Our family recently made a day trip to Ebey's Landing on Whidbey Island, and I somehow happened to have my camera with me. So, I thought, why not use it?

This first one was my favorite of the day. It is of a lupine, either small-flowered lupine or two-colored lupine (I didn't get a close enough look at the leaves to know for sure, and they're blurry in the picture! I need to resume my former practice of carrying my flower books with me). There's a bit of dead space in the corners, but I still like it as a composition.

The next two are of mystery flowers. The first I have no clue on; I couldn't find anything like it in my book. I like the composition overall (except for the light spot in the background in the upper left corner). Unfortunately, it doesn't look good in any standard print sizes; what you see here was cropped at a manual ratio to get the bad parts of the image out.

The second looks like beargrass...? I was not aware that they grew near sea level anywhere in the Puget Sound area. Who knows. The picture itself is okay but could use some contrast enhancement - as well as, perhaps, some rotation, since the stem seems slightly tilted to the left. Since the photo you see here is actually cropped, I'd have enough space that I could get away with a rotation.

I've made a couple recent trips to Discovery Park, and decided to condense them into a single post.

Here is a pic from around sunrise. Brightening up the foreground would help bring out the flowering trees.

Next, two shots of the Olympics juxtaposed against out-of-focus flowering branches. I'm not really sure if they work. On second look, my mind's eye would like to see the branches and mountains both in focus. I dunno.

A couple classic lupine shots:

And now a few from my evening trip. As is usually the case  at Discovery Park in the evenings, it was rather breezy. Huge daisies are in bloom all along the North Beach trail. Here are my two most interesting pictures of that:

This next one shows what some of the beach meadows at Discovery Park actually look like. I'd like this picture a lot better if it weren't for the dead-looking branch in the upper left hand corner.

A hawthorn tree was blooming, common hawthorn I think:

Finally, a shot that I'd been hoping to take for months: of a sunset over blooming lupine plants. Unfortunately, conditions were less than ideal: a narrow bank of clouds on the horizon meant that I had to take the picture a bit earlier than I would have liked, making the sunset a bit too bright even with a graduated ND filter. Still, it's a promising result, and with some tasteful application of highlight recovery to the RAW file, perhaps even a useable one.

Lupines at Wide Angles

As the title suggests, the highlight of a recent trip to Magnuson Park was some shots of a lupine plant that I took with my wide-angle lens. They could each use a little lighting work, but they're not too bad as is. I think the first one is my favorite.

And, check out this floweret bright. I think it is a Nootka rose, and there was some sunlight from behind the flower that produces the luminosity you see in some of the petals. I shot this all the way at f/29 to get all the flower parts in focus.

Up next is a lupine shot that focuses on the wet leaf in the foreground. It took me a lot of tries to get thing positioned just the way I wanted, and to get close enough that the lupine flowers in the background would fill the majority of the frame width-wise, not leaving too much dead space.

Now some grass shots. This first one is a bit heavy on the dead space, particularly at the top, but I still think it's cool subject-wise. The second is a bit busy in general, but I like the lighting and the looks of the grass. I'll have to try again with this type of grass soon.

Finally, a nice shot of backlit lupine:

Round 2

So I returned to Magnuson Park this morning to finish a few of the things I had started on Thursday.  Last week, I mentioned that I was taking a break from super-long photo trips for financial reasons. This decision, I realized, will also be good for my craft. Going on long trips can connect you with some phenomenal subject matter, to be sure. But when you make trips close to home, you have the luxury of being able to return to familiar and almost identical subject matter on successive trips (i.e. within days); thus, you can afford to take some creative liberties. If a picture doesn't turn out, the lost time isn't as painful. Also, the fact that the location is familiar allows you to focus your work rather than trying to take in everything at once. Finally, while in a nearby park you can make note of future shots to try, either in a few days or in a few weeks.

