Felix Culpa, Avalanche Edition

This time, instead of clearcuts, the title is referring to avalanche meadows. A highlight of the Gold Creek Trail, near Snoqualmie Pass, is that it passes through numerous areas that, at one time or another, have been subjected to the fury of avalanches and stripped of their forest cover. In the avalanches' wake  grow willows, alder, and a variety of beautiful wildflowers. A ways down the trail, there is an avalanche swath so recent that one can still see the devastated trees blanketing the hillside. In the valley, though, the willows and wildflowers have grown to the extent that the debris is hardly visible; you have to intentionally look for it to see it. The trail also passes through some nice older forest areas.

I'm going to start with some of my best flower shots, and transition more toward the landscape end of the spectrum later. The first is of a tiger lily (or Columbia lily, as they're sometimes referred to). This is probably one of my best shots to date of a tiger lily, both in terms of image quality (the in-focus areas turned out pretty well) and in terms of background uniformity. Also, it's nearly symmetrical, which is always a nice bonus when photographing a flower!

This second captures bunchberry flowers growing on a mossy log. I used f/9 to preserve some of the log's texture beneath the flower. In hindsight, I maybe would have tried one turn of the dial wider, to reduce the depth of field just a tad, but I think it turned out pretty well. I tried a variety of compositions with the clump of flowers, and this one resulted in the least dead space.

Below you see some paintbrush flowers. The trunks you see in the background belong to vine maple trees; I used f/16 to preserve the level of detail you see. I thought their winding diagonal lines contrasted nicely with the vertical, bulbous paintbrush flowers (technically, you are seeing the red bracts rather than the flowers, which are small and concealed).

Another red flower comes next: western red columbine. I stopped down just a tad, to f/5.6, to get a little more detail in the in-focus area. The background is still reasonably uniform, although it could be better.

This is a pink monkey-flower; this hike marked the first time I had ever seen (or at least noticed) one! Exciting! For this image, I actually stopped down to f/7.1; wider apertures did not give enough detail on the face of the flower, and there was nothing for the eye to lock onto.

There were a lot of queen's cup growing in the forest along the trail; ground-growing flowers, though, are hard to photograph well. You can photograph them from straight above, but that can be boring, and you also run the risk of including dirt/sticks/rocks/ugly chaos in your composition's background. These flowers were positioned in such a way that, with the camera nearly at ground level, I was able to make the background consist mostly of a Douglas Fir trunk - which gives much more interesting context than a lot of forest-floor detritus! I used f/13 to keep some perceptible detail in the background flowers and tree trunk. In this case, I wanted not to isolate but contextualize the foreground flower.

What you see below is a coralroot of some sort, probably western coralroot. This picture represents an element of luck; I did not know these flowers grew on the trail and I actually missed them the first time I passed them, and only saw them on my way out. I used f/4.2 to minimize background detail and isolate the foreground flower. I don't like the part of another flower protruding into the frame in the lower left; otherwise, I'd like this picture.

Interesting factoid: Coralroots are saprophytes, meaning that they don't make their own food like most plants; they instead derive their food from decaying organic matter on the forest floor. Hence the absence of the green chlorophyll necessary for photosynthesis.

The next picture, of Sitka Valerian, comes from the most recent avalanche area. In the background you can see a waterfall coming down the mountainside. In hindsight, the waterfall doesn't show up as clearly as I'd like, but just for the heck of it, I thought I'd post it. I used f/29 to keep as much detail in the waterfall as I could.

The next two show Sitka valerian from the same spot at different apertures; the shots are cropped differently but from the same angle. I cropped them differently because I felt that in the second picture, with the front blossom isolated, it was better to crop off the left part of the frame. The first picture uses f/29, the second f/5. I haven't decided which one I prefer.

Now, finally the landscapes. There are really only two. The first comes from very early in the morning, as the sun was peeking through a break in the low clouds and illuminating the valley. I don't like the white spot at the upper left corner, but otherwise, this is pretty cool, and it was a fun moment to witness. An aperture of f/22 and an in-between focus point kept everything sharp.

Finally, this last one comes from a patch of devil's club that I have photographed before; this one, though, is my best, creating the best sense of the area's lushness. I used f/25 to keep everything in focus; I would like to lighten the rock behind the devil's club if I were to change anything in editing.