The Lost Sunset

Last week Tanya, Carson (our Newfoundland), and I circumnavigated Hood Canal. (For those not familiar with Washington State geography, Hood Canal is not a canal. It is a natural saltwater channel, essentially a fiord – long and narrow- that runs along the east side of the Olympic Mountains.)  I was hunting for good photographs. Tanya and Carson went along for the ride. We first stopped at Shine Tidelands State Park, on the west side of the Hood Canal Bridge. The tide was very low, and we saw some interesting sea life. Carson took a swim, or more like a wade (he seems to be the only Newfoundland in the world that doesn’t like going in water deeper than where he can touch the bottom). Not much photographically, but fun nonetheless.

We continued west and then south, through Quilcene to Mount Walker. I was hoping to get some forest shots of wild rhododendrons. The road to the top of Mount Walker is lined with them. Unfortunately, we only saw one bud just starting to open. That’s it. We probably saw 2,500 rhodies, but no blooms. To make matters worse, it was raining on the top of Mount Walker. There are two viewpoints up there. At the northern viewpoint, we could only see a couple dozen yards. At the southern one, there was a hole in the clouds, so I did trip the shutter a few times (in the rain) looking down on a sunny Hood Canal and Puget Sound. Nothing too special, but it gave me a chance to use my rain sleeve.

After driving back down to the highway, and a quick-lunch stop, we continued on to Brinnon. There we stopped at Whitney Gardens and Nursery. Whitney Gardens includes over 7 acres of rhododendrons and azaleas, seemingly in peak bloom, as well as other plants and trees. It was not crowded, most people were staying in the nursery portion of the grounds. I had the garden to myself. With the sun in and out of the clouds, I was watching out for too much contrast. So I  looked for compositions mostly in the shade or when the sun was behind the clouds. After about an hour and a half, I’d had my fill of rhodies.

We then drove up the Dosewallips River Road to look for river and forest scenes. We pasted a herd of elk on the way out of Brinnon, as I didn’t have the big glass (big for me anyway) on the camera. I decided to shoot the elk on the way back. We stopped a Rocky Brook Falls and it had a good flow. The sun was fully out now, and the contrast was too much for any decent waterfall shots. But back at the car, we found it wouldn’t start! We had the starter replaced about a week earlier, but since it was “fixed”, it sometimes wouldn’t start when the engine is hot. So we had to wait, but that just gave me more time at Rocky Brook. By now the clouds had come back some and the contrast had dropped considerably. I was able to capture a decent shot of the creek and a better one of the falls.

On the next try, the car started right up, and we drove to the end of the road. On the way back, I took a few shots of the Dosewallips River and put on the 70-200mm lens with a teleconvertor to shoot the elk when we got back toward town. The elk were still there, now on both sides of the road. They apparently didn’t like the looks of me, because they sure turned their backsides toward the camera whenever I stuck it out the window!

Back on the highway, we continued south. At the Hamma Hamma River, we again drove in toward the Olympic Mountains. I took a few shots of the river, but not much else caught my eye, so it was back to the highway. But a short ways down the highway, at the mouth of the Hamma Hamma, there was a good view over Hood Canal. The tide was now high, and the Hamma Hamma delta was flooded. I liked the flooded grasses in the delta with big towering clouds on the other side of the canal.

We skipped the drive up to Staircase and stopped at the Tacoma Power park at Potlatch for a picnic dinner, though it was a bit cold to eat outside the car. After dinner, Carson took another “swim” off the boat ramp. Then it was on to the far side of Hood Canal near Union to find a good spot for sunset shots. Earlier in the day I would have bet we would not have seen a sunset, it was that cloudy. But now, there was the chance for a colorful one. We drove up and down the highway south of Union, and I finally decided on a spot overlooking the Skokomish delta, with Hood Canal and the Olympic Mountains in the background. The mountains were mostly covered with clouds, but the sunset wasn’t bad. Based on the featured photo on this blog, you be the judge.

I spent about an hour at the spot, first waiting for the sun to set, than shooting about 180 frames. I had used most of an 8 GB card earlier in the day, so for these sunset shots, I put in a new 4 GB card. I was pretty happy with the results and we headed home.

By this time, you might be wondering why this blog entry is titled “The Lost Sunset.” Well, the next day I downloaded the 8 GB card with no problem. I was using an external hard drive with a card reader attached with a USB cable to my computer, downloading directly to Lightroom and backing up at the same time. When I stuck the card in with the sunset shots, it went in a little funny. Lightroom showed the first two shots and the very last shot, all the rest were nothing but white frames with lots of color noise. I pulled the card out and saw one of the pins on the card reader bent flat. I put the card back into the camera, and the camera failed to recognize it. The card was corrupt and my sunset shots were lost. I felt slightly sick.

At the time I didn’t own any file recovery software. The following day I did some research on the internet, and downloaded a couple of free programs. Both these succeeded in pulling some old photographs off the corrupt memory card – photos left over from an old shoot, shots that had been erased when I reformatted the card prior to the card at Hood Canal. Neither was able to same the sunset shots. I had heard that PhotoRescue was good program, so I downloaded it. Though it costs about $30, it allows you to try before you buy by showing thumbnail images of the files it can recovery. It seemed to work, and $30 later, I had my lost sunset shots.

I guess the morale of the story is don’t force your compact flash memory cards into a card reader. If they don’t go in smoothly, try lining it up again. And if all else fails, try PhotoRescue. It rescued me.