The Storm II: The Miracles

Here's a couple more pics from The Storm:


This is my kids' favorite park. It is only a couple of blocks from our house, and during the summer we're there every day, some times twice. Miraculously, only the picnic area got smashed, with the tree falling right between the play structure and the merry-go-round. Lucky. Also, if you look in the upper right hand corner of the picture, you can see a few fir branches blowing in the breeze. About two hours after I took this picture, that tree fell on another picnic bench. Bad day for benches.


This is a big old tree directly behind our church. It fell over, obviously. But our Church was safe and sound - we lost a few shingles and a fan vent (I rescued it as it skidded across the parking lot. At the rate it was moving, I figured it was light-weight aluminum. Um - it wasn't . It probably weighed about 50 pounds. That's how fast the wind was moving.) But other than those two things, our building was fine. Divine intervention? Hmmm . . .

The Storm

Sunday, December 2nd, shall forever live in infamy for being the day the 36 hour hurricane force winds smashed into the northern Oregon coast and wreaked havoc on all aspects of peoples' lives. This was my first major natural disaster and I am glad I survived. It was pretty hairy.

I usually try to keep my writing short and let the pictures speak for themselves, but I feel like I need to provide a little background for those of you who haven't heard what happened up here. I also want to give a disclaimer that in my photos I looked for iconic imagery, not straightforward reporting. I don't have a lot of destruction of people's property and whatnot because I just feel badly showing other people's misfortune. Large companies, the town, and utilities, no problem - but displaying someone's wrecked house for my own agenda just seems jerky. Plus, I just didn't take any that were very good.

So anyway, here's the rundown from the Hills' perspective. After our first church meeting on Sunday our Bishop (church leader) stood and announced that the rest of church was canceled and we should all go home. 10 minutes later, the power went out and the winds kicked up a notch. I went home and my wife and I readied our home as best we could by gathering firewood into the basement, locating flashlights and candles, and feeding ourselves. Well, we fed ourselves first, actually. Then we waited for the power to come back. 2-3 hours later, it did. We had a hot meal, called our families to tell them we were fine, and went about our business. At 10:00 that night, the power went out and it didn't come back for 4 days.

We have frequent high winds here and we're fairly used to it. Storms in the Pacific Northwest usually last around 6 hours and then they blow themselves out and everything is fine. We clean up debris from the streets and continue about our daily lives. This storm just wouldn't stop. Some of the pictures I took were in the height of the storm, but because earlier I had read that the storm should be dying down, I went out anyway . . . with my 2 year old daughter in the car! I got some cool shots, but it was stupid.

It gets dark around 4:30 up here and I never realized just how dark it actually gets until there was no light from anywhere except the occasional passing car. We had a fire in the fireplace and candles burning, but it was dark and lonesome. Lonesome because of the extreme isolation we felt. There were no roads out of town that weren't blocked by trees, floods, or both, and we had no communications by phone, except for within our own exchanges. We could call people in Astoria, but not across the bay to Warrenton because those calls are all routed through Portland, and the main phone line to Portland was broken and buried 8 feet underground, which was itself 8 feet underwater from floods. The cell towers were down too, so we literally had no communications with the outside world for three days. Apparently, some news stations reported on the destruction in other towns on the coast and they said, ". . . but we can't get into Clatsop County and no information can get out. But we do know that they bore the brunt of this storm." Great. Nothing like a little panic to get your parent's heart rates going.

But, despite it all, we survived. I am very lucky and blessed to have the superb family that I do. My wife was (and is) amazing, keeping the kids happy and entertained, then working in the ER all night, then keeping us entertained again the next day. Our house, by the way, has never been cleaner because of her stalwart efforts to keep us all busy. The kids too, were amazing. Little to no fighting or arguing, and the whole event was seen as an adventure not a burden, which made it easier for me to handle. We read books and cuddled in front of the fire, then watched Sesame Street podcasts on the iPod for a treat. The kids were really amazing.

