ShipleyNW
Well Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2025
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- Name
- Ken Shipley
- City/State
- PNW, USA
- CC Welcome
- Yes
I'm a dam photographer.
People ask me all the time, what kind of pictures do you take? I don't really have an answer. I'll take pictures of anything, if the light's right. But my catalog does have a disproportionate number of dam pictures. Probably enough to put a claim on the 'dam photographer' title.
Most of my dam catalog was built with DSLRs, but I did make one trip last summer with an R5 up to the Chief Joseph Dam on the Columbia River. It's a big drive from home and I'd never been in the vicinity. I figured it was summer and that might be the one spot in the PNW where the crowds might be sparse. Good time for a trip to the Okanogan.
I'm not a dam enthusiast. I've spent enough time around dams and read enough visitor-center placards to kinda know how they work and what it took to put them up, and I am in awe of that. But if you started asking me questions, my knowledge would fall apart quickly. That's not why I'm there.
I'm there for the structure. I look at dams like sculptures carved into a harsh landscape. Depending on the light, depending on the weather, both of which change often in the coulees and prairies, there are a lot of things, photographically, that you can do with a dam.
I drove from Chief Joseph to the Grand Coulee Dam on a road I'd never been on and it put me out on a vista I'd never seen. I go to the Grand Coulee all the time. It's down in the coulees, for which it's named, and those ice-age geologic formations make interesting subjects by themselves.
Photographically, the Grand Coulee is tough. It's got a flat front. At night they send a light cascade of whitewater over the face and show movies on it. Really. But during the day when the water is off, it's just kinda flat. I'm sure there's a name for that design, but I'm the wrong guy to ask.
More important, the dam faces directly north. At this latitude, it never sees any sunlight, even when the rest of the scene does. Flat and in its own shadow makes it hard to work with. I tend to shoot it in pieces.
People ask me all the time, what kind of pictures do you take? I don't really have an answer. I'll take pictures of anything, if the light's right. But my catalog does have a disproportionate number of dam pictures. Probably enough to put a claim on the 'dam photographer' title.
- Join to view EXIF data.
Most of my dam catalog was built with DSLRs, but I did make one trip last summer with an R5 up to the Chief Joseph Dam on the Columbia River. It's a big drive from home and I'd never been in the vicinity. I figured it was summer and that might be the one spot in the PNW where the crowds might be sparse. Good time for a trip to the Okanogan.
- Join to view EXIF data.
I'm not a dam enthusiast. I've spent enough time around dams and read enough visitor-center placards to kinda know how they work and what it took to put them up, and I am in awe of that. But if you started asking me questions, my knowledge would fall apart quickly. That's not why I'm there.
- Join to view EXIF data.
I'm there for the structure. I look at dams like sculptures carved into a harsh landscape. Depending on the light, depending on the weather, both of which change often in the coulees and prairies, there are a lot of things, photographically, that you can do with a dam.
- Join to view EXIF data.
I drove from Chief Joseph to the Grand Coulee Dam on a road I'd never been on and it put me out on a vista I'd never seen. I go to the Grand Coulee all the time. It's down in the coulees, for which it's named, and those ice-age geologic formations make interesting subjects by themselves.
- Join to view EXIF data.
Photographically, the Grand Coulee is tough. It's got a flat front. At night they send a light cascade of whitewater over the face and show movies on it. Really. But during the day when the water is off, it's just kinda flat. I'm sure there's a name for that design, but I'm the wrong guy to ask.
- Join to view EXIF data.
More important, the dam faces directly north. At this latitude, it never sees any sunlight, even when the rest of the scene does. Flat and in its own shadow makes it hard to work with. I tend to shoot it in pieces.
- Join to view EXIF data.
