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!
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