Our house sustained very little damage. All our windows held up, our door didn't leak too badly, and we only lost a few shingles. This is impressive considering that our neighbors across the street lost the eves to their roof, and some of their roof, and a whole lot of insulation that flew through the air like an itchy pink mist. So our hose did well for being 77 years old. We did have our garage/shed get knocked off of its foundation by about a foot, but it was pretty rickety to begin with. The whole thing will probably have to come down and be re-built, but that doesn't seem to be a huge deal, 'cause we don't live in there.

So, all in all, it wasn't too bad of an experience. We now know that we need to be more prepared in some ways (an emergency radio, for one) and that we are pretty resilient in others (Mac N' Cheese is great - all the time!) We also really had a chance to get closer as a family and bond in a way that we rarely get to in today's busy modern world. And that was pretty nice, to really play with the kids, talk with my wife, and enjoy what it really means to be a family.

Then the power came back on and we became zombie slaves to technology once again. Speaking of which, here's my pictures:

I had never seen power lines down like this - especially not with the pole still attached!

This picture is a little dark, but if you look carefully behind the destruction of the power poles you'll see the trees whipping around in the background. Also keep in mind that I took all these pictures in between gusts, so those trees are really relaxing in the just strong winds, not the full on gales they had gotten used to.

This is at a local park - again note the trees in the background - at least a couple more fell before the storm was over.

I like this shot for its simplicity. I like the previous statement for the same reason.

Poor Dairy Queen.

This was a darn big tree! And it was snapped in half like a toothpick! I could not believe it, and I stood there taking the picture!

This shot requires extensive explanation. (This is more reporting on how crazy the storm was than it being a particularly interesting shot) The hole you are looking at was caused by the log sitting directly behind it. The hole is about a foot deep and the log is a 25 foot long tree top that came crashing down, thumped a hole in the ground, then twisted to its final resting place. I'm glad I wasn't in the woods during the storm.

And then my children - they were playing and playing in the dark and I took this shot with the flash - I think they knew it was coming, but it's a heck of a facial expression on my kid anyway!

That's all for now. I'll put some more up later.

The Beach

No, I am not referencing the Leonardo DeCaprio film, or the bestselling book it was based on - I am talking about the trip my family and I took this weekend to Newport, Oregon for my daughters 2nd birthday. Why, you may ask, would someone who lives on the coast in Astoria go 150 miles down the shore for a vacation? Obviously for the Oregon coast Aquarium and Hatfield Marine Science Center - both based in Newport. Seaside's Aquarium is nice, but ti doesn't really cut it for my little oceanologists. We had a great time, and I had a lot of fun taking pictures.


My son loves the ocean - and after being trapped in the car for 3+ hours, he needed a silly release. This was it.


The two girls in my life are gorgeous. I love them to pieces.


I took this on the beach, and it took a lot of shots to get it just right. When I got home, it was still lacking some pizazz, so I used an infrared film filter on the computer and got this image. The texture of the ocean waves popped out and the bird itself was suddenly defined as a silhouette - no longer a bird, but the idea of a bird. Weird.


This one is from the aquarium, and I subjected it to the joy of infrared as well. I like that he is mostly hidden from view, and that all we see is a hint of a smile behind his otherwise stark and unfeeling avian eye. I have pictures of him with his beak totally exposed, but they lack the mischievous mystery that this shot possesses. Well, I like it, anyway.


I took this picture on a very low shutter speed and had to hold the camera very still. As a result, the lobster appeared to glow beneath the fluorescent lights of his tank. I enjoyed the effect of infrared film so much that I tried it on him, and the effect was eerie and humorous at the same time, so you can't beat that! Also, his eyes are just two black knobs on the end of some protuberances, which was really weird to look at.

