Hannegan Not-Pass

On a recent weekend, I took a photo jaunt to the Hannegan Pass trail, off the Mount Baker Highway. As the title might suggest, I never made it to the pass. I'm wary of snow, especially carrying so much equipment. But I had a very nice valley walk nonetheless, and the views were stupendous - a mountain experience for a lowland price, one might say!

In that vein, we'll start with a picture of a mountain! I was attracted to the way the morning sunlight was side-lighting the mountain and falling unevenly on the trees and shrubs around me. The prospect of being able to frame the mountain with leaves was also enticing. Even at the relatively early time at which I took the picture, I was worried about the high contrast. It ended up not being as bad as I had feared, although the darks are a bit darker than I'd prefer, and a few spots on the snow are a bit blown out. But not too bad. I used f/18 to get everything in focus, setting the focus point between the foreground leaves and the mountain. Since I was all the way at 27mm, and wasn't too close to the leaves, I didn't need to use a narrow aperture (which would have sacrificed sharpness).

Next comes a flowering shrub that I had never seen before, or at least had not noticed. I believe it is trailing black currant. I took this shot at both f/4.5 and f/6.3, and struggled over which one to post. The one at f/6.3 preserved more detail in the background flowers, but I posted f/4.5. The wider aperture eliminated more background distractions, made the composition cleaner and simpler, and imparted a stronger feeling of depth.

The next one is on the abstract side, and for that reason, I'm not certain whether I like it. An aperture of f/13 served me fairly well, preserving enough background detail to keep the lines of the waterfall distinct, while still blurring the background a bit. Since the spot was shaded, I was able to get a shutter speed sufficient to blur the motion of the water, while still fast enough to keep the foreground fern sharp (it was moving ever so slightly in the occasional breeze).

The slopes surrounding the trail also featured numerous waterfalls. The first is at f/13, which allowed me to blur the foreground leaves a bit, adding, I hope, some depth. The second was at f/25 to keep everything sharp. The flowers in the foreground are false Solomon's seal.

The next two impart a strong feeling of growth, I think. They were both taken at f/25 - the narrower aperture, combined with hiding the sun partially behind a branch, enabled me to get the starring effect you see below.