Methow Trip, part 3: Flowers

The third post from my camping trip this weekend! This one features images of all the wildflowers I found.

I'll start things off with a flower that was all over the place, heart-leaved arnica (Arnica cordifolia). I'd seen these before, on my Kamiak Butte trip, but had yet to make a satisfying photograph of them.

For this first image, I used an aperture of f/3.5, to isolate the center of the flower as much as possible and blur the petals. I think this improves the feeling of depth.

For this second image, I used f/13, because I wanted to put the foreground flower in context and get some definition in the background flowers.

Below is one that was new to me, old man's whiskers (Geum triflorum). This one I shot at f/6.3 - wider apertures blurred the stem and background flower too much, making them unintelligible blobs. The green background is thus slightly splotchy, but it's not too distracting.

Next is what I believe to be globeflower (Trollius laxus ssp. albiflorus). I used f/3.8 to blur the background as much as I could. I had my camera right on the ground to get this perspective. I can't remember whether I was using my tiny tripod or just using the dirt; either way, I wanted get a straight-on perspective, rather than photographing them from above.

Of course, what trip to Eastern Washington in the spring would be complete without that ubiquitous feature of grassy meadows, arrowleaf balsamroot (balsamorhiza sagittata). These two images juxtapose it against different types of trees; quaking aspen in the first and ponderosa pine in the second. For both images, I made use of narrow apertures to get both the foreground flowers and the background trees in focus - I wanted detail in both.

Next is another flower that was new to me this trip, lemonweed (or western stoneseed, or Columbia gromwell)  (Lithospermum ruderale). For this first one, I wanted to isolate the flower and blur as much of the leaves and background as I could, so I used f/3.5.

For the second one, I used f/8. Wider apertures blurred the background flowers too much.

Here is a closeup of a blooming lupine, lit up by some filtered sunshine that was shining through some trees. I had set up this composition while the lupine was completely shaded; the light came as an extra bonus. I wanted to boost the amount of the foreground flower that I had in focus, so I used f/5.6. Even so, it was barely enough, but I didn't want any more background detail.

Below is Hooker's fairybell (Disporum hookeri). I shot this flower on Kamiak Butte also but I like this composition better; I think the background leaves complement the flowers nicely. Also the darkness of the background helps eliminate distractions. I used f/3.5 to isolate the foreground flower as much as I could.

Next is false Solomon's seal (Smilacina racemosa). I used f/3.2 to isolate the in-focus areas of the inflorescence. I wanted to feature the arrangement of the leaves, and I think this composition does that. Doing so was all about perspective - shooting straight-on, rather than from above, so that the undersides of the leaves would appear in the lower half of the frame.

Next is a a group of penstemon flowers, probably Small-flowered penstemon (Penstemon procerus). I used f/5 because wider apertures did not put enough of the foreground flower in focus, making the image look generally blurry and not all that attractive. I found the majority of these plants growing among rocks, and had to do some searching to find some flowers with a background that wasn't whitish-brownish-gray.

The next one I am having a tough time identifying, but it might be rayless mountain butterweed (Senecio indecorus). I found these mostly along the Monument Creek trail, and not so much out and about in the Methow Valley area. Here, I stopped down ever so slightly to f/4.5 to boost the amount of the flower that I had in focus.

Next is star-flowered false solomon's seal (Smilacina stellata). I wanted to include the leaf pattern in the composition; I think it adds some interesting symmetry to the composition. Even at f/3.5, I still had plenty of definition in the leaves.

The flower below belongs to a shrub that I haven't identified yet. I'm going to keep looking, but I wanted to go ahead and post this. I found it growing in the more desert-y places. For this one, I used f/6.3, because wider apertures had too small of an in-focus area on the foreground flower. I was close enough to the subject that there still wasn't too much background detail.

Below is a paintbrush just beginning to open up; the red parts will be the bracts. I stopped down just a bit to f/4.5 to get more of the bracts in focus.

We'll end with another flower that was new to me this time: that of black gooseberry (Ribes lacustre), which I found growing along Rader Creek. In both cases, I used the fairly wide apertures of f/4.2 to isolate the flowers that I had in focus and blur the leaves, reducing them to just shapes.

Thanks for reading!

Methow Trip, part 2: Along the Way

Hello! Here is the second post from my camping trip this weekend. These images are all from pullouts along various roads, or from my campsite - not from my actual "hiking trips" but worthy of posting. If you haven't yet, check out the immediately previous post, the first one from my camping trip!

