Selecting A Backpacking Trip In The Wallowa Mountains
Billy Newman Photo Podcast | Selecting A Backpacking Trip In The Wallowa Mountains
Produced by Billy Newman and Marina Hansen
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Hey, what’s going on? This is Billy Newman and you are listening to the Billy Newman photo Podcast. I am out in my truck, I’m recording from the mobile studio, just my laptop and a microphone. And I sit out here with in an empty field next to some houseflies. But there’s no house around, or the field flies, I wonder. But today I’m sitting out here and I’m thinking about a couple of the photo things that I’ve been trying to put up, I just posted one earlier, it was a backpacking photo that I’d taken. When we were out in the willow mountains up in the ego cap wilderness. That’s a really cool spot. I’ve talked about it a ton of times before, but but it really is a special location as it goes even for Oregon, which is really blessed with a lot of very nice, very approachable photographable locations. But the will our mountains have always been something that stood out to me is one of my favorites. And I’ve heard that that region has a lot of stuff like that, like as you move further over into Idaho into the sawtooth mountains in the house Canyon, there’s a lot of really peculiar spectacles to go see in that area. And it’s really interesting how it’s laid out, I appreciate it. And I loved kind of getting to go through the whole area. But the allow mountain specifically as something kind of special to him, especially when you get up into the Alpine area, and you get away from people, even as it goes, when you get to Joseph, you’re significantly away from people. But as you leave and kind of pushing further into the ego cap wilderness,
the number of people just drops down to less than a dozen by far. And, and even less than that, you know, as you move into the more remote areas, it’s sort of interesting how there’s a threshold of where people are, like, if it’s under so many miles of a hike, there’s gonna be a lot more people, they’re just sort of evolution, maybe it’s our you know, it’s it’s just natural selection, right? It’s, it’s where people would naturally select their interest to be closer to the main road, and then further and more competitive at a farther distance. And so it’s interesting, like, if you go to a lake that’s six miles in, there’s gonna be more people there than if you went to the lake that was nine miles, and it just people kind of pull out first, or they pull out to the, to the route of the trail, it’s going to not be as much it seems like, but also on top of that, really. And I blame myself for this specifically, it’s way busier. And now, this decade, just generally, it seems like the Rei or the the whole outdoor industry, this whole outdoor media industry, outdoor adventure industry, it just seems like it’s double what it was 20% up from what it was a decade ago. That might make sense. And the reason that I would say that is it just seems like there were so many more people filling the parking lot of the area than there were in the years past. And you know, the reason that I say that, and the reason why that’s that’s qualified information, maybe, is that it’s after Labor Day. Now what the trick used to be when I was doing a lot of the photo trips that I do, as I kind of travel east trim here and kind of do a big loop in the fall to take photos is after Labor Day, where you really notice is that a lot of these state parks, a lot of the managed locations where there’s a park coast or something like that, those all get shut down for the winter, it’s closed off unless it’s like a bigger, higher volume, National Park kind of area. But all of these remote locations like the willow wilderness, or the alvord Desert that we went to, these are places where there would likely be no people, especially no people, if it were off hours off season, sort of stuff, sort of visitation. But what we noticed when we were there is that the parking lot was filled up, like you know, it was 5060 7080 cars deep. They all just kind of Park in a line up above the trailhead, and that’s, you know, you kind of visually just are impacted by Wow, there must be this many people from all these cars up in the mountains right now. And in the past, like when I was there in 2011. And then again in 2012 and 13 there would be no car like there was five cars in the parking lot. It was me I pulled up right to the very front. And I mean even when we went this last time, it was a mid week trip. It wasn’t it wasn’t Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And even still with that midweek trip, there was more traffic up there. So we went to our noid like I believe and that was an area that was I think like six miles and so a little bit of what I was talking about before about natural selection of the hike you’re going to go on that day. Six miles was is less of a hike I think the other one icelake is nine miles maybe the other one is 10 1213 miles so you know somewhere in there, but it just got to progressively goes on from about six there’s about one every two miles or so if you know if you kind of put you know your so many more miles after that. There’s this next one, so on and so forth, as you can imagine, but a lot of people go up to this like for like a lunch day hike, which sounds like a blast. Now I have to actually carry all the heavy stuff with you or, you know, all the equipment all the overnight stuff that you’d have to deal with. But it was fun. It was, it was cool. We went up to our annoyed Lake, we camped up there for a night. And we did a lot of photo stuff. But it was kind of tough because I think I mentioned on that last podcast where the we were prepared, but the weather would kind of get twisted on us more often than really what I wanted it to. But the weather would kind of spin out on us a little bit. So the first night we were there, it was nice and decent. And temperature and weather, as we were hiking up to the location where we’re going to camp. There’s only one other couple camping up there, I think was like a mom and a daughter team that were there were camped out at the site. And then so we pulled away from them on the lake. And you know, it’s just the whole lake to us, which is really cool. It was fun. So we shot around there for a while, but there’s rain that picked up it was probably one of the first rains of the season. A while at least for me, or for us or for that area, but it seemed like it kind of built up over the mountains. You know, like how you see storm systems kind of build up over the mountain top sometimes seems sort of like it was that like it was some kind of weather pattern that was about the allows, it seemed like it was nice everywhere else. But it just seemed like it wasn’t very nice there. So we camped there for the night.
