Major support for Oregon Field Guide is provided by... MAN: My rappel!

MAN: Oh, my gosh, it's beautiful.

MAN: Good morning, everybody.

Woo!

Let's do it again!

MAN: Nicely done!

MAN: Oh, yeah!

Fourteen and a half.

Yes, that was awesome!

[ people cheering ] There you go, up, up... ED JAHN: Tonight on Oregon Field Guide: It's a look at the Northwest through the eyes of several remarkable photographers.

Ellen Bishop takes us on a photo geology tour of Oregon's volcanic landscapes.

Bill Wallauer shares how working with Jane Goodall led him to a career as a wildlife filmmaker.

BILL [ whispers ]: That's quite a sight.

And Kevin Coulton uses the strange beauty in oil pollution to reflect on our impact on the environment.

Then finally, Field Guide photographer Todd Sonflieth captures the easy pace of summer.

Bill Wallauer grew up hunting and hiking in Oregon, but when he went to Africa and befriended primatologist Jane Goodall, it changed his life.

At that point, he dedicated himself to using a camera to document wildlife not just in Africa but around the world.

[ wind whistling ] Must be 6:45-7:00, and I'm overlooking this flat out here where we're hoping to find herds of elk.

And so if we're in a high point first thing in the morning, I'd love to spot some elk from up here first.

JULE GILFILLAN: Bill Wallauer has been tracking and photographing wildlife practically his whole life.

We've got elk.

That might be a little bull.

Oh, wow, just to his left, there's a bunch more.

My first encounter with elk, I was probably 5 years old, and I was following my dad.

We were deer hunting, and there's this meadow out in front of us, a big bull elk with a herd of cows, and, you know, for me, for a 5-year-old, that was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

And, you know, from then on it's been that kind of lifelong love affair with this species.

Bill grew up in Joseph and later moved to Grants Pass.

But in 1989, his life took a sharp turn in another direction.

Oh, yeah, it's cold.

This is a problem I don't have to worry about in Tanzania.

That was the year Bill joined the Peace Corps.

Luck would have it, I met Jane Goodall within a month of my arrival in Tanzania, and we became friends.

And so I had this little video camera, and Jane was delighted.

She said, "Why don't you try to get some footage?"

So there I was with a little video camera, following Jane's chimps in Gombe National Park.

Twenty years later, Bill's not only a skilled photographer but also an expert on wildlife behavior.

[ chimp screeching ] When you first see chimp aggression, it looks like they're trying to kill each other.

Most of it's bravado.

It's all about showing kind of who's boss without hurting anybody.

One of the bigger personalities in the chimp community is Frodo.

[ hooting ] This is Frodo, who's just this massive male.

Five times my strength.

If he wanted to, he could rip me limb from limb.

You know, if he wanted to hurt me, it would've been over the first year.

And Frodo comes and whacks into me, and that's where the camera almost falls out of my hands, so here I am filming as he comes by, and if you watch a frame at a time, he looks over, and here's his face here.

And he picks his -- you can't tell, but he picks his left foot up and kicks me right in the chest.

And watch what the camera does.

Bam!

[ laughs ] And then charges off.

It's just all bravado.

He's not really trying to hurt me.

Along with the rough and tumble, there are moments of beauty.

Here's the Rutanga Falls, and Frodo comes into the scene.

Waterfalls are something that intrigue us.

You know, something there, like in your core, is emotionally affected that you can't even put your finger on.

Apparently the same thing happens with chimps.

This isn't a dominance display, he's not attacking anyone, but just gorgeous falls and this image of this massive adult male chimp.

Is he vying with nature, or what's going on in his head?

I'm not quite sure, but I just love that image.

There are times that everything comes together, and he's backlit, he's beautifully lit here, swinging back and forth in front of these beautiful falls.

And he kind of swings through frame, and I just let him slide out of frame here.

Bill's unique skills made him the go-to guy for filming chimpanzees in Africa.

He's shot dozens of documentaries...

He just wanted to say hi.

[ chuckles ] ...appeared on 60 Minutes, and was a cinematographer on the Disneynature film Chimpanzee.

BILL: I think wildlife behavior is my passion.

It's the coolest thing ever.

They are just a fascinating, wonderful species.

And, you know, the sad thing is we're losing them.

Significant amounts of forest are being chopped down every day.

Roads are being built into these areas.

There's a multi-million-dollar bush meat trade.

Chimps have to live in those forests, and chimps aren't going to change their behavior to protect their habitat, and so it is up to us to change behavior.