Family Reunion Video

Every year my wife's side of the family likes to make silly family reuinion videos. This is our attempt at a 70s cop show spoof. It is pretty lame, and there are a lot of inside jokes, but perhaps someone might think it's funny. Summer blockbuster it is not.

Egads! An Eagle!

Three boys I worked with for several years in the Young Men's program at my church recently achieved the rank of Eagle Scout. I was asked to participate in their Court of Honor, so I did. One of the mothers hired "Wildlife Images" to come up with a live Bald Eagle to be a part of the program. It was very cool to be so close to a real Eagle, so as soon as the ceremony was over I scurried home to get my son. When we returned, they had already put "Defiance" (the eagle) back in his box, but my son was so cute, the trainer brought him out again. I then took these pictures. (Well, one of them was taken for me, 'cause I was in it.)




Just for the record - I was not shorter than the lady in this picture. I was sitting down, because my son was scared. So stop making fun.

If you are interested in "Wildlife Images," visit thier website: www.wildlifeimages.org They offer free tours of their facilities, and it looks sweet. Unfortunately, I think they are in Grant's Pass - not exactly a day trip for us.

Fisherman Foto Fun

Okay, so I wanted to post more sports pictures. So sue me. I have nothing witty or interesting to say about them. You probably should not look at them at all. Try one of the many blogs listed to the right. They are worth your time.


I feel badly for subjects of sports photography. It's hard not to make a weird face when you're playing sports.


Even if your face is not visible, sometimes you can get in weird positions. Poor girls.


Sack on the 10! Fourth down, time to punt, Vikings!


Here you can see the continuing sad saga of our injured fisherman. It sucks watching a game from the sidelines when you should be playing, but it's even worse when you're all alone.


More motion blur. I just like the fact that there really is no main subject in the picture.
That's all.

AHS Fall Sports

School is almost back in session, but the sports teams have been hard at work for several weeks. Volleyball and Football got a chance to test their mettle this Friday, and I was there to document the action for the Astor Post. I will never be as good at sports photography as my predecessor, Cam McFarland (I mean, come on - his name is 'Cam') - who has left AHS for bigger and better things, but I'll give it my best shot. By the way, I love puns.


Coach Hunt giving her girls a pep talk - I like that you can tell all of her girls' eyes are on her - even the ones whose faces we can't see.


The lighting is bad in our gym - so I had to crank the ISO rating way up to get this shot. It's still a little fuzzy, but I'm glad for the zoom lens.


On to Football! I was pacing the sidelines with my camera and saw all this stuff set up for me - as pretty as a picture! So I took one.


This was pretty heartbreaking. This kid hurt his knee on the first play of the first game of the season. He's a Senior. I hope he heals up quickly.


Ahh. . . the thrill of the hunt! I know some people don't like my blurry photos, but this time I think it really adds an element of motion and excitement to the shot. Plus, it was really dark by the time I took this picture, so I didn't really have a choice. By the way, #54 smashed this guy into the grass about .5 seconds after I snapped the shutter, so that look of "I want to destroy you" is not faked.

Hopefully I'll get some Soccer and Cross Country pictures up soon - though I do have to go to their games/meets first.

Lights

I am not much of a photographer, I know, but I ever since I started looking at life through a camera lens, I have become much more aware of light and how it effects everything it touches. I like the lighting in these next couple of shots - though I had nothing to do with it - I just happened to be there while Mr. Sun did his business.


I like the contrast in this shot - both the shadow and light on the steeple, as well as the deep blue of the sky with the bright white of, um, the steeple. I got lucky to get this shot on such a clear day. The single subject is striking. I like alliteration. I should be an Anglo-Saxon poet.


I recently re-watched Pixar's "A Bug's Life" with my kids and became interested in the translucence of leaves. I waited around for a bug to walk across my subject leaves, but they never did. I guess I won't make the sequel.


