Discovery Sunshine

Saturday's rainy trek to Gold Creek was redeemed last night by some sunshine at Discovery Park. When I arrived, the parking lot was almost completely full, and I was worried about the park itself being discouragingly crowded. In fact, I felt as though I had the park to myself for most of the evening. I guess it's big enough to absorb the throngs that visit it.

In the first image, I wanted to incorporate some of the dandelion seed heads into different perspective. I used my ultrawide lens, with a closeup filter attached, to get as close as I was while still having an expansive background. My original thought was to have one of the historic buildings in the background, but I never ended up finding an angle that both did that and presented the dandelions in an attractive way. Below is my second choice; I like the way the tree shapes fill up the upper part of the image. I settled on an aperture of f/7.1 to put the background of focus but not lose too much detail in the foremost seed head.

This second one is of lupine plants, gone to seed. I hadn't originally intended to do a square crop with this image, but upon viewing it on my computer, decided that wider crops didn't serve it as well. There was too much dark detail on the sides, which distracted from the sunset and from the less jumbled stalks in the middle. I used the narrow aperture of f/25, because I wanted all the lupine seeds to be in focus. An upshot of this aperture was the rays that are visible coming out of the sun.

For me, what was attractive about the next scene was the color. I wanted to work the yellow-green backlit leaves, shaded dark green maples, and beige grass into a single composition. Below is my best result. I wanted everything to be in focus so I used f/18. Ultimately, I'm not sure how interesting of an image it is, but it was an interesting idea, so I thought I'd go ahead and post it.

Finally, a wide-angle perspective of the historic buildings area. The contrast ended up less than satisfactory; it was pretty late in the evening, but I was shooting toward the sun; that and the filmy high clouds conspired to make me overexpose some of the sky. Post-processing would perhaps partially alleviate this problem. Even so, I like the composition, and how the foreground tree frames everything. F/18 was sufficient to get everything into focus.

Fog Fun

I don't recall whether I've written about this before, but September is actually a tricky month for nature photography. It's beautiful to experience - cool, fresh mornings; afternoons that are warm but not hot; leaves starting to change - but not as photogenic as one might expect.  For the most part, summer flowers have faded. A few leaves have changed color, but more are just looking withered and mottled. Certainly, there are good pictures to be had, but they require more patience to find than in August or October, when one can go for the easy money of wildflowers or abundant fall foliage.

The Gold Creek trail yesterday was quite damp, and rain was falling more often than not. But the upshot of the rain and clouds was an attractive fog that danced in and out of the valley. This first image comes from the viewpoint; I wanted to find a way to include the fog and the colorful vine maples in a composition. This was my best result, and although the contours of the fog do not show up as crisply as I might have preferred, I still like it. I also like how the branches essentially provide lines that lead toward the background trees. I used f/22 and set the focus point between the foreground and background trees to get everything into focus.

There were still some berries remaining on the bunchberry plants, and I finally found some at a height that my little tripod could feasibly photograph. I used f/7.1 in order to keep a decent amount of the foreground berry in focus.

For the next two images, we'll return to the fog theme. This first one looks down the Gold Creek Valley. It was actually raining at the time, so I had to crouch down under a tree to take this picture. Upon doing so, I waited until the fog was just right; I wanted some of the trees in the background to be visible and thus bring out the contour of the hillside. Since everything was fairly far away, and aperture of f/16 sufficed to bring everything into focus.

This last one was a bit of an experiment; it doesn't suggest a whole lot of depth, but I still like the way it turned out. As in the above photograph, I had to wait a few minutes for the fog to be just right - there were certain trees that I wanted to stand out, so I waited until a gap in the fog was between me and them. I think the light gray trunks complement the fog and add to the mysterious aesthetic. Since everything was far away and basically at the same distance from the camera, f/14 sufficed to get everything into focus.

Summer's Final Bonanza

Last week, I went on a camping trip, which was significant in that it was the first camping trip I've ever taken completely on my own. It's not that I mind having other people along, but all the best candidates were working, out of town, or otherwise occupied. My destination was Paradise Meadows in Mount Rainier National Park; I camped in the nearby Cougar Rock Campground.

In The Wild Cascades: Forgotten Parkland, Harvey Manning wrote of the importance of taking one's time in ascending through the Cascades' ecological zones, in order to fully experience the mountains. Preferably this would be done over a matter of days on foot or, if in an automobile, with plenty of stops along the way to take in the transitions.

