| The above will search Ashland Daily Photo. |
When the daytime temperature hits 60 degrees and the forecast is for snow in the evening, you know the sunset is likely to be spectacular. Luckily I was out, waiting for Ellie to finish her flute lesson, when the pre-sunset show began to take place.
After taking a few weeks off due to lack of snow, Mt. Ashland Ski Area opened up again this morning thanks to the snow that began on Saturday night and is continuing to fall.
Ashland, Oregon just after sunset
Today’s photo is one of the first I took with a new lens–the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X 116 Pro DX Autofocus Lens for Nikon. I tried to stitch (photomerge) three images together to get about 200 degrees worth of Ashland, but Photoshop was not willing. Perhaps I’ll try to do it manually in Photoshop.
Mt. Ashland is to the left of center. Wagner Butte is to the right of center. Ashland High School had something going on at the football field so the lights were on and that caused the brightness to the left of center. The brightness near the far right is the Ashland Springs Hotel. The lines in the lower-left half on the bottom are the cars going up and down I-5.
I took this about 15 minutes after sunset on my D7000 at f/4 for 30 seconds at ISO 100. I cropped the bottom and top off the 11mm picture to give it more of a panorama feel.
Please read the copyright notice on the bottom of every page before using images, such as this one, from this blog.
Sledding on Mt. Ashland
We headed up to Mt. Ashland last weekend not to ski but to sled. Normally, January is the height of the ski season but not this year. With little snow, the ski resort closed a few weeks back and won’t reopen until next week at the earliest.
The ski runs sit empty–even on a weekend in January. The sledding isn’t even ideal as there are rocks, bare spots, and the ground has more ice than snow on it. These two had a blast though.
Birds take flight with Mt. Ashland and Wagner Butte in the distance
Lunar halo above Mt. Ashland, Oregon with Jupiter in the ring
EXIF data for this photo is:
Nikon D7000 camera body
Tamron 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5 lens
15 seconds
f/8
ISO-800
10mm
First snow of the season on Mt. Ashland
After just three months without snow on Mt. Ashland this year, we have snow on the top once again. Last week’s rain meant snow on Mt. Ashland. However, if we don’t get any more snow in the next few weeks I suppose it could melt before the more typical November snow.
Today’s photo was taken near North Mountain Park. We were staying at a friend’s house while our floors were being redone.
Ashland sunset
Had some interesting clouds the other day so I decided to head over to the other side of the freeway with my camera, new ultra wide-angle lens, and tripod to see what kind of sunset would be offered up. It was a good one!
Mt. McLoughlin and Ashland from Wagner Butte
Wildflowers attract bees as well as butterflies
Wagner Butte Trail
As I mentioned before, I didn’t bring enough water. I had about 6 oz. left for the way down and nothing left after a mile or two of the five plus miles down. I was a bit worried that I may start cramping up and not be able to make it back to my car so I didn’t stop to take many photos on the way down.
This was unfortunate as the light was much better as you can see in the above photo, one of the few I took on the way down. Instead of a bright sun overhead, the sun was frequently obscured by clouds and/or at a much more interesting angle for photography. Next time I climb Wagner Butte I’ll either head up in the early morning, while it is still dark with a headlamp, or bring a headlamp and leave later in the day so as to come down during the sunset.
Tons of bugs attack me on Wagner Butte - Mt. Ashland in the background
Also mentioned in a prior post, there were thousands of bugs at the top of Wagner Butte circling around what appeared to be a rusted kitchen sink. I didn’t get close enough to inspect so as to avoid the bugs. Instead, I went around the edges of the butte taking photos and hoping not to catch the bugs’ attention. That worked for about a minute and then they spotted me. Immediately I was swarmed by a zillion bugs. I fired off the above photo (all of the little black things in it are flying insects), and quickly got off the butte. They left me alone at that point. Thank goodness as I didn’t want to have to share the rest of my walk back down the mountain with them.
View of Pilot Rock and Mount Ashland from the top of Wagner Butte
The top photo today is about as wide a picture as you can get from the top of Wagner Butte. I had my ultra wide-angle lens on my Nikon D7000 and shot this at 10mm. Pilot Rock and Mt. Ashland look very far away, but they wouldn’t if I was shooting at, say, 50mm or even 24mm.
Most days in Ashland’s summer feature no clouds at all. The sky usually isn’t this blue either as forest fires in Northern California or Southern Oregon tend to give the sky a gray haze. However, I got pretty lucky on this day to have bluer than normal skies and some clouds as an added bonus. About 3 hours after I took the above photo we had a brief thunder and lightning storm.
Wagner Butte, Jackson County, Oregon
The foundation for the lookout that was here until the 1970s is all that remains on Wagner Butte. There looked to be a rusted sink or something too. I didn’t get too close to it as there was a tornado of bugs swirling above.
Medford is in this direction, a bit to the right.