The first two images come courtesy of Washington Pass along the North Cascades Highway. When I arrived, to my dismay, the road to the viewpoint was still closed. Nevertheless, there were still some photographic possibilities to be had. The first image represents the view from the highway (there was still enough room in the turnout to pull over and park. I didn't stand in the road to take pictures, Mom). The second image represents the view from the road to the viewpoint - I walked around the road closure gate and walked a ways. The trail to the true viewpoint was still under several feet of snow, but the road was already clear, and I didn't see any harm in strolling up to take a few pictures. Many other travelers pulled over at the pass, but didn't walk past the closure gates - in contrast to October, when the road was closed due to the government shutdown, and people were swarming past the gates.

I don't like including gray, cloudy sky in my compositions as a general rule, because it ends up looking whitish and bland. I did it this time primarily because I had no choice. The fact that clouds obscured parts of the mountaintops (Liberty Bell and the Early Winters Spires) helps, though, as does the fact that the clouds weren't too bright.

Next, a view of the Methow River from the Lost River Road, near Mazama. There were a number of pullouts with views of the river, but this one had the best view of the snowy mountain in the distance (not sure which peak it is). I used a narrow aperture, f/22, for two reasons - to get everything in focus, and to enable a relatively long shutter speed (1/3 second) to blur the water. The exposure for this one was tough, despite the fact that it was late in the evening. The rapids at the bottom are a bit overexposed, but I think that could be remedied in Lightroom. I used a polarizing filter to deepen the blue of the sky and cut some of the glare coming off the river.

This one comes from an adjacent pullout; I wanted to frame the mountain with the cottonwood trees growing along the far side of the river. The mountain is a bit more obscured than I would prefer, but this was the best I could do. I used a polarizing filter, again to darken the sky, and an aperture of f/16 to make sure everything was in focus.

Finally, two images of Eightmile Creek, which flowed right alongside my campsite - which, by the way, was probably the nicest campsite in which I've stayed thus far on any of my photography camping trips. Lots of nice trees, bushes, and nice views of the creek. (I will say that the campsite at Kamiak Butte where I usually stay is also nice. It's more bushy and private, but it doesn't have a creek.)

I used apertures of f/20 and f/25, and exposure times of 1/2 and 1/3 of a second, respectively. I set my tripod up on a rock in the creek for a more direct perspective. This only happened, though, after I inadvertently sent my tripod in for a brief swim. A good reminder to always be careful when photographing in and around water!

Methow Trip: Landscapes Etc.

This is the first post of three in a series that will share my experiences camping in the Methow Valley area. Most of the images in this post are from the MVSTA trails system near Winthrop, with the exception of a few from the Monument Creek Trail in the national forest. All of the images in this post, with the exception of the very last, were taken at narrow apertures to put the entire scene in focus.

A World of Contrasts

In parts of the Methow Valley, particularly along the foothills of the Cascades, desert, grassy meadow, and forest all meet. Part of this, I think, is because of orographics; it is just over this area that the rain coming over the Cascades becomes insufficient to support a consistent forest. It also has to do with local terrain features - north-facing vs. south-facing slopes; the presence of rivers, springs, and wetlands; the ability of the soil in a certain spot to drain moisture; and others. The upshot is a kaleidoscope of Ponderosa pine forests, aspen forests, lush riparian areas, grassy meadows, and desert-like hillsides. This first pair of images features some of those contrasts.

The first looks across a valley where water from streams, and collected in beaver ponds, feeds quaking aspen, ponderosa pine, and lots of shrubs and wildflowers. Up above, you can see the much drier hillside. The morning during which I took this photo was so still that even the leaves of the quaking aspen did not blur in a shutter speed of 1/5 second.

This is a good example of what we in the business like to call framing. I could have found a more open vantage point and done an image just of the view across the valley - but where's the fun in that? Or rather, where's the depth? Including foreground elements helps add a feeling of depth to the scene, making the image more intimate and compelling. And in this particular case, it reinforces the message of contrast.

The second image looks across the ravine of Rader Creek, with alder in the foreground and a dry hillside with Ponderosa pine and balsamroot in the background.

The Blooming Desert


One of the most common shrubs in the desert-like areas was antelope brush (Purshia tridentata), and they were almost all covered with little yellow flowers. I've never seen anything like it in the deserts of Eastern Washington.

