This marks my first ever "autumn" hike in the Cascades. Until now, both this summer and last, I've generally been chasing wildflowers. This time, though, I had a different objective in mind: emerging autumn colors. Since this was my first autumn hike, it was a bit depressing to see all the shrubs withering and the wildflowers gone to seed. Still, there much to enjoy. A few defiant blooms were hanging in there. More importantly, some of the vine maples and other plants were turning beautiful fiery colors, and the mountainsides were a mosaic of green, red, orange, and yellow.
Also, the trail conditions were the best I've seen there. In early July, the trail was a quagmire of running water and lingering snow piles. In late July, the trail was still muddy in a couple places with the streams still iffy for crossing. Now, the trail is almost entirely dry with the creeks and streams mere trickles of their former selves. Even the main crossing of Gold Creek was no sweat at all; I barely even got my sandals wet.
First things first. I would be remiss not to begin with my favorite plant, fireweed. They are no longer blooming, even at Gold Creek's elevation. But some of the plants' leaves are turning red!
This first picture is probably my favorite from the whole trip. F/4 ended up being the best aperture for this shot. I tried f/6.3 but the increased depth of field brought out too many shapes in the background. F/3.3 was better but I wanted a teeny bit more of the leaves to be in focus. As it is, the background is still a bit uneven, but I think the composition turned out quite well otherwise.
This next one captures more of the general sweep of things; I wanted to capture the reddening fireweed stalks in their context. I used f/22 to get everything in focus, and moved the camera down a bit to get a more intimate view of the stalks. I think it turned out well, and the contrasts between the reds and greens comes out nicely.
I'm not sure what sort of plant is featured in this next picture, or whether its buds or seeds are showing (I am assuming seeds due to the time of year!). I used f/5.6 because I wanted to make sure I got enough definition in the front seed head that a viewer's eye would have something to lock on to. Narrower depths of field produced smoother backgrounds but, due to the decreased foreground focus, weren't visually appealing in this case.
The next picture is perhaps more interesting conceptually than it is visually. There's nothing striking or out of the ordinary about the foreground flower stalks. I actually wish the front one were further to the left, to keep it separate from the middle one (I had no way of doing so without sacrificing the background). The red color of the background, however, gives this picture an interesting context, juxtaposing the still-blooming flowers against autumnal foliage. I'm not sure if that context is enough to make it work as an image; I'll have to come back to it. Still, I thought I'd post it.
I like how the backlighting turned out on this one. There is a snag on the right side that messes the composition up a bit, but it's still alright.
The next two are related only in the fact that they didn't turn out to quite as sharp as I'd have liked, in the first one due to the aperture (f/25 - it seems like image quality starts to visually deteriorate at about f/22 and much more so thereafter) and in the second one due to the aperture (f/22) and the fact that I was using my small tripod as a monopod to get the right height...so there was probably a bit of camera shake. At any rate, I liked the compositions. They could both use some lighting/contrast tweaking, and neither is blow-me-away amazing, but I think they work.
And now, as promised, the Big Rock Candy Mountains. I saved my pictures of them for last because they were taken under midday lighting conditions, so they don't do the views or the colors. justice at all. But the reds, yellows, and greens made me think that the mountains were made of candy, or fruity pebbles, or something.
...Maybe I could get some good shots of these peaks in the future. When I hiked back from this spot, the distance of slightly more than 5 miles took me exactly three hours to hike, including a snack stop and a stop to change shoes and purify some water. So if I started up the road before dawn, I could make it there a couple of hours after sunrise, while there is still some interesting light. My next chance to hike will be in a couple weeks, probably; the autumn foliage should be even more intense by then! Stay tuned!
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