We got through some rain. It was nice. The next morning, we took a lot of photos that morning, a lot of photos through the day, we kind of walked around the lake, you know, is interesting, I guess way back before it was before it was a wilderness area. Before whatever kind of legislation went into effect in the 60s, I think was the Nixon era, you know, when Nixon had just gotten in and what was like 68 and they pushed for Wilderness Act to the wild and scenic act are brothers a bunch of stuff before that. But from way back like 100 years ago, like before, these regulations existed on what could and couldn’t happen in wilderness areas. I guess it was a bot area next to that lake, and they built like six or seven cabins up there. Like we just cut down wood and built these cabins. So you got there. And I think they’re still owned as private property was sort of grandfathered in. Once the whole wilderness thing was established, there’s a lot of those private land facilities that were grandfathered into that system because they’d already existed there. So these are all like undeveloped and maintained things that I guess you could you could pay someone to, to hike up all the way there and then camp there if you want to. It seemed a little dilapidated. To me though, I don’t know if I’d want to put out some cash for that after especially after hiking all day, I might as well just take my tent or hammock or sleeping pad or something, you know, if I’m doing that, but it was cool to go check out and it was a it’s kind of cool to spot something a little different up there. But it was really fun. You know, honestly, I don’t like the cabins because really what I want to go to the allows for is the wilderness experience is the getting away from the cabins, the private property, the signs that say you can’t go here, someone else owns this sort of thing. I’m trying to get away from that and go to public land and go to places where I have access where I get to do things. And so if it’s in civilization, like downtown, and I see private property, or whatever it might be, or you know, this is ours, it’s not yours, I say, Alright, fine, that’s okay. Because that’s the that’s the negotiation we’ve made here and civilization, but when we go way out, when we’ve hiked in miles and miles under our own discipline and accord to get somewhere to spend time there and then there’s some sign some indication that we’re not supposed to be there, or we’re not supposed to be a part of it or we’re not supposed to whatever, we were supposed to respect their private property. And it’s a big open field that is a place that everyone gets to hike to that’s just a big lake that’s a tourist destination now I’m not respecting that rule I’m going wherever I’m going to do whatever that’s your business to get a camp post to discipline not mine. So that’s might be a leg that I don’t go to any more or that we won’t really hike out to again, I think mostly, you know, photos were fun, it was fine other than like not really getting the the light and the opportunity you know, run it into a storm roll the rest of it that kind of took away a little bit but really there’s there’s just not as many How do you say like priority landscape features at that at that location is pretty Lake It’s very nice. It’s very Alpine looking.
And
you know, and it’s presentation but it just didn’t really have one of those those triple A titles to photograph when you get there. There’s not like a lake and then this really cool perspective of a mountain it’s just sort of a big Ridge that runs along this this glacial lake cool, really pretty beautiful shouldn’t take away from it but but when your goal is just kind of to get to a specific kind of thing, and then get a photo in the can as they say in the biz or you know when you get to finish it, it’s done. It’s already locked off and it’s already captured. You got what you want, then you can move on. It just didn’t really feel like we got there at our location in the allow amounts but it was super fun being there. It was cold at night. Oh man made mornings bad. That’s the thing that sucks about morning photos. At night. You get the sun to heat up the earth all day and then you get to go out and take photos of it in the morning though. It’s just been cold. Though time especially as we move into fall as we move into winter, like that cold just really starts to peak, it seems like well, you know, we’re getting really close to the freeze. I’m sure it was already freezing up there above the Alpine level like we were 7500 feet, something like that. So that’s a lot Are you from coming down here oh man and the altitude not altitude sickness, altitude fatigue, it just drew on me Marina to she really noticed it. But you know, as you go around, it’s like one o’clock that next afternoon, you’re just trying to, you’re just trying to have energy to sit and eat lunch, it seemed like it seemed like you know, if you’re really pumped up and you really got to hike in or something, you could struggle through it, but just that, that native energy that you would have to go do something it just was really zap that might be just from sleeping on rocks for four days beforehand, and then try to hike or something like that. But it’s but it’s, it’s weird. I don’t know, I remember a couple other times he was you kind of if the backpack and you climb up in elevation, it just can be really fatiguing. So we made it through it, I posted a photo up to Instagram today, it’s hitting Facebook and Twitter and whatnot this afternoon. I’m also trying to run through and find a good video clip, like a good behind the scenes video clip of us kind of walking through or running around, up in the flowers as we’re hiking. And I know I have a bunch of those of us backpacking, and trying to put in some work to get to a spot to take some cool photos. So I’ll try and put one of those up on YouTube on on Facebook later today. And maybe I should cross post that to my website. Look at me. Oh, and speaking of my website, Billy Newman photo.com, I’m trying to get that one worked out still I have the front page, the about page, you know how to do some little development. I this weekend, I tried to do some stuff where it’s trying to get like I was telling you all about last week, I was really just trying to get my computer in order, which is fine, you know, it’s all set up. But I’m trying to do some specific stuff or trying to integrate software so that it works and talks with, you know, to each other so I can get more stuff done.
