Discovery Sunshine

Discovery Park was quite the place to be yesterday afternoon. I don't think I have ever seen the parking lot as full as it was. Not that it was a problem - it was good to see lots of people enjoying the outdoors, and the large park absorbed the throngs without seeming crowded. It was just funny that it should be less crowded on so many warm, clear summer evenings, and overrun with visitors on one of the coldest days of the autumn so far.

Believe it or not, there are still a few flowers blooming. They are certainly in the minority at this point, but I saw a few yarrow, a Queen Anne's lace (or some other carrot-type flower; I actually didn't stop to look very closely) and even some California poppies on the drive. Their tardiness would have been forgivable back in October when we were having our freak warm/dry spell. Now, however, they're definitely living on borrowed time. Those little rebels!

This was my attempt to render that concept onto an image; it juxtaposes living and withered yarrow flowers. The soft evening sunlight, partially diffused by some grass out of frame helps. I was able to position myself such that I got the blooming flower in focus and the dead flowers just out of focus, which I think makes the image more effective.

I then perambulated down to the beach for the sunset. My result was this picture, which silhouettes grass and dried-up hardhack stalks against the sunset. I used f/25 to get everything in good focus. I like it, and think it doesn't look too cluttered; the beach, however, creates a diagonal black area at the bottom which isn't terribly appealing compositionally. Still, it's alright, and I like the color scheme - the strong blues reinforce the clear, cold nature of the evening.

Also, I have an announcement! I have just opened up a website! To the readers of this blog, fear not: I will continue to write this blog as always. The new website is more of an online gallery where I can post some of my best work - sort of a web-based portfolio; at least, that is how I am conceiving it. Eventually, I hope to have a separate website where I have prints and other things available for purchase.

If you're reading this blog, you've probably seen these images before. Ultimately, though, this website will also be a place to keep track of any contests or events I'm participating in; plus, I just think it's cool. Here it is! http://www.zhibit.org/jdanderson

Old Growth Autumn

When you think of Puget Sound forests, "spectacular autumn foliage" understandably doesn't come immediately to mind. Trees are predominantly evergreen; alder leaves never turn color, they just die and drop; other deciduous trees' leaves can get brown and/or splotchy; and the weather is often a bit sloppy. Still, if you look carefully and patiently, there is a subtle beauty to be found.

I decided to spend yesterday in Rockport State Park, one of those relatively rare low-elevation places in the Puget Sound lowlands that features old-growth forest. I am interested to learn more about the history of this park, because it is not clear why the area was not logged. There are no steep slopes or other geographic features to discourage logging; the Parks website simply states that Sound Timber Company "refused to log them" and sold them to the State. Hmm.

The day was quintessentially Northwest autumn: mild temperatures, fog, and an intermittent drizzle. Although the drizzle was a nuisance, because I had to keep the camera and the front of my lenses dry, the fog was an asset. It cleared up the one time I needed it to; the rest of the time, it gently filled in the forest, making ordinary scenes romantic and mysterious. God's free diffusion filter!

This was my best of the morning, a classic shot of some foggy trunks with some autumn foliage in the background. If you look closely at the trunks, you can see that there is a bit of distortion ("barrel distortion" - lines are bowed outward). It's not as bad as it seems - the foreground trunk actually was bowed like that in real life. There's nothing I can do about that except try to fix it in Lightroom. We'll see. Also the lighting obviously needs some work.

This was from a viewpoint on the "Skagit View Trail." The fog, which was thick at that point, obligingly cleared up enough to facilitate a clear view, while still hanging around enough to make things interesting. After I got this picture, the fog filled in again. The autumn oranges in the trees came out better than I had expected, but I'd still probably need to give a bit more zip in post-processing.

Here is a cool foggy forest scene. If I had photographed this under normal conditions, it wouldn't have been as interesting. But the fog gave it some depth, veiling the yellow maples in the background.

In the next one, the moss provided some natural framing. The vine maple in the background doesn't come through as strongly as I would have liked, compositionally speaking. Still, it's alright, and certainly a compositional idea to remember. I shot it at f/20, which brought both the moss and the tree in focus pretty well.

The autumn star of this next picture is again a vine maple. I used f/22 to get everything in focus. The fog helps keep the background from getting too cluttered or intrusive. I would have liked it if there hadn't been a trunk behind the young tree in the center; there was no way I could have moved enough to make that happen, though, without ruining the rest of the composition.

For this picture, I used my wide angle lens to get a feeling of closeness to some ferns while still including the autumn foliage in the background. This one ended up looking a bit "messier" than I like. Interesting, though.

A final scene juxtaposes some still-green shrubs with some gnarly yellow maples. This one's not that amazing/fantastic but I still kind of like it.

I will definitely be returning to Rockport at some point, probably during the spring - there were a few portions of the trail that featured a lot of withered trillium plants, which led me to believe that there will be some nice floral displays in the spring!