Kevin Merchant Photography News - 2023

October saw one more trip up to see and photograph pika on the trail to Snow Lake. A very good day with noticeably lower temperatures. The one pika we spent the day with had one considerably sized haystack that we could see. No doubt, there are others stashed away somewhere in the boulder field.

Next up was a trip for the October 14^th annular eclipse - AKA ring of fire. We left on Tuesday and camped at the Skull Hollow campground, south of Madras, Oregon - just outside the path of eclipse totality. Before leaving home, we identified a number of potential camping sites, in Oregon, that were in the eclipse path and appeared to be worth investigating. On up-close inspection and keeping an eye on the weather forecast, a decision was made to continue south down into Nevada. I had identified one possible campground from a satellite map that was in the path and the location seemed very promising - Virgin Valley Campground. With printed out directions, this is where we headed. It is inside the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge and is no-fee camping, both good and bad as it turned out.

Arriving late Wednesday, we grabbed one of the, to our surprise, few campsites not already occupied. The eclipse had hardly received any news coverage and so we didn't really know what to expect. It turns out, this campground was very popular. On Thursday morning, I walked around to see if any other (better) campsites were going to become available. By mid-morning, several parties were leaving and we secured a better site. Although, not ideal, it was an upgrade from the first night's space. Eventually, we traded our site with someone else who needed more space for people coming in later that day and ended up with the site we really wanted. By ideal, I mean on the eastern perimeter where there would be no possibility of someone pulling in and blocking the view of the eastern horizon (the eclipse started just after 8AM, with the sun low in the sky) and level with space to set up two cameras. All day Thursday, people kept pouring into the campground, to find all of the spaces taken. Many left, but a few talked their way into sharing a space. Towards the end of the day, a number of spaces had two or three parties sharing a single campsite. This included us where we shared the space with a couple from Alabama - our kinda folk.

Thursday night was clear so I set up my newly acquired ZWO TC40 carbon fiber tripod with the iOptron Sky Guider Pro equatoruial tracker and proceeded to do the polar alignment. It is a good thing I did because Friday night was clouded over with no view of the stars.

The elevation at the campground was around 4600' and temps were getting down into the 20's. Keeping our phones charged at night was a challenge. Fortunately, I had acquired a battery for just such occasions. The Anker 521 Portable Power Station, which has 256Wh of charge with USB, AC and 12V outlets to power a number of different devices. Phones weren't the only challenge and on Friday, I made sure all of the camera batteries were fully charged as well as the tracker. To make sure there would not be any problems in the cold morning, we slept with the batteries in our sleeping bags to keep them warm. If necessary, the battery could be used to power the tracker throuhout the eclipse.

The weather was not looking ideal for the eclipse on Saturday and, in fact, it was cloudy in the east in the morning. We were up early to set up both eclipse cameras plus another camera to shoot timelapse images of us throughout the eclipse. 8AM comes and clouds are still obscuring the sun. My first recorded shot has a timestamp of 8:08:11 AM, about two minutes after first contact. When the sun was finally visible, we scrambled to get both cameras aimed at the sun (with filters, of course) and focused. Note to self - get solar finders to assist in finding the sun with the camera.

It was not a perfect start and in fact, there were times when the sun was blocked out completely. That was not a problem for the camera on the tracker, but the other camera was being adjusted manually as the sun moved out of frame. It took time to re-aim the camera when the sun moved out of the frame AND was obscured where you couldn't tell how much out of frame it had moved. I am re-thinking how to handle the second camera due to those difficulties as it is worthwhile to shoot with two cameras at different focal lengths.

As soon as the totality (ring of fire) portion of the eclipse was over, some people were leaving. As soon as the eclipse ended, quite a few more people were leaving. According to the timestamp on the last few images I recorded, the eclipse ended at 10:45:18 AM in our location - 41° 51' 16.506" N 119° 0' 2.556" W, Nevada. We were able to see the ring of fire and there were a lot of "oohs & aahs" around the campground for those few fleeting minutes. We spent another night in the high desert, enjoying the company of new friends, a warm fire and smores.

I am not entirely sure when I will get around to processing the images taken. The backlog remains considerable.

Be well, be safe.

Summer is past here in the PNW - both calendar-wise and weather-wise. Four inches of rain in the last week confirms it. It has been a busy summer for me in spite of no updates on this news page.

Photo activities have included a 3-day hiking/camping trip to the coast in Olympic National Park. An arduous hike through slick rock and boulders when incoming tides covered up the sand - you can't time it all for low tide and easier walking. Two nights of camping right on the beach with not a soul in sight. Wonderful sunsets. Observing the occasional black oyster catcher.