My twin nieces came to visit with their brother last week and they wanted me to take pictures of their skateboarding exploits. This one turned out rather well. I don't think the lighting or contrast are super-sweet, but I do like how this picture looks. I managed to catch her right before she "dropped in" - the next picture in the series (using my camera's multiple shot feature) is of the ramp, a shadow, and a big blue sky. Yay! I took an action photo that wasn't blurry!

Replace "busy" with "lazy".

I've been busy. Too busy to take any pictures. As I think back on the last couple of weeks, I can't remember what made me so busy. But I'm sure I was very, very busy, nonetheless. I looked through my picture files and found a couple of gems that I never posted before. Here they are, almost as if they were new!


Kid + flower = cuteness.

Awww. . . my boy and his cousins. My son loves his relatives - good thing too, 'cause most of 'em have moved back into our state, so we'll be seeing a lot more of them.

I just realized that I didn't show any pictures of my children's faces. I was just too busy to look for those kinds of pictures, I guess.

My Life's Ladies

I am blessed to be married to one of the world's greatest women. She is kind, loving, laid back, and driven to succeed, and all the while puts up with me and all of my strange (read: idiotic) eccentricities. And besides all of those great qualities, she is beautiful beyond compare. Luckily for me, we had a daughter who shares many of her traits, most especially, her beauty. We'll see how my daughter deals with me when I start spouting random facts to her friends on road trips - will she quietly ignore me and get on with her life, or will she melt in embarrassment and hope for a car wreck? Only time will tell.
But anyway, here are some pictures I took of my wife and daughter at Enchanted Forest, a mini-Disneylandesqe type of amusement park outside of Salem, Oregon.


It's a Super-Fun-Happy-Slide! Yay! Both of them are out of focus - darn low lighting! - but I like my wife's expression. I think she may be having more fun than my daughter.



Tickling is very fun for all parties involved. If you look carefully, you can see the stamp on my wife's hand, ensuring an easy re-entry later on in the day. No ticket stubs for us, boy! This is high class livin' at its finest.



The natural world is wonderful. And here, I am using the word to mean "full of wonder" as opposed to "great." I feel like Lemony Snickett right now. I am such a dork.

PS: I just finished Harry Potter 7 yesterday at 7:15 pm. I started reading it at 11:45 am the same day. Without counting bathroom breaks and short pauses for snacks, this means I read the 759 page book at a rate of 108 pages per hour. I put this here to show two things - 1) That book was frickin' awesome and exciting - by far the most action packed of the series - two thumbs up! And 2) That's how fast I can read, Rob.

Cousins

Ahh, family reunions - the chance to get together with a bunch of people you are related to, but with whom you don't always relate. Luckily, I get along great with my family, so this runion was a blast. We spent our nights hoplessly overcrowded in three 'cabins' (bigger than my house) with aunts and uncles and cousins and grandpas and grandmas spilling out all over the place. But it was all in good fun, and I'm glad to say I got some good use of my camera while there. I'm also happy that this will be my last post of a picture of Smith Rock, and thankfully, this time there's people in it!


These are my nieces, Kiana & Kaylene (they're twins) who live in Corvallis and love skateboarding. They are quite good too, especially since they just recently started. They have their first sponsor, and I look forward to finding a sweet T to wear with their new brand. Anyway, I forced them to hike with me all over creation on our trip and only let them pause momentarily to snap a few photos. They were wonderfully patient and I appreciate their ability to feign interest in all the weird science facts I constantly spewed in their direction.



This is a picture of my two kids and their cousin Aaron, one of the newest members of our extended family. Both my kids love babies more than anything (including cookies) and so there wasn't much coaxing needed to get this shot. Of course, I think my daughter is watching TV here, but the other two are interested in what's going on!

Peace for now . . . war later?

Smith Rock - The Sequel

Same story as last time, just more pictures.


I like this one for its weird perspective - is the camera looking straight up, or is it looking off of a cliff top at the horizon? You decide.

