We just got back from vacation in Oregon's beautiful Columbia River Gorge. We spent nine days hiking and photographing a handfull of the many beautiful waterfalls located in the Gorge. Because this was our first time visiting this area and not knowing the best time to photograph the different waterfalls, we will be returning to Columbia River Gorge later this year for some great autumn colors. Hope you enjoy.

After 17 years, I have been inspired to pick up my paint brush once again. From a very early age, the artistic bug hit me. Around the age of 11, I began drawing cartoons and eventually working up to more detailed subject matter. I primarily worked in pencil and charcoal with my subject matter being very detail orianted. Over the years, I have experimented with almost every art medium out there but always went back to my handy graphite pencil. It wasn't until college when I realized that a nice pencil drawing was great, but I would have to expand my artistic abilities in other mediums. After weighing all my options, I decided that acrylics allowed me the versatility that would best suit my artistic style. After college, my desire to want to paint or draw soon faded and I haven't drawn since.
One day out of the blue, I received a copy of Rock and Ice Magazine. A magazine built by climbers for climbers. I have always been fascinated by this very strenuous and dangerous sport called rock climbing. Although I have never had a desire to climb myself for a strong fear of heights, I've always had a great admiration and respect for those who do climb. While flipping through the pages of this magazine, I came across some beautiful photos from a very talented sports photographer by the name of Keith Ladzinski. I immediately googled his name and found his personal web site Keith Ladzinski Photography. I was instantly inspired to want to paint again. About four hours and 76 pages later, I emailed Keith and asked his permission to use his photos as reference for a series of paintings I wanted to do.
If everything goes well, I will be doing several series of 2-D photorealism paintings on rock climbing, mountaineering and ice climbing. My medium of choice will be acrylic. My technique for achieving my photorealism style with acrylics will involve many different layers of light washes, acrylic mediums, sculpting, airbrushing and hand painting until I get the desired realistic look I'm going for. I will be posting pictures of my first painting on this site in stages, so you can see the different steps I have to go through from beginning to end. Eventually, I will be designing another web site specifically for my art. Keep checking back for a work in progress.

Due to bad weather, we had to cancel our trip up to the Sawtooth's this week. On the only somewhat nice day of our 6 days off from trucking, we decided to take a short fourty-five minute drive over to the Bruneau Dunes State Park to scout out the area for future photography trips. On our way back from the dunes, we pasted a billboard for the Thousand Springs Scenic Byway. I've always wanted to drive this route to see if there were any waterfalls worthy of photographing. Little did we know, but our curiosity would soon pay off. When I think of waterfalls, I immediately think of the waterfalls in the Columbia River Gorge located in north western Oregon. So, when we began our scenic drive down highway thirty on the Thousand Springs Scenic Byway, I honestly didn't think we would see any waterfalls worth spending the time to photograph. Boy was I wrong. We just entered the town of Hagerman and pasted several cascading waterfalls to our left. The only problam was, we couldn't find any signs or roads that lead over to these beautiful waterfalls. I stopped at a public smimming pool to ask for directions. Without doing so, I never would have found this paticular area. I have to admit, the waterfalls along this scenic route are not very easy to find. After about 20 minutes and a bunch of winding backcountry roads later, we arrive at a secluded area called Ritter Island. You can check out our latest photos of this waterfall near Ritter Island. More photos to come in the near future of waterfalls located on this scenic route.

I have been anxiously awaiting for over a month to return to Easley Peak for my third attempt. I attempted to climb up to Easley Peak twice this week with no luck. Now, mentally and physically drained, I will wait until summer to try again. As frustrated and disappointed as I feel now, I am not one to give up so easily. For those of you who will inevitably face disappointment in your future, I leave you this... "If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance."
Samuel Johnson