Tour Boat on Crater Lake

Tour Boat on Crater Lake (2012)

Rim Village Visitor Center. Crater Lake National Park. Oregon. August 22, 2012.

Copyright © 2015 A. F. Litt , All Rights Reserved

Photo of the Day by A. F. Litt: December 1, 2015

Scrolling through a ton of photos from our family's 2012 summer vacation today, looking for one that leapt out at me... I was thinking mountain, or coast, but this one, overlooked for years, really struck me today.

On that trip, two of the places we visited I found to be remarkably difficult to shoot, the Redwoods and Crater Lake... Both due to the scale of the subjects. These are both incredibly beautiful, photogenic places, of course, but they also have challenges. In the Redwoods, it can be difficult to convey the size and scale of the trees while at Crater Lake, it is difficult to show much of the lake, when shooting from the rim, without resorting to a pano, and I sort of hate most panos, unless they are blown up large and hanging on a wall.

You'll notice that most of the fantastic shots you'll see of Crater Lake are not taken from the rim, but from the peaks circling the rim, back a bit from the edge. Unfortunately, another challenge I faced as a photographer on this trip (and most) is that my main role while visiting was not as a photographer, but as a dad on a family vacation, and due to the limitations of time and children, not much hiking happens on these trips.

Shooting Crater Lake from the rim is all about finding interesting details, and there are plenty of those. One of the things I like about this shot is that there is a sense of immensity conveyed, even though the actual subject of the photo is one of the smallest details you will see at the lake, a small boat made tiny by the vastness of the water and the maw of the caldera containing it.