For the first image, a polarizing filter helped deepen the blue of the sky. I also shot this quite early in the morning; later in the day, the stronger sunlight would have been to harsh, and the high contrast would have distracted from the colors of the bush and the hillside.

The next image includes antelope brush, arrowleaf balsamroot, and lupine, all blooming together. I tried a horizontal version of this composition, but ended up liking the vertical one much better. With so many blooming antelope brush plants, the challenge in this and the other images was to get some of them to stand out, rather than having the picture be a nondescript yellow mass of color. The only solution to this is just to carefully select your perspective and subject matter.

The flower in the middle of the next image is one that I didn't take the time to identify it in the field (shame on me), growing in the midst of antelope brush plants. I'm going to look into it this week, and will update this post if I figure it out. In the meantime, suffice it to say that it's pretty.

Next, a garden-like scene with lupine, antelope brush, quaking aspen, and another flowering shrub (possibly choke cherry).

The final two antelope brush images put quaking aspen in the background. I wanted to make some compositions with this concept to highlight the fact that these habitats exist in such close proximity in many places.

Quaking Aspen

Now, a few shots that look more exclusively at the aspen. I've read that aspen is the most geographically widespread tree in North America. In Washington, aspen are only here and there, and generally only east of the Cascades. There are some extensive areas of quaking aspen, though, in the Methow Valley. It's called "quaking" or "trembling" aspen because the leaves shake in the slightest breeze, a breeze insufficient to stir the leaves of other trees. There are a variety of legends and folklore associated with this. One is that Christ's cross was made from aspen, and its leaves have trembled ever since.

The first image was rather difficult; almost being backlit, there was quite a lot of glare from the sun hitting the lens. My lens hood wasn't sufficient to block it; I had to get creative with my hand placement to the side of the lens! A polarizing filter helped to bring out the blue of the sky, particularly on the right-hand side of the image, which is at more of an angle to the sun and thus more responsive to the polarization.

Here's one done under overcast lighting, focusing more attention on the trunks themselves.

The image below looks down on an aspen forest from a dry, open hillside. I liked how trees of different sizes and ages were next to each other; that can be hard to come by when you're photographing a tree that often grows in large clonal stands.

Other Forests

The Monument Creek Trail (which actually follows the Lost River) doesn't visit the river very often, but passes through some nice meadows and interesting ponderosa pine forest. The trunk in the foreground of the next image os that of a particularly large and old Ponderosa specimen, with hemlock and a younger pine in the background. I thought that the fact that the foreground trunk was tilted would add some interest to the image, rather than having it be just a bunch of straight tree trunks. It also fills up the frame more nicely that way.

The image below, featuring hemlock and Ponderosa pine, is also from the Monument Creek trail.

This last one I tried at a narrow aperture like all the rest, but I found a selective-focus approach to be more interesting in this case. Maybe that's because it calls more attention to the new growth on the hemlock leaves.

Seattle Things

I'm going to condense the photographs from the last couple of trips into one post. A lot of Seattle parks are actually quite nice this time of year. A variety of flowers - both native and introduced/invasive - bloom in open areas, from now through August. My last two trips were to Magnuson Park and Discovery Park in search of some of these flowers.

Magnuson Park

First is a closeup of common salsify (Tragopogon dubius), which is apparently an introduced species. I was quite close, so I stopped down a bit to f/6.3 to get more of the flower's center in focus.

Next comes a closeup image of a vetch (Vicia) of some sort. F/5.6.

A specimen of the same plant, budding. I was so close for this one, in fact, that I stopped down to f/10 to have a decent amount of the foreground in focus, and to get some shape in the already-opened flowers in the background.

Finally, I noticed that a lot of the grass had these little things hanging from them. Are those stamens? Maybe? I don't know much about the anatomy of grass. F/5. Even at 1/250 of a second, this image was almost impossible to take in the breeze. The grass kept moving around, even in the slightest movement of air, ruining the shot. I did manage to get a few to work, though, and this was probably the best.

Discovery Park

I believe the first plant featured is Tolmiea menziesii, or Youth-on-age. I've seen it often, but had never really taken a close look at the flowers or photographed them. F/4.5.

Second are some flowers on a salal (Gaultheria shallon) bush. I used f/5; I would have liked to open up wider and reduce background clutter even further, and I tried doing so, but I wasn't satisfied with the smaller amount of the foreground flower that was in focus.

