Ruby, Ruby, Ruby Baby...

This week's adventure took us to our final destination of Ruby Beach, Washington.

Don't try and look it up on Google Maps, you'll have a very tough time finding it.

Anyway - we started off a little later than last time, again in my Mini Cooper.  Mike wasn't able to come with us, so we took another classmate, Cassy, with us.  She's much prettier than Mike (sorry, little brother) and she's got a very cool personality.  We got along great.

I got Derek and Kody (I spelled Kody's name wrong last time, so I'll be sure to make no mistakes this time!) at 0830 and we went to the ferry terminal to pick up Cassy, who came over on the 0745.  From there we took off west, this time, towards the Washington coast.

Our first stop was Madison Falls.

The entrance to the very small park area
and path to the falls.

Madison Falls in the Olympic
National Forest.

Derek, of course, wanted to get some "sick shots" of the falls for both school and his own personal use, and set about looking at how he could get on top of the falls in order to accomplish that...

Where's Waldo? Derek deftly maneuvers
his way to the falls.

Yes, that's Derek - his camera is in a
water-proof housing.

While Derek scaled the falls to get his "sick shots," Cassandra and I (along with Kody) took shots from below.  Mine, you'll see here.  Derek's can be seen on his website, Action By Derek.

Cassy attempts to capture Kody in
a posed moment.  Never happened.

I, on the other hand, got them both... :-D

Derek the Mountain Goat...

After a while of rummaging through the upper areas of the falls, Derek came back down to meet us and take a few shots from the bottom of the falls (see his images...)

Note the lack of footwear on the lad.  Remember, it's *January,* and we're in the Pacific Northwest, in the Olympic National Forest, way up high in elevation.  It was in the very low 40's in the sunlight, never mind the shade...










Once satisfied with the amount of images we captured at Madison Falls, we trekked onwards, toward Ruby Beach - this is what we encountered....

A photographer's point of view is very
influential in the way their world is
captured in slivers of time.

Ruby Beach, Washington 01/22/11

Cassy stares out into the Pacific...

Cassy posing all pretty and stuff.

Poseidon's son

Lesser mortals would be frozen.

.  .  .  .  .  .  .

.  .  .  .  .  .  .

The shots above were taken with both my Canon 7D and my MyTouch phone camera (or camera phone, since they aren't much phones anymore as they are everything else...).  During a portion of the images capturing and photo-experimenting, Cassy wanted to take a shot of me in a lean-to make of driftwood and a large fallen tree the jutted from the stand to the beach.  Derek suggested she use the remote strobe he had with him and was using at the falls earlier.  

He searched his rucksack thoroughly and came up empty handed on the strobe.  We figured he must have left it at the falls!  Without much more, and with the realization that a very expensive tool was left behind, we stayed just a few extra moments before we packed up and headed back to Madison Falls in a desperate attempt to find Derek's strobe.

We got to the falls much after dark.  Derek left Cassy, Kody and me in the car and took off with a flashlight to see if he could locate his strobe...  The image above shows Derek returning to the Mini without it.  It was a downer in an otherwise really beautiful and photographically fruitful day.

We're already planning a shorter trip for next week.  Something with less mileage to maximize the photo experience. . .