This is all well and good if you have plenty of time, and your summer has been free enough of commitments that you can be patient with this approach, since you've had plenty of opportunities already to explore different facets of the Cascades on your own time. Sometimes, though, you realize that you haven't hiked or photographed nearly as much as you wanted to this summer, that you start work in a few days, and that the wildflowers are almost all gone. With your eyes on the prize, you skip the endless switchbacks through silver fir and avalanche chutes, and you drive up to the high country to get that last glimpse of summer's glory. I was in this latter situation, and although the wildflowers were past peak, they still amply rewarded my efforts.

Let's get to some images, shall we?

We'll begin with the obligatory flowering-meadow-with-Mount-Rainier-in-the-background shot. I'm sure you've seen pictures like this. I faced a bit of a challenge due to the fact that Rainier was in fact hardly visible at all. While this was initially disappointing, I soon realized that the partially shrouded mountain was interesting in a different way, lending some mystery and intimacy to the images.

I actually produced three satisfactory iterations of this concept, so I will post them all. For all of them. I used a similar exposure strategy - a narrow aperture, and a focus point between the foreground and background. In all three cases, I also had the camera fairly close to the ground; the exact height differed a bit in each case, but it was much closer to thigh or even knee level than eye level. I think the first, from near the visitor center, is the most striking compositionally, due to the closeness and vividness of the flowers. The second one, from Mazama Ridge, is also exciting. It represented one of the few intact lupine-and-paintbrush meadows in the area - in most meadows, the majority of lupine plants had already gone to seed, and the paintbrush were withering.

Following are two more experimental images with the shrouded mountain in the background. I am going to post both focus points that I tried - the mountain and the foreground flowers. I'm not sure which I like better. Apertures of f/14 and f/13, respectively, prevented too much detail loss in whatever was out of focus. I wanted the flowers and mountain to provide a meaningful counterpoint to one another.

Mountain challenges notwithstanding, the cloudy skies provided some obvious advantages, the foremost of which was even lighting. I've talked about this before - how overcast lighting is very versatile, and particularly useful the for photographing streams and forests (two frequent situations in this part of the world).

Below are two creek images. The first comes from Myrtle Falls (on Edith Creek), the second from a smaller creek farther along the trail. The pink flowers are monkey flowers. These compositions were challenging due to my location - the trail in both cases was relatively far from the water, so I could not use my usual technique of getting low and close to a chosen foreground. I instead had to zoom as far as my lens would allow, which can compress distant objects and detract from an appearance of depth.

For the first image, I was viewing the falling water at enough of an angle that a feeling of depth persists.  The second is a bit flatter, but since the camera was angled up toward the falls, a feeling of depth persists as well. In both cases, a more straight-on perspective would have been less compelling - but in both cases, that was ultimately out of my control. While it's true that I tried to choose the best shots from each vantage point, I didn't have my usual flexibility in choosing or modifying said vantage point.

The next image comes from Mazama Ridge; I wanted to capture the way the trees were festooned with fruticose lichen. I had a tough time doing so in a way that didn't include unsightly white blotches of overexposed sky. What you see below was my best result. I used a narrow aperture to keep everything in focus; it took some patience because, with an exposure time of one second, even slight movement of any of the branches would have blurred them, and I wanted them to be all sharp. I had to wait until the air was perfectly still. The image looks a bit busy, I'll admit, but I think it would make more sense at a larger size; all the different shapes would be more distinguishable.

Now we'll look at some images that go a bit closer in. The first is of aster, taken very early in the morning when the previous night's rain was still on the petals. I tried to set the focus point to include some of the drops. I used f/9, which isn't a very wide aperture, because I wanted good depth of field in the foreground flower and wanted the two background flowers to fade out of focus only gradually.

For the next image, I wanted to capture the way a paintbrush flower and a sedge were growing near each other. I would have preferred something with a straight green background, but there was no way to compose the shot without including other flowers. Below is the best result. I used f/7.1 to keep some form in the background flowers; at a wider aperture, they would have been unidentifiable blobs. I've been going back and forth in my mind on whether I like this image, due to the busy background.

This next one I like a bit better, since foreground and background are a bit more unified. It's still "busy," in a way, but it fits together more nicely. I used f/11 to once again preserve some shape in the background flowers. I like the contrast between the lupine and the daisies.

