An Animal-Free Adventure

Yesterday, before my aforementioned visit to Picture Lake, I hiked partway down the Lake Ann trail (off the Mt. Baker highway). The title refers to the fact that I've had some interesting scrapes with large mammals during my photo trips and other journeys - including the bear on the Baker River, and a deer in the road on the way to the Maple Pass trail (by far the more dangerous incident). The largest animal I saw yesterday, however, was a chipmunk. That's just the way I like it. Other people have said I am "lucky" to have seen bears, deer, etc. They can have them! Personally, I'd much prefer that our paths did not cross, and that I stayed free of all animal danger.

The first picture of of Sitka valerian and a mountain - maybe Shuksan, although I'm not quite sure. I used f/29 to get the flowers and the mountain both in focus, and got down so that the foreground flowers were above eye level. Even though the lighting is a bit harsh, I still like it compositionally; I think the wispy clouds also add interest.

Let's continue with the valerian theme! This one came a bit later in the evening, as you can probably tell from the lighting. As with the last image, I used a narrow aperture (f/25 this time) to keep everything in focus. I liked the shadows the light was creating on the cliff faces, and wanted to put this and the flower fields below together. I tried a variety of slightly different angles and this ended up being my favorite. The clouds are a bit bright, but other than that, the exposure actually turned out fairly well for such a contrasty situation.

This one features spiraea of some sort, with valerian in the background. Despite the selective focus appearance, I stopped down to f/18; I wanted the valerian flowers to be discernible forms. At wider apertures, the background was basically a mottled white blob, which is so much less cool. I liked the opportunity, in this image, to juxtapose the pink against the white in definite areas of the frame.

This one juxtaposes lupine against a mountain in the background; I used f/10 to keep some detail in the mountain while still isolating the lupine. The placement of the lupine is not very strong, in my opinion, but I couldn't really concentrate because there were about 1000 flies swarming on my body! Still, it's so vivid that I though I'd post it.

Lastly, more lupine with a little falling stream in the background. I'm not sure how well it comes through but I think it was a cool idea. Since I was relatively far away from the plants, I used f/4 to achieve maximum selective focus. Even so, the right half of the image is a bit busy. So, again, I don't know if I'm convinced by the image, but it was worth a try.