It's a particularly special place because the steepness of its topography relative to its surroundings and its east-west orientation (creating distinct northern and southern sides) allow the butte to sustain multiple distinct ecosystems. The north side, which receives comparatively little direct sunlight (especially during the winter months) accumulates a great deal of snow, which melts slowly throughout the early spring. Moisture of any kind is retained here longer than on the sunny south side. By summertime, the south side is too dry to support much of a forest. Instead, it is carpeted by grassy meadows, dotted only with occasional groves of pine and shrubs. It is this south side that is the star of the show, with extravagant flowers and sweeping views of the Palouse.
The forest, too, was beautiful in its own right, and in fact featured a floral show just as diverse as that on the ridgetop, if less ostentatious. The tree cover consists mostly of ponderosa pine, with a smattering of fir, larch, aspen, and other trees thrown in for good measure. Mallow ninebark, the dominant shrub throughout most of the forest, was just beginning to show some white blossoms, and profuse wildflowers carpeted the forest floor. Even with basically four days in the park, I only had time to photograph a small minority of the species in bloom.
This post focuses on my photography in the forested areas of the park. The next post will feature the meadows.
We'll start with star-flowered false Solomon's seal (what a mouthful!). I like this composition because it's nearly symmetrical, with attractive lines formed by the leaves. I used f/3.8 to keep the background simple. (You may notice that my wide apertures differ in some of my pictures; this is because, for complicated physical reasons, my macro lens' maximum and minimum apertures vary at different focusing distances. My other lenses similarly differ at different focal lengths. There are fixed-aperture lenses, but sadly they are more expensive).
Next, a flower that I saw for the first time: ballhead waterleaf. They bloom pretty low to the ground, but their purple color helps them to stand out. I actually really like this composition. It keeps the flower at eye level, and having the flower cluster partially obscured by a leaf adds some depth. It is almost as if the flower is shy, and peeking out from behind its leaves. I used an aperture of 3.5 to minimize background distractions.
Next comes another flower I encountered for the first time: Western meadowrue. The reason it was striking was that its flowers seemed to resemble jellyfish, especially the way the hanging stamens danced about in even slight breezes when the rest of the plant was still. Thankfully, I was able to photograph this flower on a relatively calm morning, enabling me to get even the stamens sharp. I stopped down to f/9 to keep some discernible detail in the stamens of the out-of-focus flowers. The background green is a bit splotchy, but I had to accept it because this specimen had more attractive blooms than any other meadowrue that I had seen on any of the trails.
Ponderosa pines, although they look cool in their context, don't necessarily top my list of the region's most attractive trees. My brother noticed an interesting phenomenon, however - the emerging cones, or whatever these are, actually look quite pretty. I used f/4 because I thought the narrower depth of field would make the image more dramatic, and prevent too much distracting detail in the surrounding needles. Kudos 24/7 to Julian for noticing this!
In a few spots, miner's lettuce carpets the forest floor. I struggled to devise a composition that depicted this without becoming overly busy or complex. What you see below represents my best result along these lines. I used f/8 to keep some detail in the leaves underlying the buds. Had the flowers been blooming already, the image would have been more spectacular, but the leaves below would have been perhaps less discernible.
Confusingly, the flower below can be referred to both as "woodland star" and "prairie star." It occurs in both places, I guess, but that's the trouble with common names. I found this particular specimen in the forest. I used f/5.6 to compromise between background blur and keeping some discernible detail in the flower.
Below is a detail of a mallow ninebark just beginning to flower. I used for f/5.6 for reasons similar to the above picture. Yes, the background is a bit splotchy. But this was the most attractive flower/bud cluster that I saw.
Below is false Solomon's seal (not to be confused with star-flowered false Solomon's seal). It grew very thickly in some places, and I wanted to capture that. The image below doesn't have as much depth as I would have liked, although viewing it at a larger size might help.
I'll end with a sunset image; I took it near our campsite, where the forest borders farmland. Primarily, I wanted to capture the way the late evening sunlight casts shadows over the Palouse's rolling hills, accentuating their contour. This phenomenon actually doesn't come out all that strongly in the image below, but I still like it due to the colorful clouds and the warm color of the sunlight on the tree.
Shortly I will post the second half of my Kamiak Butte pictures, the ones from the meadows! Until then, cheers!
1 comment:
That last photo is fantastic
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