The photos in the Winter gallery have a common theme of ice and snow. Pictures include huge sculpted icicles, ice covered cliffs, snow and ice covered river boulders, and hoar frost on leaves. I'd like to add more photos of the snow-covered landscape.
The pictures of home interiors feature a number of kitchens, bathrooms and living areas showing kitchen cabinets, hardwood floors, granite and soapstone countertops, a slate fireplace, and more. The purpose of this part of the site is to share building and remodeling ideas.
The Canadian Rocky Mountains include Jasper, Banff, Yoho, and Kootenay National Parks and numerous provincial parks in both B.C. and Alberta, a contiguous body of parkland which protects the Canadian Rockies from the United States border halfway to the Yukon, over 700 km. The Canadian Rockies are recognized by the United Nations as a Unesco World Heritage Site
This gallery includes pictures of some of the lesser-known sights from Banff, Jasper, Lake Louise, and the Columbia Icefield Parkway. It also includes pics of some of the icons of the Rockies such as Emerald Lake, Natural Bridge, Mt. Rundle, Peyto Lake, and Mt Robson.
This gallery includes images some of the important Cascade volcanoes including Mt. Hood, the Three Sisters, Mt. St. Helens, and Mount Adams. There are photos of alpine meadows full of wildflowers and moody shots of old growth forests. This section focuses on Cascades landscape photos. Other pictures from the Cascade Mountains are scattered through other parts of the site, principally in the Wildflower pages and the Trees and Forests pages.
Many great landscape photos depend on dramatic skies for visual drama. Sometimes the sky itself is the photograph. Alfred Stieglitz, one of the fathers of photography as an art from, spent a lot of time and energy photographing just clouds and skies in a series called "Equivalents". Cloud photos are a great way to express or convey emotion.
This section includes a few shots of unusual cloud and weather conditions. Also pictured are some of the classic cloud types llike cumulus, cumulonimbus, and cirrus. The photos are art-oriented versus strictly informational
First time visitors to Western Oregon and Washington always remark at "How green everything is," and that's never more true than in the spring. Douglas fir, cedar and hemlock trees provide an evergreen background while newly leafed out shrubs, ferns and grasses provide lots of green color below.
In the fall, vine maple provides brilliant red, orange, and scarlet colors, while bigleaf maples and cottonwoods provide yellows and browns. Locals know that it's a good time to drive the Mount Hood Loop Highway and see the pear and apple trees turn color in the Hood River Valley.
This gallery contains photos of the Pacific Coast beaches and headlands, including pictures of the waves, surf, and sand. Displayed here are photos of the Pacific Coast from Vancouver Island in British Columbia to San Simeon in Central California, but most of the pictures were taken on the rugged Oregon Coast.
In many cases, I've tried to capture the look of the coastline as it might have looked when it was truly wild. In other shots, the human-scale buildings give a sense of scale to this magnificent coastline.
This gallery shows photos of sunrises and sunset from Vancouver Island, the Tualatin River, the Pacific Coast, and the Columbia River Gorge. There are few sights more spectacular than a sunset painting a cloudy sky with vivid shades of orange and red.
This gallery displays photos of native trees both in detail and in forest settings, including douglas fir, western hemlock, bigleaf maple, Oregon ash, ponderosa pine, aspen, and more. Most of the trees are native to the Pacific Northwest, but some, like the David Maple at left, are exotic horicultural species.
Many of these pictures were taken from the Shamberg Bridge just south of Sherwood, Oregon, before there was a Tualatin National Wildlife Refuge and when the road was just a country backroad. Now that road has been renamed Roy Rogers Road and it has become a major arterial and Shamberg Bridge is within the refuge.
Newer photos coming to this section will be from hikes around the public area of the refuge and will include more intimate details of the flora and fauna. The existing pictures show water reflections, sunsets, foggy mornings, ash trees, and fall foliage
I have the good fortune to live near the Columbia River Gorge. The blooming season begins here in February in the eastern Gorge and progresses from east to west and from river level to timberline as the season progresses. The blooming season extends from late winter to early summer.
Then, all through the summer, alpine meadows move through their blooming cycle. All the major Cascade Mountain Range peaks and many of the minor ones have extensive meadows, and some of them are very easily accessible.
The Gorge is both a place of spectacular vistas and a major transportation corridor. It's famous for Multnomah Falls, many other beautiful waterfalls tumble down its rugged cliffs. It was the route Lewis and Clark followed to the Pacific. It is the home of Bonneville Dam, one of the largest public works project of the Great Depression. The Columbia is the most important salmon river in the United States, though the runs are a tiny fraction of what they once were.
This gallery contains photos of well-known waterfalls, a little windsurfing, a few historic buildings. The Gorge is home to a spectacular wildflower show in the early spring, and so the majority of the images in the Wildflower Gallery could actually be classified Gorge photos.
This gallery shows photos of a few of the fungi found in Oregon, including the sculpted puffball, oyster mushrooms, and a shelf fungus. I gotta get out this fall and fill out this section!
Ferns thrive in the forests of Western Oregon and Washington. In the spring, deciduous ferns like lady ferns and bracken ferns reappear after lying dormant through the winter. Evergreen ferns like the sword fern send up a new set of foliage.
In the fall, bracken ferns turn attractive shades of brown and tan. Licorice ferns, whose dormant period is the summer, send out fresh green foliage.
This gallery shows a few of many native plants that grow in the Pacific Northwest. Many others are shown in the foliage, fern, tree, and wildflower galleries.
The thumbnail at left shows backlit leaves of Sagittaria latifolia. Other plants included in this gallery are red currant, osoberry, and false hellebore.
Because of a strong personal interest in wetlands, this is one of the largest assemblage of images on this website. In fact, my home is on the edge of a wetland, and that is what fostered my interest in these underappreciated species. This section includes sagittaria, rushes, bulrushes, nightshade, skunk cabbage, and more.
All materials on this site are copyright 1992-2010 by Doug Gorsline / ashcreekimages.com.
The Architectural gallery includes a few pictures of vintage buildings and a larger number of photos of new home interiors and remodeled interiors. The vintage photos are mostly of Art Deco style building exteriors, a personal interest of mine.
