Backpacking for a Portrait
Recently I decided to kill three birds with one stone (who hasn’t). I decided to go backpacking, take a few portraits and train my son in location photography techniques, as well. I know you may be saying, “yah, so what’s the problem”. I‘ll tell you… Let me start by saying I love backpacking as much as I love taking pictures, which, to put it lightly, is a lot.
So I started this adventure by pulling out my Mountainsmith Elite 5000, with a capacity of 5,100-6,300. Can we say HUGE? This was probably my first mistake. I wanted to just use my Mountainsmith Borealis, But I was packing the food and shelter for two people for 4 days.
I did find that the camera padding in the Borealis was removable. I also found that it nearly fit the internal dimensions of my Mountainsmith Lumbar pack perfectly. So I used the Lumbar pack and packed:
- one camera body
- 3 lenses; 50mm prime, a long zoom and a wide angle zoom
- two flashes
- a few Cybersyncs
- a 43″ convertible, collapsible shoot-thru umbrella
- tons of AA batteries
- filters
10 pounds is 10 pounds too much when you’re backpacking, But I was sure I wanted to cover every possible situation. I placed this Lumbar bag inside my backpack along with my lightstands, and tripod. I added all the normal items around this stuff. My pack came to 50lbs. Yikes!! 50 pounds is about 20-25 pounds more than I carry on a trip, but like I said, I wanted to be prepared.
The Secret Spot
So here we are loaded for bear and headed to that secret spot where no humans have ever been in history… that special spot I hiked to six years ago. When we arrived, there was a lot of smoke in the air and we wondered if there was a forest fire somewhere nearby (It turned out that they were field burning down in the Willamette Valley. A soon to be illegal farming practice done for centuries).
We hiked a ways in and were high above the creek. Looking straight down we saw about 10 or more salmon the length of my leg from foot to knee. These guys were pretty beat up and just circling around the top of the water in a deep pool. Unfortunately, all my camera gear was packed away - could have used that zoom! This is the only shot that turned out with the 50mm.
The trail was not so bad, but the weight was beginning to get to me. My dog, who is 12 years old, was also showing fatigue from his pack. I just kept telling myself it will all be worth it when we get there.
We finally made it to our turn off from the trail. From this point on we would have to go cross country for about a half a mile or less, and… we would have IF it was six years ago. Somehow I forgot that I live in Oregon and that you can always count on a few things… protestors, rain and the underbrush to get thicker, which it did. I also forgot to count on trees falling. Yes, trees fall all the time and they do make a sound. The sound of thunder. Here is a picture of a small one. Unfortunately for us, it wasn’t the only one. Heaps of these guys fell all over where we needed to go. We tried for a while, but with the trees and very thick underbrush, we had to turn back for somewhere else.
As you can imagine, I was steamed over this, especially after making a, “this isn’t going to stop us” attempt. I just decided it was not meant to be and we hiked back on the trail until it was close enough to the creek to hike the creek to the spot. We went for a good while when we came to another large fallen tree. This tree blocked the entire channel. We may have made it if we took our packs off and climbed over, but Timmy, our dog, would not be able to make it. Another problem is that the water was deep on the other side. We decided to leave this trail and drive somewhere else on Fall Creek.
We ended up driving around the forest for a total of 147 miles and wound up in Oakridge, Oregon. We used to live in this itsy-bitsy town in the middle of the Cascades. Oakridge has some of the most beautiful scenery in Oregon. I miss it very, very much. We went up Salmon Creek, our old local favorite area.
It was getting late in the day and we needed to find a spot soon. I started pulling in, and driving down, the old roads that lead to the creek. Finally I found one that was perfect. We pulled the packs out and set off.
Since we sleep in hammocks, I set them up. I have to tell you that if you haven’t slept in a modern backpacking hammock, you are really missing out… and I am not just talking about their overall weight. These things are comfortable! I use a Hennessey Hammock and am simply delighted with it. My saying is,”The Hennessey Hammock-Anything else is just a sore back or shoulder”.
We spent the night and messed around most of the day in the water and fishing and basically hanging out. At some point we built a rock walled pool in the river to play in and enjoyed each others company. A storm blew through at one point, but we sat under some large fir trees and stayed dry playing Uno.
Around 4 or 5 pm I decided to set up that equipment I tortured myself with earlier and get a portrait. I picked a spot I thought would work and went to work setting up. I chose the 50mm for this shot because I needed to be in close on the rocks because of the river. The shoot-thru umbrella was set up about three feet from the subject at camera right. I used a LumaPro LP120 on the stand set at 1/2 power. I spent a little time dialing it in and took a few shots. It was at this point I realized I forgot to pack my sons wardrobe, and the homemade shirt with marker marks all over it wasn’t cutting it. Oh well… the missing extra clothes saved me some weight.
I then used my son to switch places and focus the camera on my eye, using what I had dialed in and set up. I was also doing a bit of training during this time. I thought it would be good to build his knowledge and confidence in the art of photography. He seemed to enjoy it and liked seeing what was captured. It was partly cloudy as that storm left and the light on the trees in the background kept changing. It made it difficult to obtain what I wanted, which was captured in the portrait of me.
All in all, it turned out to be a great trip with my son. Oh, and by the way… I still want to make it to my secret spot someday and will try again later.