Here's a shot of where I was. This is on the trail heading down to the main trails. About 2 minutes before this picture was taken, I almost dropped my daughter out of our baby backpack onto some sharp pointy rocks. Luckily for all involved, I caught her by her ankles just moments before her face collided with the ground. But, this is still a nice picture.


Same as above, just different angle and closer. I like the river in this shot.

This picture makes me dizzy - these cliffs were towering over us at incredible heights, and this shot really captures the vertigo staring up at them all afternoon started to give me.

If I were Uncle Rico, I could throw a football right through these goalposts. But I'm not.

I do have more pictures of Smith Rock, but I'm tired of just cliffs and sky. I'll try to add more variety next time!

Father's Footsteps

I recently went on vacation to Redmond, OR for a family reunion. While there, we did many lovely things, such as travel back in time to the wild west on the Crooked River Dinner Train where we witnessed a murder, and then solved it! We also spent a day at Smith Rock. My dad grew up not far from this massive set of monoliths, so it was cool to get to see my dad's old digs. When he was a kid, there were only the trails he and his brothers made to get to the places they liked to play, so I was quite literally following in his footsteps. While there, I got to lug around my camera (with tripod this time!) and took these pictures.

Smith Rock is world renowned as a place of excellent rock climbing. (I do mean world renowned - when I was in England several years ago, I saw a poster advertising Smith Rock in my hotel) I saw this couple way up there and took this shot.

Then I zoomed in for this one - for no real reason beyond showing off my 150mm zoom.

It wasn't until I got home and put the picture on my computer that I realized that the person way up there, on the side of the mountain, nay, the cliff, was wearing flip-flops!

I liked this grouping of rocks - zoomed out, they looked like little bumps, close up, the massive boulders that they are.

This one looks like pieces of . . . well . . . I don't know. I just like them. I don't have any clever metaphors for you right now. Maybe you can decide what they look like and let me know.

I took many more pictures, but I don't have time to put them up today, so stay tuned!

My Big Backyard

We often have a variety of wildlife that frequents our backyard. Most recently, some deer friends of ours (pardon the pun) have been coming to visit. They always lie down in about the same place, and relax through the heat of the day. They are surprisingly tame and I was able to get quite close for this picture.



We also have a Velociraptor that hangs out in our long grass. I had to put a telephoto lens on the camera to avoid its rows of razor sharp teeth, but I think the shot turned out well.



Of course this is actually my son's toy, but he thinks this is the coolest picture ever and wanted it online. How can I resist the pleas of such a cute kid?

Hello again - did you miss me?

It's been a few days since my last posting, and with good reason. One of my other pet passions is videography, and I have spent the last three days working on the latest installment of Hill family films. My wife's family makes reunion videos every year, and as a family we dress up, act something out, and put it on DVD to share at the annual reunion. It is good silly fun, but it means that I end up logging late hours editing the thing and can't do anything else.

But, that's done now, and I can get back to updating my blog. Today we went for a family hike up the Cathedral Tree Trail to the Astoria Column. It was our first time, and we really enjoyed it. My four (nearly five) year old was able to hike all 3 miles without needing to be carried or whining! Hooray. And along the way, I took these pictures.

I don't know what this stuff is called (other than moss), but I think I know what J.R.R. Tolkien was thinking when he came up with the character "Treebeard." I like the lens flare - it makes me feel good about myself.


My daughter is choosing which flower to pick for her mom. It doesn't get much better than that.


Curse you MR. Squirrel! You move around too much and even when I do finally hold the camera steady, you twitch and look blurry! ARRRGGGG! Really, I just should have brought my tripod, again.


This is another shot that turned out blurry, but to good effect. I like the way he's looking off into the distance and seems to be wondering if he's doing the right thing.


Ahhh, the column. The second most photographed place in Astoria (I made that up). I liked the cloud pattern in the background, and if you squint at the bottom, you can see my family patiently waiting for me to get done with this foolishness and climb the column with them.

So I did.