choose from, and Karen and I both got the vegetarian tasting menu, which consisted of at least eight courses (small portions, of course). It’s one of the only fancy-ish places I’ve been to where I not only loved everything I ate, but I actually left feeling full! If you’re ever visiting the Willamette Valley, I highly recommend this place.

This was our multi-course dinner at the Joel Palmer House

The Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum is also located in the Willamette Valley, and we were excited to check it out. Just driving by the place, it’s incredibly impressive. The museum is made up of several buildings, one of which is an IMAX theater, and another is an indoor waterpark with a 747 on the roof! No joke. You can actually see waterslides coming out of the 747. We bypassed the waterpark and went right for the museum, which is currently home to Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose. The “Goose” is absolutely massive, dwarfing every other plane in the building. It was originally designed to carry supplies and troops in and out of war, but the war ended just before its completion. The plane only flew once, for a total of about a mile, at an elevation of 70 feet. You can see a picture of this plane in the post header. We spent a good amount of time shooting and exploring in the museum before heading out to more wine tastings.

One of my shots from the Evergreen Aviation Museum. I put my camera on a monopod, set the self-timer and held it high over my head to get this shot looking down the wing.

This is a different plane, but it shows you how I got the shot in the photo above.

One of Karen’s shots from out front of the museum.

In the upcoming week, we’ll be hanging out back in the Portland area and will perhaps drive out to the Columbia Gorge area to photograph some waterfalls. More to come!

Aside from hanging out in Oregon, I did make a short trip to Columbus, Ohio, to present my Kelby Training Photographic Artistry Seminar. I am flying out again this week to teach the same seminar in Boston, so if you’re a Boston local, I hope to see you there!

In one more bit of news, there are still a few spots available in my Iceland workshop this summer, and I’d love to have you join me! This is by far one of my favorite places to photograph and the workshops are always spectacular. You can visit the Iceland page for more info.

As I mentioned above, I’ll be traveling to Boston this week, and then meeting Karen back in Portland on Wednesday (She’s been spending some family time in NJ). From there, we’ll decide where our summer adventures will take us. More to come!