The next one features pasqueflower, I believe, already gone to seed, with Rainier in the background. I stopped all the way down to f/18 to preserve background detail, especially in the mountain. I had to do so because I was quite close to the pasqueflower in the foreground. Even though the colors are a bit muted in this one, I like the way they contrast - the green of the meadow, the beige of the pasqueflower, and the white of Rainier's glaciers.

I'll close the post with some more experimental images. With the first one, I wanted to incorporate the somewhat stormy and dramatic sky into a view of one of the flowering meadows on Mazama Ridge. I used a graduated neutral density filter to darken the sky. The trees on the far right look a bit too dark; other than that, though, the trees and the mountain didn't end up excessively darkened. Those too-dark trees on the right can probably be corrected without too much trouble. I would have preferred a more extensive group of flowers for my foreground, but this was the most interesting view that I could find in time and that incorporated flowers, mountain, and the interesting clouds.

The next image is similar, but it was done sans filter. Incidentally, it follows the rule of thirds prety nicely, at least vertically. The tree in the middle doesn't really, but sometimes strong shapes can override the rule of thirds.

For this one, I wanted to use a narrow depth of field (f/5.6) to isolate a red paintbrush flower from its purple, white, and green surroundings. Frankly, the result isn't as compelling as I had envisioned, but I like how the paintbrush is framed by different species of flowers.

Finally, another meadow shot. I wanted to juxtapose the meadow, with subalpine daisy featured in the foreground, against the gnarly trees in the background. In retrospect, they aren't as prominent in the composition as I'd have liked. Still, it's a nice picture. I used f/25 and an in-between focus point...you know the drill by now!

Magnuson Experiments

Recently, I traipsed on over to Magnuson Park, in hopes of a more successful trip than my last. I was definitely more in practice than I'd been the last time (you wouldn't think so, judging from how often I've been posting, but I'm far behind in that regard), so my results were more creative and better executed.

My first idea was to juxtapose an aster flower against the sunrise. Below is the best result. Silhouettes of leaves and branches are visible against the sun; I can't decide if these shapes are interesting or a distraction. The aperture I used was f/5.6. I tried narrower apertures, to increase the amount of the flower that I had in focus, but that made the ball of the sun smaller and not as cool-looking. So I bit the bullet and used f/5.6. I wasn't able to see the flower very well through the viewfinder, and didn't want to spend long looking in the viewfinder anyway due to the fact that the sun was shining through it. Thus, my strategy for choosing a focus point basically amounted to a quick look and guesswork. Thankfully, the shutter speed was quick (1/320 of a second) and I was able to make multiple attempts while the sun was still low and golden.

The next shot is a bit more typical for me; I've definitely used this concept before, but this one preserves more color detail in the flower itself and includes fewer distracting silhouettes behind its petals than my other attempts. I used f/5.6 to isolate the flower as much as was feasible (I could have gone a bit wider, but I wanted to keep most of the flower in focus).

Having photographed aster flowers countless times at Magnuson, I wanted to try some different perspectives on them. Below are my two best. The first combines an eye-level perspective with a partial obstruction of the in-focus flower center with some petals. Ordinarily, I try to avoid obstructing the in-focus area of a flower. In this case, though, I thought it would add some depth and a feeling of intimacy. I am relatively pleased with the result. I used f/7.1 to keep an appreciable amount of the flower's center in focus; I was close enough to the flower that this narrower aperture didn't create too much distracting background detail.

The lighting was more even for this second aster shot due to the fact that the sunlight was filtered through a tree. I wanted to focus on the dewdrops on the petals rather than on the center of the flower, which is my more standard tactic. At f/5.6 - I wanted to isolate the dewdrops as much as I could, in order to bring attention to them - and at a very short distance from the flowers, my depth of field was quite narrow. It was thus rather difficult to set the focus point exactly where I wanted it. Thankfully, I was using a tripod and the flowers were quite still. Therefore, I used this strategy: I'd take a shot, rotate the focus ring ever so slightly, take another shot, rotate the ring again, and so forth. I ended up with four or five different focus points and was able to choose the best. This is the nice thing about digital; I can use this sort of a technique without wasting any film.

Finally, we'll change gears to chicory flowers - which, unlike aster, aren't native to the area but are still very lovely. They appear to close up at night and open up in daylight; thus, toward the end of my morning trip, they were just beginning to open. For the shot below, I stopped down all the way to f/16 to preserve some background detail; I wanted to juxtapose the foreground flower against the flowers, grass, and trees in the background. Not as much of the foreground flower's center is visible as I'd like; otherwise, though, not a bad image.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for a camping adventure!