Other hikes included a scouting trip from the Sunrise visitor center, in Mt. Rainier National Park, to the Second Burroughs. I had not done a hike here in 40 years - a training/conditioning hike in 1982, in preparation for climbing Mt. Rainier. On this year's trip, we had clear skies and clear views of the mountain, unlike the '82 hike in cold and wet conditions with no views of the mountain. Arriving in the parking lot at sunrise was not the best timing, but this was a scouting trip, afterall. We decided a second hike was necessary for a sunrise photo shoot from Second Burroughs. What was intended to be a week or two later turned out to be a month. Last week we made it - up at midnight, leaving the parking lot at 3:18 AM, arriving at Second Burroughs at 5:30 AM and then waiting in the cold for sunrise. We had clear skies and the stars were stunning. You don't realize how much light pollution you live with until you are in such a place. The sunrise was spectacular. A bonus for the day was seeing two Cascade red foxes; a species endemic to the Washington alpine and subalpine areas of the Cascade Mountain Range.

We have also managed a couple of hikes on the Snow Lake trail at Snoqualmie Pass, for pika photography. The pika are so curious and fearless. Of course, they are well adapted to the granite boulder fields they inhabit. Where we humans have to travel on the "surface", they are able to disappear into one of the many routes underneath the rocks - their preferred travel routes. You have to constantly scan the boulders where they may silently pop up, watching you, undetected. Hopefully there are a few more of those trips before the snow season comes.

Of course, image processing continues. I am approaching the end of images captured in 2020. Today is upload Wednesday and I have made the 29^th upload of the year, totaling 2,615 new images.

That's all for now. Be well. Be safe.

It's upload Wednesday again. The 19^th this year. And, by my calculations, 1582 new images from 2020 have been added to the gallery. There is still quite a way to go for 2020 images. I continue to press on.

Summer keeps threatening to show up, but the spring temps are not letting go just yet.

I did make it to the south Oregon coast last month. While personal business took up quite a bit of the time, several beach shoots were squeezed in along with a couple of afternoons with snowy plovers. While no chicks were sighted, there were several nesting pairs, which is a good thing. Considering the time alloted, it was a productive time.

That's all for now. Be well. Be safe.

April has arrived and this week we are expecting a dusting of snow. Not much has changed since the groundhog saw his shadow in February! Not much else to report. Processing 2020 images continues. I have started a schedule of uploading a single day's worth of images in the NEW section every Wednesday.

I have continued to use the DxO PureRAW2 Lightroom plugin. That is, until a week or so ago when I purchased the recently released PureRAW3 plugin. It includes a newer noise reduction option called DeepPRIME XD, which definitely shows an improvement from DeepPRIME. I had hoped that some of the deficiencies, in my opinion of course, were addressed. Unfortunately, they were not. But, I am living with them for now as a minor nuisance.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the hard drive failure. While working in Lightroom, I started hearing an unusual hard drive noise that started out as an unusual number of drive accesses going on. A day later, it evolved into the sound of even more drive accesses. Did it occur to me to do a backup? No!!! On day three, the drive died an utter death. No bringing it back. What did I lose? It was the drive that I keep all of my Photoshop work on. Three weeks of Photoshop work lost. While that was significant, I did not lose the work that had been done in Lightroom - creating the DNG files in PureRAW2 or the Lightroom processing steps. This did save a lot of time. While painful and tedious to recover, it could have been worse. I am now on a weekly backup cadence. If there is a silver lining in this disaster, it is the strategy I adopted a very long time ago where I keep my master files on one hard drive and the work files on a separate hard drive.

That's all for now. Be well. Be safe.

Processing 2020 images continues. I recently uploaded a batch of mountain bluebird shots taken in Ellensburg. The first of a number of day-trips over the mountains. If I'm not up by 2:30 in the morning for one of those trips, I'm late!!! For sunrise, that is. First light on the birds can be exquisite.

Although the groundhog saw his shadow, we have small signs that spring is around the corner. Daffodils have started popping up. The primroses are blooming. We'll see about another 6 weeks of winter.

In my January 3, 2022 NEWS entry, I mentioned fulfilling a promise to a friend. As evidenced by the lack of 2021 NEWS entries past January 1^st, that promise took up the bulk of my time from April 2021 to August of 2022, which I do not regret. Since August, I have earnestly been working on image processing in the digital darkroom. I have been posting batches of images as they are finished, now located in NEW > 2022.

In 2020, due to COVID-19 pandemic conditions, my photo efforts had to be re-calibrated. Trips planned were canceled or in some cases, weren't planned at all. Public land closures prevented access to places I might normally go to, especially for birds. As evidenced by 2020 NEWS entries, I did find ways to make myself busy. Between backyard bird photo sessions, bluebird day trips to Ellensburg and the occasional day outing with a fellow photographer, I managed to have a surprisingly productive year. I have just uploaded the first batch of 2020 photos - backyard birds.

Belatedly, I wish you all a Happy New Year.