Recent Adventures

It's been a relatively uneventful couple weeks, photographically speaking. Rain and especially work have taken their toll once again (although I suppose being busy with work isn't in itself such a bad thing these days - it means that I will have more money to spend on photography when conditions are more ideal). So I've only gotten out a couple of times. I'm starting to experiment, though, with photo-editing software. I downloaded a trial version of Apple Aperture, and the darn thing crashed within about 5 minutes. I'll try again later, but I don't want to use a program that bogs down and crashes while I'm editing (I had read about the same problem on online reviews). So I'll see if I can track down trial versions of Photoshop Lightroom, Photoshop Elements, Capture NX, etc. and see if those work. Mostly I want one that lets me work on images in Camera RAW format, and that has high-quality editing tools.

Anyway, the pictures. This one, I think, is cool and a bit moody. The juxtaposition of the remaining flowers against the dead plant parts was what I had in mind. I suppose it's a bit busy, but I didn't want to lose too much of the focus on the flower by taking down the depth of field any more than I did.

Also, I'll bet you didn't know that fireweed leaves turned colors in the autumn. I sure didn't!

And a couple other autumn shots that don't really have anecdotes behind them:

I think this last one could stand some enhancement - the yellows of the leaves in the top half of the picture could maybe be brightened and/or saturated. I think it would make the picture a lot more interesting if that color stood out. This is why I need some photo editing software! I can feel my creative impulses yearning for freedom!

Arboretum!

Another recent trip I took, one much more successful, was to the Washington Park Arboretum. It's a popular park, but if you can manage to get there early on a weekday morning you can actually get some solitude. I made it just in the nick of time to photograph sunrise from Foster Island.

There was a thin mist in the air, which made for some of those classic rays-of-sunlight shots. This was the best:

And some leaf closeups! I was pleased with the way they turned out; I managed to get pretty close, and there was almost no breeze. And plenty of photogenic dew. Just the way I like it. The only problem is that the dew, especially in the first of this pair, had a lot of glare, even with the polarizer. Oh well, I still like it.

Summer's Rot

Maybe it's just because it's still early into autumn, at least foliage-wise. Or maybe it's not the most fantastic autumn because it's been rather wet and windy. For whatever reason, though, a recent trip to the Coal Creek Nature Park was a bit disappointing. The maples (vine and bigleaf) whose color had already turned didn't look very good - the leaves, instead of turning nicely yellow or orange, just had nasty brown spots on them. I was especially disappointed by the vine maples, since I've heard that those turn nice colors in the fall. Maybe that applies more to sunnier places or the mountains or something. Most of the forest made it seem that autumn had never come; instead, summer had just died and began to rot away with nothing to take its place.

Still, some of the trees looked nice, including some of the cottonwoods and one tree whose leaves had interesting red spots. My pictures of those were the day's best.

I also got some nice pictures along wide spot on the trail. They were a bit dark, but it's nothing a bit of brightening in editing software couldn't fix. As soon as I can afford editing software. Soon. Very soon.

And, finally, these ones of the forest. I liked the way the colors turned out, despite the depressing leaves.

Spider Heaven

A few days ago I spent a morning in the company of spiders and fisherpersons at Bob Heirman Wildlife Preserve. It sits on the Snohomish River and is close-ish to Monroe. There is one main trail that runs through a grassy meadow, along the river bluff, and (after some obstacles in the form of fallen logs) through a forest of alder and cottonwood to a wide gravel river bank.

First the spiders. I like this shot I got of a web; I would have liked to get closer but that was as close as I could feasibly wiggle my tripod. The next lens I purchase will probably be a macro lens with a greater focal length (i.e. I can get equal magnification at greater distance).

This tree was completely draped in spider webs, which made it look strange/interesting:

Beyond that, it was a very pretty autumn morning, with a thick fog giving way to warm sunshine. There were a lot of dead fish lying around the riverbank in various stages of decay. I'm not sure why this is; I couldn't find anything online that would suggest a cause. This actually caused some stomach unpleasantness on my part. But other than that, I very much enjoyed the park.

Combinations of sunshine and fog always make for interesting scenery. I stood around for what must have been 45 minutes waiting for the fog to look like this:

Until next time! I'm going to try to seek out some vine maples next.