Boeing Creek Spring

I was hardly able to believe my luck - two days of good lighting in a row! Sunday afternoon saw lightly filtered sunshine. And although there was a light breeze, I fortunately wasn't focusing on closeups. I ambled down to Boeing Creek Park, one of my favorites, to see what was going on.

For this first image, I was attracted by the backlit Indian Plum leaves, and I wanted to find a way to incorporate them with the mossy trees in the background. My first composition from this spot actually set the leaves all around the frame, with the trees showing up in the center. Theoretically, this would have worked. In practice, though, two factors conspired against it: A splotchy patch of white sky showed up at the top of the frame, and the composition included a big ugly dead maple leaf hanging in the bush (and there was no way I could remove it without killing about a hundred plants).

So I brought the camera higher and chose this composition. There was still a problem: at f/9, not all of the background was in focus! I didn't want to stop down past f/9 because I didn't want any more deetail in the foreground. I tried a few different focus points; my most pleasing results came from focusing on the tree on the right, which is the most prominent.

This second image is not quite as striking as I had envisioned but I thought I would post it anyway. I think the bush opening up is a red elderberry, with a big old Douglas fir in the background (one of the park's remnant giants). I used f/5 to achieve as much selective focus as I could. The trunk doesn't show up as vividly as I had imagined it would...but I still think it's an interesting shot.

Toodle-oo!

Return of the Salmonberry

Today, while not quite as paradoxical as its immediate predecessor, was close. The morning dawned with the underside of high clouds aflame with red and pink. Soon the color faded, however, and what remained was an overcast and unusually frigid March morning. Frost hung on the grass. Even a few patches of snow remained from yesterday morning's snowstorm, which had ended as oddly and abruptly as it had begun, giving way to a cheery spring sun still not warm, high, or long-lasting enough to reach all of shadow's cold refuges.

I returned to Meadowdale Beach Park to finish last week's unfinished business. The salmonberry flowers were undaunted by the cold. Indeed, I got one of my best salmonberry portraits to date. Flower portraits are tricky; you want to have some sort of unique context or perspective without distracting from the flower itself - but you need that extra component, otherwise the photograph is pretty but relatively uninspiring. I think this first image does the trick by incorporating a second flower and a bud in the background. They give the image some context while not compromising the centrality of the foreground flower. I used f/6.3 to keep the aforementioned background objects from becoming formless blobs.

This second image is a different angle of the same flowers, also at f/6.3. It's less perfect, but it has a different feel to it, due to the vertical perspective and the inclusion of a bit of sky in the background.

The next photograph puts salmonberry flowers in a bit more context. I wanted a flower shot with some mossy trunks and branches in the background. I actually tried this shot on two occasions during my hike. The first time, the air was a bit breezy and I had to use a quite high ISO to get a reasonable shutter speed at f/20, the aperture I needed to get adequate background detail (I actually would have liked more, but that would have been even more difficult). My results were still not very sharp and the noise was high. On my way back, I was able to use "only" ISO 500. It's not as awesome as it was in my mind's eye; I'll have to come back to it eventually to decide whether it was worth all the trouble.

The next one I rather like. The morning sunlight was beginning to burn through the clouds, although it was still diffused a bit; it was also still angled. All this made for some very interesting lighting. I wanted to put the salmonberry flowers out of focus to emphasize the idea of the forest. I stopped down to f/9, though, so they would retain something of a discernible form. They give the forest a cheery aesthetic. I don't like the half-trunk on the right side. This partially has to do with the crop; I cropped it to a standard 8x10 dimension. It would obviously look different at other sizes. In a final edit, I might crop a bit more out from an 8x10; the bottom could afford to lose a bit. Other than that, I think this one turned out well.

Next is a shot of the same plant and the same background, from a slightly different angle and with the flowers in focus this time. The filtered sunshine brings out the salmonberry plant more than overcast lighting would have. I used f/9 to keep some detail in the background trunks, thus preserving the image's context.

Finally, a shot of a broadleaf maple overlooking the alder and salmonberry forest. A bit of slight, filtered backlighting made the mossy maple branches stand out.

Eventually, the filtered, angled sunlight changed into overhead, direct sunlight, rendering the forests a contrasty mess to a camera's sensor. I was fortunate to have been outside with my camera during such choice conditions!

A Post-Literate Park

Today, for the first time, I visited Washington Park in Anacortes. Its hiking trails are more extensive - and more rugged - than I had expected. I jumped the gun on the specific varieties of meadow flowers that I wanted to photograph, so I didn't come away with any show-stopping pictures. I am more excited for the possibilities that this park might hold. If pictures are to be believed, the rocky meadows on the southern slopes have quite the array of wildflowers later in the spring. I certainly hope so, because it's a cooler setting than the Ebey's Landing, or even the rocky meadows in Deception Pass...and both of those places are farther away!

I will post one photograph from the afternoon. This is a red-flowering currant bush. Even after I had waited about 20 minutes for the right lighting, this picture was still almost impossible to pull off - there was a slight breeze, there wasn't a ton of light in the shade, and I needed a wide depth of field (f/10 was the aperture on which I ultimately settled). I had to crank the ISO all the way to 800 and still couldn't go any faster than f/50 of a second - and it was still a bit underexposed. So it's dark and, worse, there's a lot of noise. Still, I kind of like the composition.