For instance, here is one of lupine buds. I think this is more successful than the one I took earlier this week. There is an intruding leaf bit on the right side, but otherwise I like the composition.

And here is a close-up of lupine flowers. I didn't try anything nearly this adventurous with the lupines on Thursday. I actually really like this one.

I also made a couple of new friends. I had scoped them out on Thursday, so I knew where to find them today. This might be common salsify:

I really liked the lighting on this one.

And these two are Nootka rose flowers. These compositions aren't the best (backgrounds are a bit busy), but they're a good start. The more I photograph this type of flower, the closer I'll get to that perfect composition.

Finally, a couple grass pictures. The close-up (second picture) is one of the better grass close-ups I have taken.

Lupine and other fun things

This first one was the best of the morning. The lighting is good, the depth of field is good, and I like the composition. The few light clouds hanging around in the sky actually helped to soften the sunlight a bit and make it more attractive on the flowers:

This next one catches a large-leaved lupine as it is beginning to show color.

A couple more lupine pictures. The second of this pair is not really proportioned very well - too much dead space on the right side. Any cropping, though, would risk intruding into the flowers themselves. Also, even at f/3.3, which was the widest my lens would let me go, there's still an inordinate amount of background clutter. Perhaps a compositional idea to try again with a different flower and different conditions.

This next one is of a thimbleberry flower. There are quite a few of these blooming around Magnuson Park right now. With the clouds ambling by, it took me a bit of patience to get the lighting just so - sunny but not too sunny. If I edited this, I would make the darkest background shadows a bit lighter.

Now a little hodgepodge of non-flower-closeups that I took. The first is of the sunrise; the trees at the bottom were very flowery, and it looks like there's still a bit of definition in them. I might try to edit this and bring them out a bit.

A Douglas Fir with new branch tips:

And a couple back/side-lit grass shots. They're a bit contrasty, and the second one could have used a slightly narrower depth of field. I still like them, though.

Happy Summer!

Well, summer has arrived, at least in spirit and in weather (temporarily), if not in name or in schedule. I made it to Richmond Beach the other night and snapped this one:

The next evening, I wandered around Discovery Park for a while. The vetch are blooming like crazy and the lupines are also blooming. Did you know that there are two kinds of lupine in Discovery Park? Large-leaved lupine and another kind I haven't quite identified. I'll have to look at its leaves more closely. Here are the lupines:

And here are some pictures of vetch. Did you ever think that their flowers look a bit like pig snouts or something? The first one suggests that to me. The second has an interesting backlighting scheme, I think.

There are also a few camas plants scattered throughout the South Meadow. I think they might actually be great camas rather than common camas. Anyway, they are just starting to bloom.

How Blue Was My Valley

My trip last Saturday might be the super-long day trips for a while, largely for financial reasons. so I wanted to go out with a bang. So I took advantage of some camas blooms down south. Lupine and other cool flowers are starting to pop up in local parks now, so I'll have plenty to do close to home in the near future.

I got to Mima Mounds right at sunrise, and there was some very nice light coming across the fields. I took this one with a graduated ND filter - which may have overdone the darkening of the sky, but not irreparably so.

On these next two - and I can't decide which composition I like better, so I'm posting them both, although I 'm instinctively drawn to the first - I should have used a wider aperture. I wanted some definition in the background flower fields, but f/13 cluttered the background a bit more than would have been ideal. Oh well.

Here are a few more from Mima Mounds. Again, the first of this set could have used a narrower aperture.

This next one I took with my wide-angle lens, at its widest focal length. I like the exaggerated perspective, it makes the flowers feel "close":

It was also Prairie Appreciation Day at nearby Glacial Heritage Preserve, which is not ordinarily open to the public. Unfortunately, the preserve was only open from 10-4, not the best timeframe for photography. I found some very nice flowery forest glades that would be very photogenic early in the morning or on an overcast day. If there is ever a Prairie Appreciation Day on a cloudy day, I am definitely returning.