Just Pictures: May 2005

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Mt St Helens, recollections 25 years later

On this 25th anniversary of the catastrophic eruption of Mt. St. Helens I'm going to share some of my memories and some of the photographs that I took at the time. You may have seen better pictures but these are pictures you have not seen before.

One of the memories I have is of my friend Bob Kaseweter who had a cabin at Spirit Lake. He went up to the lake on May 18, 1980 to clean out his cabin. That was the last day of the life of a person who was full of life and loved to live it on the edge. He died on the edge and I am sure that he was thrilled the last few seconds of his life. His body was never found.

........................................................

On Sunday May 18th, 1980 I had to work. I was employed by a large manufacturing facility that used a number of RF generators in the manufacturing process. As a result we could not get radio or television reception in the building. We heard rumors that something had happened at Mt St Helens throughout the day but because it was a Sunday few people were coming and going. I left work about 2 PM and headed home to NW Portland. I started down the east side of Portland's west hills and was greeted with the view below. When I got home I grabbed my camera and took the picture below. (Note: you can click on the pictures for a larger image)

There were numerous smaller eruptions over the next few months but most could not be seen because it was overcast or dark. One eruption in July, 1980 occurred on a beautiful day and I took the picture below at about the same location as the picture above.

In August I had the opportunity to fly around the mountain and into the still smoking crater. I took the picture below as we approached the crater. You can see Mt. Adams in the background.

The picture below shows the inside of the crater. You can see the growing lava dome in center left. We were close enough that we could smell the sulfur dioxide. The dome in the picture was destroyed in another explosive eruption a few weeks later.

About 24 1/2 years later Mt. St. Helens awoke once again. Up to this point the eruption has been a mellow dome building event. The new dome is still growing at one or two feet an hour. Weather permitting you can look into the crater during the daylight hours at the link below.

Of course Mt St Helens is not the only volcano in the Pacific Northwest. A very clear day in Portland is known as a five mountain day. We can see five mountains, Rainier, St. Helens, Adams, Hood and Jefferson. Four of them are dormant volcanoes and one is active. The picture below is of Mt. Hood from my backyard.

The last major eruption of Mt Hood occurred in 1790, just before the visit of Lewis and Clark. A history of activity on Mt Hood and it's possible impact can be found here.

South of the Portland there is another recently active volcanic area, the Three Sisters.

North and Middle Sister with 1,500 year old lava flow in the foreground

The entire area around the South Sister is rising which may indicate a future volcanic event. More information on this can be found in the post Volcanic hot bulge in Oregon.

Cross posted at Middle Earth Journal

Waterfall in Austria

A Black and White picture taken in the Austrian Alps. Oringinal was a 2 1/4 negative.

Waterfall in Austria

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

The making of Iris-11

I received a couple of e-mails wanting to know how Iris-11 was created. The original was a digital photo.

All of the following was done using PhotoShop Elements. You can click on the individual pictures for a larger image.
The first step was to remove the background using the polygonal lasso tool. Zoom in when using this tool.

Next duplicate the layer. Using the Enhance-Color-Remove Color convert the top layer to black and white. Using the Enhance-Brightness/Contrast command increase the contrast to bring out the texture as desired.

Use Filter-Artistic-Dry Brush tool blur the second layer.

Return to the black and white layer and click on the layer tab in the upper right hand corner. Adjust the opacity of this layer using the slider. I used about 60%.

Use the Layer-Merge command to combine both layers. Adjust the color use the Enhance-Color-Hue and Saturation command to adjust the color saturation as required.