Also, if you ever visit this park, there are two things to note. First, I wouldn't really recommend driving the loop road through the park - it's narrow, it has some sharp turns, and you'll be dodging pedestrians and bicyclists. (Similarly, if you walk the loop road, you'll have to dodge cars, but this is not as stressful). The park is much more fun to enjoy on foot, so set the time aside and walk!

A second thing to note: Beware of the trail signs. At almost every other park that I have ever been to, trail signs feature the names of the trails and/or the names of landmarks accessed by a particular trail, along with arrows and numerical distances in labeled units. Hardly any of the trail signs in Washington Park are so equipped. Rather, they use colored symbols to guide the hiker. At first, I was bewildered and navigated using my map and my position relative to Burrows Channel and the development to the east of the park. Eventually, I noticed that some of the symbols recurred (although sometimes backward or rotated), so there is a logic to this system. I don't understand why they couldn't have used a more conventional marking system, though. So if you visit, I would highly recommend using a map - and your wits, given the presence of some unmarked side trails.

Salmonberry Forests Forever

Last week, I described an oasis of old trees in Shoreline's Boeing Creek Park. I wish the same could be said about Meadowdale Beach Park in Edmonds. Only a scattering of behemoth stumps remain to evoke the forest's bygone grandeur. Still, the park is a lovely place, greeting the senses with a pleasant second-growth forest and the constant music of birdsong. The existing forest consists mostly of red alder and bigleaf maple, with a dense understory of salmonberry and the occasional red elderberry.

And what do you know? The salmonberry bushes were just beginning to bloom when I went there yesterday. What a remarkable bit of "luck!" Unfortunately, the air was a bit gusty, especially closer to the beach, making flower photography quite difficult. I did, however, manage to squeeze out three acceptable shots.

The first one, while not perfect, is the most visually arresting of the bunch. I stopped it down to f/6.3 to get an acceptable level of detail in the foreground flower. I'm not 100% happy with this composition, though, because it's a bit busy. The leaves in the upper left-hand corner (which were the objects closest to the camera) are particularly distracting.

The next shot features the same two flowers from a different angle. I was able to use a wider aperture, f/4.5, and still get a decent amount of sharpness because I wasn't as close. This one, while not as busy as the previous composition, is also not as adventurous. I think one of the reasons for its comparative lack of interest is the point of view - instead of keeping the flowers directly at eye level, as in the previous composition, this looks at them slightly from above, which for flowers is a more conventional and less interesting perspective.

This third one juxtaposes a salmonberry flower against a mossy tree (I think a maple). It turned out alright, but it's not as compelling as it was in my mind's eye. As more salmonberry bushes bloom, though, I'll get other chances to try similar compositions in more favorable settings.

Shoreline's Crown Jewel

Boeing Creek Park will always have a special significance for me. It was where, first on childhood walks with my family and, later, solitary adolescent wanderings, I learned to love hiking. It is also a lot more diverse than most forested parks in the Seattle area. Indeed, although most of the park consists of second-growth, the park is sprinkled with old Douglas firs, most of them along and within the ravine created by Boeing Creek. Why were these giants spared? Park signs suggest that it may have been due to the steep, unstable slopes on which they were and are situated.

Simply hiking through the park - particularly over time - reveals this to be entirely plausible. The ravine's slopes reveal themselves to be very steep in some places. More than that, though, this breathtakingly dynamic park's annual changes demonstrate why it would be impractical or even dangerous to operate logging equipment in some places. The soils are sandy and prone to collapse. Every spring, the trail greets me with a new series of washed-out sandy cliffs where a slope - or a trail - used to be. Bars and islands made of sand and gravel appear and disappear in the creek and in Hidden Lake. Entire trees periodically tumble into the ravine.

This turbulent, active nature - while making resource extraction, trail maintenance and hiking problematic - is a quality that, along with the presence of old trees, makes the park special and a prime place to witness nature at work.

The first composition I am going to present in two versions. I wanted to juxtapose the trunk of an old-growth Douglas fir that I found against the mossy maple trunks in the background. The creek was also visible, which was a bonus. Originally, I had planned to wait to try this composition until later in the spring or summer, when the trees had leaves. I decided to try it, though, because I realized that the mossy trunks and branches might actually stand out better without green leaves. (I will, however, try it again later in the spring as planned!) I used f/25 to get everything in focus, and actually set my focus point between the trunk and the background in order to keep both sharp.

I made two compositions, one in which the trunk takes up about two-thirds of the frame, and one in which the trunk takes up about a third. I think I like the first better, as it gives a clearer sense of the tree's massive size, but I wasn't confident, so I posted them both and you can think about it.

The next picture is imperfect but still worth posting. It is imperfect because the Indian Plum leaves in the foreground, the ones in focus, aren't totally sharp due to a slight breeze. Also, the forms of the mossy trunks in the background don't stand out as much as I'd like. Still, I like my idea here. Perhaps with some creative white-balance tweaks in Lightroom, I could help at least the second problem. (I didn't want to use any wider of a depth of field than that provided by f/6.3, because that would have brought too many leaves in too sharp of focus and rendered the image entirely too busy.)

Next, we see a young hemlock growing from the remains of an old tree (perhaps a cedar?). There are lots of diverse trees of different ages within the park, something that - for most of the park - suggests a health forest, at least comparatively: in some sections of Carkeek Park in Seattle, by contrast, the tree cover (alder) is so uniform that young firs and cedars have had to be planted to ensure the forest's continued existence.

Finally, one that celebrates the mossy maple trunks. Were I to edit this, I would modify the white balance in such a way that accentuated the yellow-green of the moss against the darker green of the evergreen foliage in the background.