At the rate we're losing these forests and this species, they have 20 to 30 years left, which is scary, because that's a blink of an eye.

Africa's a long way from the Pacific Northwest... [ elk bugling ] and these elk near Mount St. Helens are protected.

But Bill has the same passion for photographing these wild creatures.

With wildlife that's as aware and spooky as elk, it's the same with a lot of African antelope.

You really have to stalk them like prey would.

Camouflage clothes and makeup help, but these animals also have keen senses of smell and hearing.

This is actually elk urine.

I use this to mask my odor.

It sometimes makes all the difference, especially when you're close.

And getting close isn't easy.

After St. Helens blows up, you know, there's not a lot of vegetative cover, so that's the real challenge.

[ whispers ] All right.

You've gotta keep the wind in your face.

If the wind gets behind you and blows into the elk, you're done, the elk are gonna smell you and run.

The last film I worked on, I shot on and off for three years.

You know, I had over 360 field days.

So what are the chances of actually getting a decent shot of a big bull in one day?

Pretty slim.

[ sighs ] Still, there are some things working in his favor.

This is October, and the last weeks of the mating season.

[ elk bugling ] In a lot of ways, this is the best time of year to view elk.

There's lots of competition between the males over the cows, and the cows are getting herded around by the bulls and they're not as worried about people.

There are lots of elk out here, but they're spread across a huge area.

This vast plain was scoured out when Mount St. Helens erupted in May of 1980 and extends all the way to the shore of Spirit Lake.

After several hours and as many miles, Bill is close, but he's got a unique problem.

So now I'm stuck.

There are simply too many elk.

There's elk down at the bottom of this draw.

I can't go upwind and down, can't go straight toward 'em, so... [ elk bugling ] My strategy is to spot a group of elk and try to make a stalk.

Every time I moved around, I'd bump into another herd.

And if you jump one of those herds and spook them, they're going to spook all the elk and your day is going to be done.

[ elk bugling ] Wow, awesome.

They're starting to bugle.

The small reward promises more to come, so Bill makes a plan to skirt around the elk.

A stream bed affords cover as he presses farther north.

But even this maneuver seems doomed.

The sheer number of animals has pushed Bill all the way to the shores of Spirit Lake.

[ whispering ] So elk are bugling all around us.

There's one right in front of me, another one to the left, and then another guy over the ridge there.

Bugling echoes up the valley.

Very, very exciting for me.

It's this real primal call, so that's what I want.

I want to get at least one shot of this guy bugling.

There's one last obstacle to getting that shot.

Everything's fine except there's this huge expanse with no vegetation, no topography, nothing to hide behind.

[ whispering ] No cover at all.

Just be crossing across rocks.

Let's see how it goes.

[ grunting softly ] I have no choice but to cross this big open rocky area.

And so, you know, the only way to do that is to kind of crawl, bringing my camera and my tripod a step at a time, inch at a time across this barren landscape.

[ breathing heavily ] After making his way across no-man's-land to some scrub brush, Bill takes another look.

As I reached up my binoculars, and I think we're good... [ whispers ] Oh, we're busted.

...the calf sees me.

And I look to the calves left, and I see antlers sticking out of the vegetation.

After nearly a full day of chase, Bill finally spots what he's after.

[ whispering ] Oh, there he is.

That's an awesome sight, yeah.

He's worried.

Doesn't like that we're here.

He's still not sure.

From the elk's behavior, Bill knows he's on borrowed time.

That's quite a sight.

Oh, look at him sniff the air.

You see their nostrils flair.

You'll see him do this: They're testing the wind.

[ whispers ] Good timing.

Oh, there they go.

Part of what makes a really good wildlife filmmaker is understanding the behavior of the species that she or he is filming.

Studying elk growing up in my own backyard here in Oregon kind of helped me along to be a better behavioralist and observer.

[ elk bugling ] [ whispers ] That was a bugle.

Awesome.

Wow, it's so cool.

We got the shot.

I just can't put into words how it makes me feel to be out here again.

It's really nice to be back.

What I love about wildlife filmmaking is the challenge, and I got that today.

I would much prefer to spend a month out here, but to get to see what I saw in one day, even to get a big bull in frame bugling, now, that's pretty cool.

When I'm in one place, you know, I miss the home in Tanzania.

And when I'm there, I very much miss family.

And the culture here and the wildlife here and nature here is -- I miss a lot.

Just such a great place, and I'm very, very lucky to have grown up here.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Okay, I'm going to come clean here and admit that geology never really grabbed my attention.

At least it didn't used to.

That's changed for me over years of working on Oregon Field Guide, and one of the moments that did it for me was on a trip with Dr. Ellen Bishop as she took a group of amateur photographers and taught them how to understand the landscape of southeast Oregon in an all-new way.

[ birds chirping ] ED JAHN: Photographers love southeast Oregon because it's a candy store of hot springs, rock hoodoos, and wildflower meadows.

Reaching for the camera here is second nature, especially in places like Leslie Gulch.

ELLEN: I just wanted to stop here in part to look at this.

So here again you get more of this fine-grain material.

It does tend to spall off in layers pretty well.

What geologist Ellen Morris Bishop sees here, though, is a lot more than just nice scenery.

So what you're looking at here is actually a dike or a series of intrusives, so it's kind of the final squeezings of the volcano.

Ellen is leading what she calls a photo geology tour of southeast Oregon.

Her aim is to help people learn about what they're seeing through that lens.

Landscape photography is a wonderful, long-lived field, but oftentimes the rocks or the geology are kind of a second thought.

They're thrown in as an interesting part of the landscape or a mountain in the background or some interesting texture in the rock without people giving a lot of thought to what kind of rocks these are or what story they tell about the landscape.

Ellen's desire to tell the story behind the rocks led her to write a book called In Search of Ancient Oregon.

Its pages are filled with Ellen's spectacular landscape photos, photos that shatter the notion that geology is lifeless.

My mother was once flying over eastern Oregon in an airplane and she looked out the airplane window and she said, "It looks like a dead landscape."

And in fact, it's anything but a dead landscape.

It's a place where, especially on a geologic scale, things are happening really fast.

Ellen's photos are one way she conveys that story, but the photo geology tour gives people a chance to ask questions while they snap photos of that geologic drama themselves.

Okay, so that's what I've got.

WOMAN: Every place I go, I see something I've never seen before.

Some little flower or some plant, some kind of rock, a different shape, a different form.

And I'm always wondering, like, "What is that?

How'd it get here?"

[ shutter clicking ] ELLEN: We're on the north slope of the Mahogany Mountain caldera, and these rocks, you'll see, have a lot of holes in them.

Where do you suppose those holes would've come from?

Yes?

Gases!

Gases, yes!

Gases, right.

The nice thing about the Owyhees, Jordan Crater, southeast Oregon in general is that the rocks are very accessible.

It's bereft of trees and heavy vegetation that often obscure the rocks and faults and folds and other features of the landscape that are really important to understanding what the landscape is made of.

So you're kind of in the middle of a big volcanic eruption here.

To see those features takes a willingness to go off the beaten path, and Ellen expects guests on her tours to be up for some adventure.

This is my technique for removing bull snakes from the road.

[ hissing ] Oh, he's not happy.

There's no point in running over a perfectly good snake.

The next stop on Ellen's tour doesn't look like much at first, but this vague black scar on the horizon is actually Jordan Craters, where lava appears to have burst through the rangelands only yesterday.

Let's take a look at what we got here geologically.

And then we can think about how to photograph it.

Coffeepot Crater is a relatively small cinder cone type of volcano.

It's the vent system for Jordan Craters, 4,000 years old.

Many of the cinders that you see have actual glass on them.

Before long, Ellen's words transform this black pile of rocks into a place as fascinating as it is beautiful.

This can be a really dull place until you begin to imagine this as a flowing lava field that's full of heat and it's throwing ash and carbon dioxide all over the place and little animals are running up the hill to get away from here.

But, you know, oftentimes people don't really know enough to engage their imagination.

Tracy Willett would probably say she fits that description.

She came along to hear the kind of stories you don't get by just reading the plaque.

TRACY: Oh, I think you see the movement.

This, for example, was an overflow from the crater.

The crust back here didn't have any more support, and so it fell down.

And I don't think I would see that movement.

Even trying to make up a story, I don't think I would've made up that story.

WOMAN: It's just that you can see it, you can put your hands on it.

I'm a tactile person, and that's why I like things that I can pick up in my hands and understand.

It tells a story.

[ shutter clicking ] ELLEN: This is almost like opening a book.

Throughout the tour, Ellen is weaving together a story too.

She finds pieces big and small that speak to a history that's hard to imagine.

Sadly, I was hoping there would be like a nice, big maple leaf here, but no.

