The Blasted Land

Another in a series I shot recently at Mt. St. Helens. This landscape

used to be lush forest land like the rest of western Washinton state

before the eruption, but now strongly resembles the deserts you

encounter in eastern Washington and Oregon! The land is still mostly

barren 28 years later, but the forest is finally starting to recover, as you

can see. A great mix of sun and clouds created great light that day that

enabled me to capture the contour of the land in great detail. Please

view larger and take a moment to comment. Regards, Joe

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This is an interesting documentary photo. Thanks for sharing.

Karl

Joseph, I wish you could have seen and photographed this area shortly after the eruption and before the logging companies salvaged all of the timber. The huge swaths of trees blown down like so many match sticks was truly impressive -- anything but a desert landscape. There is a lot of active replanting taking place, and this will soon look like a tree farm (many areas already do). You've done well with the light and shadows.

Thank you for the compliment Stephen. I have seen pictures of that stuff and yes, the amount of blown down timber was quite impressive! I remember seeing pics of Spirit Lake just clogged wih mud and downed timber!

And yes, there is a lot of active reforestation going on up there. I actually got a cool abstract shot of trees that are all uniform in size that created a repeating horizontal pattern. I'll probably post it in my abstract folder. Let me know what you think if you get a chance. Regards, Joe