This time of year, mountain lakes look a bit bleak at first glance. Most of the leaves have fallen, skies are gray, and there is not very much snow yet. When I took a jaunt to Heather Lake on Saturday, this was the world I was afraid I would be entering.
As I explored around the lake, however, a world of color unfolded before my eyes. There was, of course, the obvious - a few remaining yellow leaves, dark green conifers, white snowy cliffs. But the trees and shrubs that were bare were their own mosaic of color. Countless shades of red, brown, and gray intertwined in a silent kaleidoscope.
Although I had already been moving in this direction, this trip in particular is inspiring me to plan to be more active, photographically speaking, this winter than I have been other years. I'm realizing more and more that there is scenery to be had in the winter - in the form of lichen, evergreen trees, moss, and other epiphytes of various kinds.
This first image is of a shrub I can't identify. To save weight and space, I generally don't bring plant identification books along on my hikes. Instead, I try to do any necessary ID-ing when I get back. Sometimes this works. But, this time, I've been poring over my guide for quite a while with no success, so I'm going to throw the towel in for the time being, and hopefully figure out this plant's identity later. I wanted to juxtapose the shrub's bright colors against the snowy cliffs in the background. I wish the lake showed up a bit more prominently in this composition; otherwise, I like it. I used f/25 and set my focus point between the foreground and the background to get everything in focus.
Below is a close-up shot of that same bush. The fruits look almost like miniature pumpkins, without stems on top. I used an aperture of f/10 to keep some detail in the leaves; I liked the background shapes they created.
Below, a more generic shot of the lake. The foreground trees don't stand out as vividly as I had intended, but it's a nice composition. Perhaps some color balance adjustments in Lightroom would help remedy the situation and bring the foreground out. I took this particular image at f/22.
Now we'll start looking at some of those branches I wrote about earlier. This is another plant whose exact identity escapes me, although I suspect it might be Sitka alder. The branches swoop forward as you see in the picture to enable the plant to survive avalanches. Once again, I liked the color contrasts - the gray branches in the foreground, the brown branches in the middle, and the green trees and dusting of white snow in the background. I used my wide-angle lens and an aperture of f/22.
Below, contrasted the striking red of red-osier dogwood branches against the lake. I tried a variety of different apertures, settling on f/20, because I wanted to preserve some detail in the background. Just before I took this particular shot, a very slight breeze kicked up. It didn't move the branches at all, but it did disturb the surface of the water ever so slightly. I ended up liking this effect; it creates a clearer demarcation between the background trees and their reflection in the lake.
Next is a wider perspective of a similar vantage point. The branches of various shrubs create leading lines toward the lake. I used f/22 here so I could get the whole image in focus.
For the next two images, I was attracted to the color contrast between a young evergreen tree and the yellows, oranges and browns of the surrounding branches and leaves. (Again, that unidentified shrub!) The first uses a relatively wide aperture (f/4.2) to isolate the tree, putting the surrounding branches out of focus. The second uses a narrow aperture (f/20) to put the tree and its surroundings all in focus. I like both approaches to the subject matter.
There's more to the hike than the lake. While large portions of the trail pass through dark, relatively uninteresting second-growth coniferous forest, the upper third of the trail features some nice old-growth surroundings, and a few pretty little open areas. Consisting mostly of evergreen trees, the old-growth areas are just as bright and as green as ever.
I like the image below because it includes trees of varying sizes and ages, an important feature of old-growth forest. I also think the colorful trunk on the left looks really cool. I tried to find a composition involving just that trunk, but there were none to be found.
Below is a foliose lichen of some kind. I couldn't ID it from my book, but given that there are hundreds and hundreds of lichen species in the state, I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I wanted to contrast the bright green against the other lichens and the dull brown of the trunk. My only qualm about this composition is that the green lichen splits it basically in half, which is bad practice. I wish I had found a way to satisfactorily fill up more of the composition with the green. Still, it's nice.
Finally, there was an open area in the forest with some mossy boulders and a tangle of red-osier dogwood. Below was my best composition; I tried a variety of heights and vantage points, settling on a relatively low position. This makes the branches in the foreground "feel" much closer. I used f/20 to keep everything in focus.
In classic Cascades fashion - at least for me - it rained on Saturday afternoon. But fortunately, I was lucky this time and felt the first drop of rain just as I was reaching the trailhead. I've been rained on quite a bit this year, and it was satisfying to time a hike perfectly around the rain - and in November! I'll choose to interpret that as a good omen for this winter.
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