I don’t know production stuff, media stuff, software stuff. It’s just I’m trying to troubleshoot little things that are supposed to work. But what I’m trying to do is go through last week, get my computer set up, get my file set up, and then go through, pick out a portfolio stuff, and then kind of continue the web development that I was doing on the website. So I’m trying to go through and find a good way to build a gallery right now. And I really essentially know most of the photographs that are gonna go in there. So I really just need to get to, I need to pick one of those photos today. Then you pick another one of those photos tomorrow. Like they could probably do just a little better than that. I mean, likely shoot, why can’t I get to 10? I think I know what photos are. So I’ll try and do that. Sure, why not. But I’m gonna try and keep working on that building human photo website. Really, I’m just trying to get some new work on there, I got a big thing about why I’ve been delaying on the photo portfolios and really trying to rebuild it or kind of rejigger it for the 2017 time period, to show off some of my best stuff, because I don’t really, I don’t know, it’s tough. It’s like some of my favorite photos, reasonably are still like old or you know, it’s my best stuff from 2011 or 12. You know, it’s like there’s still cool photos, it still means something to me. And so I really want to include those. And I’m trying to go through and sort of vet that against some of the newer stuff or the more modern pieces that I’m putting together. So Oh, that’s going good. I’ve been working with that capture one software a little bit. There’s a few different versions of it. And I really don’t know what I’m doing. And I haven’t even really watched a YouTube tutorial about what I’m supposed to do in capture one yet. Most of all, it’s fun to try out, it’s fun to use, if I didn’t have Lightroom available, or if I thought like let’s say if you’re out there and you’re using the Photoshop package, the photographer’s Adobe package where you get Photoshop and Lightroom for 10 bucks a month, if I was on any kind of subscription plan for Adobe products, I would totally cut that. And I would buy in to a program like capture one that was modern that I just had to buy once and then use and monetize after that. For me, I bought Lightroom. And I’m not going to change over to the Creative Cloud update to that I think that does not work well at all. And it really kind of I don’t know, it’s just always a diminishing return. At some level, it’s just another $10 bill, you put enough of those together between Netflix and Adobe and Hulu and everything else like it’s just a bajillion dollars that you’re indebted to every month for the services that really are not worth the total value that you’d end up paying for it. Like Lightroom Lightroom is an $80 program if you pay $10 a month for that and that’s primarily what you’re using. That would be paid for in eight months. There’s no reason to spend six years paying $10 a month for the service to use these photographs, especially if they sell the software still, or especially if there’s alternatives that are professional Capture One or affinity or a few of these others that are out there that do photo management stuff for you in a way that that wouldn’t take constantly a large amount of your budget, your money or you know, whatever kind of control system it is to get into the Lightroom catalog. That’s the thing I don’t like about it. But really, Lightroom is the most developed system for that kind of photo editing. And so I’m going to continue using it Lightroom Photoshop.
It’s just
what it’s what it’s what to use at this point, at least, I think there’s a lot of cool stuff in Capture One, but I don’t know if I could really use it with ease to get to the same level of proficiency in my work that I do with other tools. So it’s interesting, but I need to try and give it a fair shake. And I need to really try and input into it some time, at least like a run through of a tutorial or kind of see what’s special about it, what what works there better than other places. But it’s been cool messing around with. And I got a couple other ideas, some stuff that will come up in the future. Some stuff I haven’t even started working on yet. So why talk about it. And because of that, I think that’ll wrap up this episode of the building even photo podcast, you can check out my work at Billy Newman photo comm you can see all of my photos. Well, yeah, a lot. You can see a lot of the photos that I’d want to post what we’re talking about here today. You can check that out on Instagram that’s at Billy Newman. You can see a bunch other stuff on Twitter and Facebook too. You’ll find me under the same name. So thanks a lot for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast.