Yes, Virga, There Is A Sunset

This, I think, will be the first time I've posted pictures from Richmond Beach Saltwater Park, in Shoreline. It's a small park, pretty well-developed, and can sometimes be overrun by parties and teenagers. Still, the western view is of course great, and the more natural parts of the park get a bit better each year as plant communities establish themselves.

These are my two favorites of the sunset itself. I decided I would take it through grass, and I used a graduated neutral density filter to bring out the grass in the foreground. (A graduated neutral density filter has a dark top half and clear bottom half; the edge between the two is gradual. In this case, it darkened the sunset, allowing me to fill in the foreground grass a bit more without overexposing the sunset). These two were taken no more than minutes apart; I think I like the light in the first one better, but there are a couple blurry heads of grass in the way. In the second picture, I employed my younger brother to hold them out of my way, but the light had changed by that time.

The clouds were interesting immediately after sunset. It looked like they were altocumulus clouds producing "virga," or precipitation that heats and evaporates before it reaches the ground. "Virga" refers to the visible wisps/tendrils extending downward from the clouds:

Adventures in Side Lighting

Early on Saturday morning, before going on a hike with the eminent N. Simpson, Esq., I made a brief picture stop at Discovery Park. I wanted to capture first light in the South Meadow area, specifically the northern half of the meadow (behind the historical buildings). I wasn't disappointed. I love the lighting on this one:

This next one is one of the better pictures of yarrow I have ever taken, and one of the closest-up. As with the above picture, the warm side lighting seals the deal.

I also wanted to try photographing one of the fireweed stands backlit by the sun. Things didn't turn out as I expected - the sun rises so far to the north this time of year that the stand was more sidelit than backlit, and the stand did not receive sunlight as early as I though it would. But I got this interesting one, a picture of barely sunlit leaves with fireweed in the background. I seldom used flash, but I did here, and it was the better decision. I used it at a pretty low setting, just enough to fill in the shaded leaves a bit. Any brighter of a flash would have created some awkward-looking shadows among the leaves and inordinately reduced the difference between the sunny and shaded areas of the leaves.

Depth, Depth, Depth

Sometime last week - I think it was Monday but can't remember for sure - I headed to Discovery Park for a sunny evening. The fireweed were in their prime, although the tops of some of the stalks looked a bit beaten down by recent rainfall. This first one is probably my favorite, because you can see the Puget Sound in the background. I could have made the water a bit more prominent in the composition, but still, I think it works.

I took a few others of fireweed, desiring primarily to give a sense of the depth and perceived enormity of a blooming fireweed stand when you are standing in or next to it. In nature photography, a sense of depth is one of the most important compositional elements to have, and I think I did a decent job this evening of capturing it (sometimes I don't...).

I also took some pictures of a couple other favorite flower types, everlasting pea and yarrow. I'm not convinced whether I like the one of the yarrow (the second in this sequence). It's a bit busy/cluttered, and all the interesting parts are too confined to the right half of the frame. It was the best one I took, though. Maybe I should have tried the picture with a vertical orientation.

Hidden Treasures

What a pleasure it is to see the meadows stained with purple!

I went to Discovery this morning to catch some more fireweed, this time in a secret little meadow (more like a glade) I found (I guess it's not really secret anymore now that I'm writing about it, but still, I dare you to try to find it). It's near the South Meadow area, close to the viewpoint with the benches, but one must crawl around through some brushy back trails to get there. I took my perhaps most interesting two pictures while approaching the stand.

Since most fireweed stands are more out in the open, the choices for background when photographing them usually consist of the sky or other fireweed plants; any trees in the background are often too dark to look good. But since this particular stand was more shaded and hemmed in by dense trees, I had alternative background options, as you already saw above, and as in the next picture. (In the next picture, you can't tell what's in the background other than the second fireweed stalk, but trust me. It matters.)

I also took some pictures of the fireweed "interacting" with a young maple tree that was sharing the glade. I tried two different focus options for the first shot - focusing on the tree and on the fireweed. I posted both, because I'm not sure which one I like best.

Of course, I'll be returning to this little glade throughout fireweed season. A second advantage, in addition to the background issue, is that this location's sheltered/secluded nature helps keep the breeze down. The plants were still intermittently and very faintly wobbling, but much less so than those in the large fireweed stand out in the South Meadow proper.

Finally, these flowers are blooming. I think they're known as "everlasting pea," and you'll definitely be seeing more of them on this blog. I think they're a non-native weed, but I'm an equal opportunity photographer.

Filtered Sunshine! O, the joy!

Filtered sunshine, when the sun is still strong enough to produce a shadow through a sheet of clouds (generally cirrostratus or altostratus), provokes a diverse array of reactions in people. Some people see it and think, "Oh boy, it's sunny!" Some see it and think, "Oh dread, it's cloudy!" Still others see it and think, "I wonder how flowers would look!" I, it seems, am of the latter type...

So I took a quick dash over to Hamlin Park in Shoreline, to take pictures of the fireweed and blackberry flowers. Once I arrived, it was just plain old overcast most of the time, but I did squeeze a few shots in while the filtered sunshine was still around:

Since the fireweed stand in Hamlin is more favorably located than some of the others in local parks (i.e. the plants are closer to the path), I was able to do some relatively close-up stuff as well.

And, as promised, the blackberry flowers. The himalayan blackberries are blooming everywhere (hopefully we'll get some good berries later...?).

Finally, an interesting comparison of a feature called white balance. I'm still grappling with the basics, but here's how I understand it from experimenting and reading the camera manual: White balance controls the color cast of the image, by setting what color the camera reads as "white" or neutral. You use this to either change a scene's color scheme, or to compensate for the color cast of a light source. For instance: A lot of pictures taken under incandescent lighting look very yellowish; this is because cameras are more set up for outdoor lighting and aren't compensating for the yellowish cast of the light source. My camera has a built-in preset for incandescent lighting; when I took a picture out the window, it made everything outside look all bluish, because it was envisioning a color yellower than outside overcast light color as "white."

I have a custom white balance setting on my camera that I occasionally use for sunsets; it skews the colors in favor of magenta and amber (as opposed to green and blue). The first is with the setting I usually use (pretty neutral for outdoor, only a bit warm) and the second is my custom setting:

Interesting, huh? The green of the leaves shows up better in the first, whereas the deep color of the fireweed flowers is much more strongly expressed in the second. I'll experiment with these settings this week; maybe I can create a new custom setting that still has a strong magenta cast but isn't so strongly biased toward amber; the greens would show up better and I would still have the purple flowers!

Wallace Not-Falls

On Saturday I took a little jaunt over to Wallace Falls State Park - except I skipped the waterfalls altogether! (I'm saving those for a separate trip). Instead, I hiked up on the Greg Ball Trail to Wallace and Jay Lakes. Altogether, I think it was slightly more than 5 miles each way.

And I must say it was a somewhat disappointing hike. On the Greg Ball Trail uphill, somewhere between the 0.5 and 1.0 mile markers, the forest gets a lot less interesting - there is a lot less ground cover and far fewer shrubs or understory plants. There is also a lot less moss on the trees, and the trees are a lot less diverse. The lakes themselves are nice, but there aren't very many places where one can actually get down to them. So there's nothing "wrong" with the hike, but the payoff is slightly meagre considering the long slog upward to get there. If you ever feel like hiking 4-5 miles uphill to a lake, just go to Goat Lake, the forests are more interesting and the views at the lake are a lot better. Will I be going back to this park? Yes, for the falls and the interesting mossy forests at the park's lower levels. Will I be hiking back up the the lakes? Unlikely.

And honestly, I'm not so sure anymore about these day-long hikes. First and foremost, I have to spend too much time making sure I cover the necessary distance, and not enough time taking pictures, and getting more in-depth with a certain spot, or a certain type of flower/plant, etc. My photography just feels a bit rushed, because I always have to consider how many more miles I have to cover. Additionally, weather is a problem: First of all, there are only so many days when I can go on a day hike at all, so I can't be as choosy with the weather as I'd like, and as I am with closer city parks. Second, because I have to keep moving, I can't spend very much time in a spot waiting for the weather to do what I need it to do. I have to take what I can get. If there's a payoff at the end of the trail - e.g. a lake - I usually get there at about midday, which on a sunny day is the worst time to take pictures. I made Goat Lake work, but as I found this weekend, I can't always count on that level of success, that stunning of a payoff at trail's end, or the degree of weather cooperation that I had (and even then, conditions weren't always ideal).

So I'll have to make sure I balance these longer hikes - which can have some very interesting scenery but also risk a lot of disappointment - with shorter, more "leisurely" and focused photo trips. At least, this is what I'm thinking now.

The weather at Wallace Falls on Saturday was not as I had hoped - I had desired sunshine and blue skies, but when I was at the lakes, it alternated between overcast and sunny with a lot of bright white clouds. Neither really afforded me the opportunity to include the sky in my composition, which would have been nice at the lake. It also made the water an unattractive gray color. And, of course, it was usually sunny when I was in the forests, which is problematic for reasons I've explained before.

Now, the pictures. First is one at the very start of the trail, in the open area under the high-tension power lines. The foxglove are very pretty right now:

A couple of my favorites are from the beginning of the trail, along the Wallace River:

Now the real hiking begins as you wave bye-bye to the river and head uphill. But you get to see the North Fork Wallace River a few times, so all is not lost. And the forest is nice, at least for a while:

Finally you get to Wallace Lake. There are a few decent viewpoints, including one with a picnic table, where I sat and took pictures as I stuffed a sandwich down my face:

About a mile past Wallace Lake, via a trail that is a bit primitive and brushy but flat, is Jay Lake. It was hard to get good pictures here because everything was so "monochromatic" - everything was bright green except the water, which was a rather drab gray like the sky. A blue sky might have lent some color contrast to the situation, but alas, I was not so lucky. It was lovely, mind you, but not totally photogenic.

And finally a few pictures from the trail to/from Jay Lake. The forest on this trail was a bit more interesting than that of the upper reaches of the Greg Ball Trail, or even immediately around Wallace Lake.

Blooming Fireweed!

I've been waiting for this since last year - blooming fireweed! I don't quite know why I'm so obsessed with these flowers, but I can't help it. They're gorgeous and come in a very interesting spire arrangement. They also have a rich purple color, and light up in the sun very beautifully.

They're called "fireweed" not because they look fiery (even though they do), but because they're often the first species to colonize an area that has burned (or been logged or disturbed in some other way). The internet says that they can even colonize after some oil spills. They are important in recolonizing soils and setting the stage for later stages of plant succession. Fireweed likes other open areas like meadows as well. According to my book, the Native Americans used parts of it for food. I can personally attest to the good taste of fireweed honey.

The fireweed stand at Magnuson is starting to bloom. It's not very well situated for photography - you have to crawl through the grass a bit to get to it. I couldn't get as close as I'd wanted because I didn't want to trample on the whole ecosystem (I got as close as I did by following already-trodden paths through the grass). Here's a budding stalk, followed by a blooming stalk:

The fireweed at Discovery are a bit further along in their blooming; I managed to photograph there just as the first light of day began to shine on it. I'll post the good ones without further comment:

Here's a wider view of a fireweed stand:

Until next time. Thanks for reading!

First Light

Two early mornings in a row can be a bit exhausting - yesterday morning, I got up at 4:20am and this morning at 4am. Even for a morning person like me it's a bit trying. Hopefully I won't fall asleep before I finish writing this blog.

This morning, I went to Discovery Park to take pictures of the Olympic mountains at sunrise and of the newly blooming fireweed (next post). The picture didn't end up as sharp/high quality as I would have liked. I think the fact that I had my lens zoomed up as far as it would go had something to do with it. Still, it looks nice:

Yesterday, I went to Magnuson Park to catch a sunrise. As usual, it was very nice. I got a nice silhouette of yarrow plants against the sunrise, and then a more conventional (for me) one of grass:

Also, I took two pictures of the early morning sunlight on yarrow. The dimensions of the first one, at an 8x10 ratio (what I used in this case), are a little tight; a 5x7 or other narrower crop of the original might work better. I just love the quality of light; in the first 30m or so after sunrise (or before sunset), the light is very warm, giving scenes contour without too harsh of contrast.

In my next entry, I'll show the pictures of fireweed I took yesterday and today.