The Tripod, My Friend, is Blowing in the Wind

Last weekend, I ventured to Washington Park in Anacortes, seeking signs of spring, hoping I might even find some blooming grass widow. I didn't find any, although there were a few desert parsley, blue-eyed Mary, and prairie star starting to bloom. Not that it mattered - the wind was blowing so strongly that any flower photography was out.

So I started by photographing the wind instead.

For both of these windy images, my operating variable was not aperture, as I usually do, but instead shutter speed. In the first image, I did 1.6 seconds; the second was 5 seconds. The key was to both use a shutter speed and photograph a particular gust that sufficed to blur some of the images but not everything - I wanted certain tree trunks to function as "anchors" and be sharp enough to give the eye some context. Only thus would the images look windy, rather than a blurry mistake.

Below is some blue-eyed Mary; the rocks around it sheltered it from the wind enough to photograph it. F/4.5. I made a point to include the rich on the left side of the frame to add some depth and give the image a more intimate feel.

The image below captures a Douglas fir during a brief sunbreak. The sun shone thus for only about a minute.

Below is a sign of spring - budding Oregon grape! There were a few of these scattered throughout the forest. I used f/3.3 for maximum foreground isolation.

Below is Oregon Grape in context, with Burrows Channel behind it. I used f/4.8 - not just to blur the background, but to get a decent shutter speed (1/60 second), because I had to handhold this one. I used my ultra-wide lens and a closeup filter to get a more interesting perspective.

Finally is an image of buds on a Pacific madrone. F/3.2 to blur the background and soften the shapes of the out-of-focus leaves and buds.