Ice Is Not Enough

This Saturday's photo excursion created a bit of a quandary when it came to choosing a location. It was going to be sunny, so a pure forest destination was out. It was so dry that, despite the cold temperatures,  I was going to be hard-pressed to find interesting frost formations. Finally, I didn't have the time for a long drive. I settled on the Wilderness Creek/Peak area of Cougar Mountain, setting my sights on the modest goal of photographing ice formations along the creek itself.

But the ice formations along the creek, at least at the points accessible by trail, were not as photogenic as I had hoped. I found some snow up high, but much of it was rather lumpy and patchy. And the valley I was in received more morning sunlight than I had assumed. So I only came away with a couple interesting pictures.

Still, it was nice to be out and about in the great outdoors, even if it was quite chilly. The cold air and sunshine were refreshing.And there was no mud on the trail anywhere! Earth stood hard as iron, as the poet says. But the air was so cold that, by midmorning, there were significant ice formations inside my water bottle, and it was getting hard to open. So, though it was beautiful and surprisingly pleasant, I wanted to get out before my water became like a stone!

The first image is of some sort of fungus growing on a dead, decaying log. I had to work quickly to capture the speckled light coming through the trees - I've frequently attempted images in lighting conditions like this, only to have the sun move and put my subject either in the shade or in full sunlight. Thankfully, this one worked. I used f/9 to compromise between isolating the fungus in front, and keeping the background discernible.

The second one is of the trail near the summit of Wilderness Peak. I usually don't do trail shots, but I really liked how the sunlight was shafting along it; the snow on either side accentuated this effect. I accomplished the star effect by stopping down to f/18, using the widest angle I had available, and positioning the camera so that the sun was just peeking around a tree - in sum, turning the sun into a point source of light.

Cheers, and happy winter!