The first photographic destination of the day was the Baker River Trail, just north of Baker Lake. I've been there several times before but not yet in the spring. Due to its slightly higher elevation and winter snowfall, it's not as far along in terms of spring growth as other places in the lowlands - most of the salmonberry plants hadn't even bloomed yet. To further confound matters, it was sunny practically all day, which I was not expecting. I prefer the even lighting of overcast conditions, but I was there, so I had to make the best of it!
What drew me to this first scene was the strong backlighting coming through the alder grove. I accidentally left my white balance set a bit warmer than I usually have it, but in this case, I like the effect. It really communicates the warmth of the sun. I would maybe tweak it, though, to bring out the greens of the new leaves in the background. The blue color in the far background comes from the ridge on the other side of the valley, whose west-facing slope was still in shadow. I used f/25 to get everything in focus.
Below is a little flower on a bush; the bush appears to be a Vaccinium of some sort, but I have not quite identified the specific species. My best guess is ovalifolium due to the red twigs and the fact that the flowers preceded the leaves, but I'm far from positive. I used f/5, which isn't quite as wide as I could have gone, because I wanted a bigger area of the foreground flower to be in focus. I was physically close enough that the slightly narrower aperture didn't create any unsightly background shapes.
This one I took looking down from the trail with the waters of the Baker River itself in the background. I tried a few shutter speeds, ranging from 1 second to 3 seconds, and decided that I liked 1 second the best.
Below is some new growth on a willow (not sure which variety); in the background is a view across the valley to Hagan Mountain - which, in this shot, is mostly hidden by clouds. I tried waiting until the clouds lifted a bit, but I ended up liking this one more. I used f/20 to keep detail in the background. My only quibble with this one is that the composition isn't very balanced; all the foreground is concentrated into the right half of the frame.
The next image is a view up Sulphide Creek to Mount Shuksan. This is the little treat that comes at the very end of the trail. I actually crossed part of the stream and set up the tripod on a little gravel bar for a better perspective. Since I was at this point of the hike at midday, the lighting is a bit off and the contrast is high. You can see the overexposed areas of the mountain. Still, it isn't horrible, and I mostly wanted to post it to show everybody how nice that view is. I used an aperture of f/25 to get the background and the rocks in the foreground all in focus; a shutter speed of 1/10 of a second blurred the water.
Below is some sort of moss, which I'm not going to even try to identify. I tried a variety of apertures, experimenting with different amounts of background blur, and arrived on f/5 as my favorite. The filtered-sun backlighting is what drew me to the scene.
Below is a view of a waterfall coming down the valley wall. There are a few peekaboo views of it, but the best comes right after the trail ducks into the forest - if I remember correctly, just immediately past the national park boundary. I used f/25 to get everything in focus and 1.6 seconds to blur the water.
And, lastly on that trail, some salmonberry buds, with a mossy alder grove in the background. I used f/18 to get some recognizable detail in the background.
Rasar State Park
Later that evening, I stopped at Rasar State Park, hunting for more signs of spring and some sunset scenery along the river.
What was most attractive about the evening was the light. Nice warm sunlight was coming in at an angle almost parallel to the river, giving me some interesting sidelighting and backlighting situations to work with. I shot the view across the river both horizontally and vertically, using f/22 to get everything in focus. Compositionally, I think I like the horizontal one better, although the vertical one preserves more of the blue reflection in the water.
And finally, here's a closeup of a bigleaf maple flower cluster opening up. I used f/3.3 because I wanted to blur the background as much as possible; otherwise, it would have been a bit splotchy.
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