I was working as our Reader Representative last week and didn't get much chance to shoot the flooding, but few of my frames are worth a second look:

It's even a pretty shot-- a lone vehicle, headlights aglow, a dark forest of wintry trees. Is the car going to make it?

Yet hours later as I worked up the picture for publication I discovered a mystery-- something invisible to me when I shot it from the jostling little helicopter, squinting though a telephoto with a jiggling image.

Look closely, and you can see a figure on the front of the car. What is he doing?

I made two passes in the chopper and ripped about 20 frames. Analyzing them, he seems to be pulling back, as if to return to the driver's seat. On my third pass he had backed his car up to bare pavement.

I say bare, because none of it was dry. The rain was steady all that day, which added a little difficulty when shooting aerials from a small helicopter (a Robinson) with the passenger door removed.

This photo is also kind of pretty. I enjoy the simple abstract quality and the cuteness of a father and daughter together with umbrellas. But that undermines the seriousness of the situation, their town of South Prairie being flooded. So we chose other shots.

That evening, hearing that Interstate 5 might close due to threat from the Puyallup River, I wandered to the junction of the two. I found my way underneath I-5 where the river was roaring and roiling around the concrete pillars.

It was fascinating to see, but it was also dark! With the overpass shielding me from the rain, I decided to try to shoot the scene using a tripod and flash.

The tripod would make it easier to shoot the portion of the river that was illuminated by the distant street lights, but more importantly it would allow me to walk away from the camera and hold the flash (with a radio trigger) about 25 feet away.

Moving the flash away from the camera is nearly always desirable because direct flash-- with the flash attached to the camera-- is ugly light. It looks unnatural and tends to flatten the subject matter.

And the flash was able to freeze the water under the bridge, unlike the blurry waves on the right.