Ellen says this dry desert used to be a land of towering oaks and maples and three-toed horses that was blown apart by something called the Yellowstone hotspot.

So this is sort of the ramparts and the guts of a giant Yellowstone-like caldera active 15 million years ago.

That Yellowstone hotspot now lies under Yellowstone National Park.

It's responsible for the park's world-famous display of geysers and hot pools.

But these geologic superstars once put on their spectacular displays right here in Oregon.

Okay, so I get to annoy the snakes, and you guys get to step over them.

After a few days with Ellen, these women got a better sense of the geologic mischief at play here.

They'll no longer be shooting just a bunch of pretty rocks.

They'll be looking through the lens and finding the part of the story that they want to tell.

So the other thing you should try, Rosemary, is try out that nice telephoto you've got and get in really close to those rocks.

ROSEMARY: That's what you talked about in the car.

ELLEN: One of the things I try to do is get people to really connect intimately with that landscape and really observe it.

If I could move the sun -- I'm still working on being able to move the sun -- I would put the sun probably where it'll be about 4:00 this afternoon.

When I'm out there with the camera, it's really a chance to be kind of in my own little world but also to be with part of geology and trying to understand that one rock that otherwise I might never get to see again.

It's a very contemplative thing.

It's very peaceful, and it's one of the things that I think I really like most about photography.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Oil pollution that runs off from cars along roads and ultimately into our rivers is something that most of us don't even think about.

But Kevin Coulton had an idea.

Why not use the beauty of photography to get us to take notice?

MAN: This is a problem that's fascinating, in a way.

It's so obvious, because it occurs at your feet.

You can look down in any city on a rainy day and see this pollution happening.

But most people just don't connect with that.

So it looks like there's no traffic.

There needs to be a certain combination of events: overcast day, a light drizzle.

Usually carry an orange road cone.

I almost got backed over by a car, so I've been carrying a road cone just to play it safe.

Ooh, that's nice.

It's fascinating when you can find some images that are really abstract and really interesting.

That's the fun of it.

In college, I pursued degrees in civil engineering and landscape architecture.

That kind of led me into water resource engineering.

That's been my career, my whole career.

But I've always had this interest in art.

I was working on a stormwater pollution prevention plan, and after work I stepped onto the bus.

It was a rainy day, and I looked down between the curb and the bus and saw all this oily water going down the gutter.

And that got me thinking about combining this interest in art and engineering.

Yeah, this is pretty good, even with the full sunlight.

In terms of the field of oil-slick photography, I think I was a pioneer 20 years ago when I started.

This almost looks like gold.

Oh, let's try to find some blues here.

There we go.

Looks like a fresco almost.

I'm not doing this all the time.

It's an avocation, it's my personal interest.

There's a lot of newer cars out there, and maybe the pollution's been dwindling, but even so, you can go out any rainy day and maybe you have to search a little bit, but you can still find cars that are dripping.

If you start to think about it, they really can add up.

This is one vehicle dripping multiple times a minute all over the place, so this is a really good track.

I haven't seen one of these in quite a while.

In the U.S. every year, these drips and drops add up to about three gulf oil spills.

And I think the gulf oil spill was 210 million gallons, something like that.

It's a huge number, but it's so spread out, so dilute, you know, it's not as newsworthy or dramatic as a gulf oil spill.

But it's happening all over, wherever vehicles travel.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of subject material.

I wish there wasn't, but, you know, my thought was to take a different approach, make the pollution attractive to attract people.

And then have them understand in that kind of a way.

Get my feet in it.

There we go.

It's kind of interesting to try to make pollution as art, but it's one way to approach this problem, so, yeah, we'll see.

[ chuckles ] [ ♪♪♪ ] And finally, summers are short in Oregon, and precious, as most of us know.

For those days when it's not so nice, photographer Todd Sonflieth has this lovely reminder.

[ birds chirping ] [ woman speaking indistinctly ] [ woman laughing ] [ toddler giggling ] [ fishermen chattering ] MAN: He's swimming right next to me still.

[ ♪♪♪ ] You can now find many Oregon Field Guide stories and episodes online.

And to be part of the conversation about the outdoors and environment here in the Northwest, join us on Facebook.

BILL [ whispering ]: Yeah, he's worried.

Doesn't like that we're here.

[ elk bugling ] [ birds chirping ] Major support for Oregon Field Guide is provided by... Additional support provided by... And the following... and the contributing members of OPB and viewers like you.