Discovering Discovery

I took advantage of my time at home during the Fourth of July weekend to take a trip to Discovery Park. In fact, I was there on the morning of the Fourth itself. What better way to celebrate Independence Day than to go do my hobby and see my favorite flowers?

The first one isn't actually that great in terms of image quality - it's just not all that sharp - but I like the composition. I used f/25 to keep everything in focus.  Sunrises like this are the hidden secret of cloudy days in Seattle. And a little footpath took me right to the blooming fireweed!

This one catches the actual sunrise. I don't think it's as good as this picture, which I took a few weeks ago; it has a different mood, though, so I thought I'd post it. I used f/18, which is responsible for the nice sun rays that you see here.

The next one shows yarrow on the beach, down by the lighthouse. I've said this before, but Discovery Park is the only place where I've seen yarrow not in a garden with a color so pink. Perhaps they are descended from garden plants. Or perhaps it's just a genetic peculiarity there. In any case, they're very pretty. I used f/9 to get some form in the background flowers and grass blades. This one was tricky, because I had to handhold it; happily, though, I was able to get a shutter speed of 1/160 second at ISO 400, so I was in a good place.

The next one shows the fireweed in the south meadow area. I actually struggled for a while to find a composition that really captured the feeling of these fireweed stands; this was the best. I like it because the fireweed stalks look relatively unified, and if you look in the upper right corner in the background, you can see the pink of another fireweed stand! I used f/16 to keep detail in the background. It needs some color and contrast work; I think this will help add depth to the image.

The gumweed down by the beach is just starting to open up; this picture captures that. I used f/6.3 to keep some detail in the buds surrounding the lone flower. I actually kind of like this composition, although the color/lighting outside the yellow flower is a bit monochromatic. Perhaps some contrast/color adjustment in Lightroom would help.

The next two are flowers I found in the south beach area. They're not particularly creative compositions, but they were cool-looking flowers so I wanted to post them! They were both taken at f/4.5.