A Bird in the Hand...

This past Saturday, I returned to the Gold Creek trail for my longest photo trip to date, lasting from the early morning until late evening (almost sunset). I prowled up and down the trail, making it to the creek crossing a few miles in.

Unfortunately, Gold Creek itself beat me one to nothing. That is to say, I tried to cross it, but chickened out at one point when the water was up to my thighs, the current seemed a tad quick, and the water was quite cold. The area in front of me looked even deeper. I will try again soon, however, now knowing what to expect. And I got some good pictures as it was, anyway.

First things first. It was a rather cloudy morning (with a freak drizzle downpour in the North Bend area...you had to have been there) which meant the ridgetops surrounding the valley were foggy. Here are my best ones. It was the first time I've been in that valley in this sort of a fog before (it was a thick, substantial fog, not like the shallow early morning mist I saw last September).

Now on to some flowers. The bluebells and bunchberries were still blooming, as well as Sitka valerian.

First, check this out!! I think this is one of my most interesting bunchberry photographs yet. Part of me says I should have used a wider depth of field to get the leaves in focus, but I like how the narrower depth of field keeps attention on the flower. There's still enough definition in the leaves that you can tell what they are.

I tried this next one with both a narrow and wide depth of field, and I ended up preferring narrow.

Here is a worm's eye view of Sitka valerian. I wasn't sure what to do since the lighting wasn't fantastic; I tried to take a picture of the flowers with the ridge in the background but the contrast ended up too high. The idea of a view from below just came to me as crouched by the flowers, thinking.

This next one is more contrasty than something I'd usually do, but I think it works here, at least somewhat. The shapes of the branches and speckles of light in the background give the impressions of forest-ness and evening-ness that I wanted.

These next two are among my favorites of the whole hike, especially the first one. These are bluebells with Gold Creek itself in the background. I tried a wider depth of field but didn't like it as well. In these ones, there is still enough definition to tell that there is water in the background, I think. When I was shooting, I was also pleasantly surprised by the variations in the colors of the bluebells.

This one was from rather late in the evening - 5 or 6pm, I think. Moreover, the sunlight was filtered through some trees. So a nice soft light was falling on the leaves, and the river was entirely shaded, making for what I think was a cool contrast.

Some postworthy shots from the forests:

Finally, as on my last hike, I stopped to take a couple from-the-road shots on my way out. This time, however, they took me by surprise. The sunset was perfect! For the first one, I devised an ingenious trick to get the foreground daisies and background mountains both in focus. I set the focus point between the flowers and the mountains! It looked gross in the viewfinder, and would have looked gross at a wide aperture. But at f/20, the flowers and the mountains both ended up in focus! Actually focusing on one of them would have ended up in the other looking blurry.