Below is miner's lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata), which I found along the trail paralleling the north beach.  I stopped down to F/10 because I wanted the shape of the leaf to be discernible.

Below are some lupines and oxeye daisy growing in a field near the beach, next to the Hidden Valley trail. Since I was pretty far back from the lupines, I opened up all the way to f/3, as wide as my lens would let me at that focusing distance, to achieve the selective focus effect and blur both the foreground and the background. This made getting the lupine properly in focus a challenge.

Next is an iris from a cultivated garden in the park, in the historic area. For this one, I also opened up wide, f/3.3, to blur the grassy background as much as possible.

People often bemoan the weather this time of year, late May and June, complaining about cloudy days and "June Gloom." The picture below, in which I took care to include the nondescript cloudy sky, is my answer to this complaint. F/22 to put the whole scene in focus. The flowers are probably some sort of vetch (Vicia).

Kamiak Butte, Pt. 3: The Meadows

The forests of Kamiak Butte are surprisingly nice, no doubt about that. But it's really all about the meadows. That's why you visit. In early may, they are a kaleidoscope of wildflowers and flowering shrubs. It makes you wonder what the Palouse must have been like before settlement. Was it all like this? Were all the open areas full of flowering plants like this?

Of course, the obvious stars of the show were arrow-leaved balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata) and paintbrush, so that's where we'll begin. I don't know what variety of paintbrush is featured in this post's images; my best guess is harsh paintbush (Castilleja hispida).

The first image features both balsamroot and paintbrush. I saw all these flowers growing close together and had the idea of setting the focus point to be a flower in the middle. Eventually, I narrowed the composition down to these specific blooms. I used f/3.2 to maximize selective focus and isolate the middle flower as much as possible. I think this image connotes a good feeling of depth.

For this image, I focused on the foremost flower but still used the idea of putting one flower within the context of a few others. Again, I used f/3.2 to maximize selective focus.

Here is a close shot of a balsamroot flower. In this case, I used f/3.5 to maximize the selective focus effect.

For the shot below, I was still pretty close to the balsamroot. But despite the selective-focus appearance, I used an aperture of f/16, because I wanted some perceptible detail in the balsamroot flower in the background. This puts the foreground flowers in their meadow context, and enhances the perspective.

Now a wider view of a balsamroot field, this one on the West End Primitive Trail. In contrast to some other wide-angle shots I'd taken on the trip, I specifically wanted to avoid including any of the distant rolling-hill farmlands in the background. Instead, I wanted an entirely natural context for the balsamroot. Perhaps this gives a glimpse of what much more of the Palouse looked like once. I used an aperture of f/20 to put everything in focus.

Below is a larkspur (genus Delphinium). I think it's probably upland larkspur (Delphinium nuttalianum) - that's what's suggested by WSU resources about Kamiak Butte. Anyway, it's much more important to note that it's a larkspur. I used f/4.5 to blur the background and the buds behind the flower.

Below is a desert parsley. A number of varieties of desert parsley grow on the Butte, so I'm going to have to be content with that for now. F/4.5 for background blur. Most varieties of desert parsley, being very small and close to the ground, are tough to photograph without including sky (which, on a cloudy day, can be quite unsightly). This was my best result.

Below is a flower I haven't identified yet. I'm working on it. I know that I promised myself that I'd try to be better about identifications this year, but I was on such a roll on my trip that I didn't bother much to get out my books when I was actually photographing, which is really the only way to do it. Trouble is, I kind of like this image. I think the rocks behind and in front of the flowers lend a lot of depth and intimacy to the scene. F/5 gave me sufficient selective focus.

Below is what I believe to be small-flowered blue-eyed Mary (Collinsia parviflora), which appear periodically in both the meadows and forests. (I've also seen them west of the Cascades, on Whidbey and Fidalgo Islands in rocky meadows). They're certainly small - so small that they quiver in even the slightest breeze, making a photography a challenge. I think they quiver of their own volition, even when there isn't a breeze. I was so close that I used f/6.3 and still only had a very small area of the foreground flowers in focus.

I arrived a bit earlier in the bloom cycle than last year, so I had the chance to enjoy some earlier flowers that I missed last time. For instance, there were still lots of shooting star (genus Dodecatheon) still blooming up on the ridge; last year, they had mostly all withered. For this first image, I was close enough that f/5 gave me plenty of background blur. That close, it's challenging to get the focus point where it needs to be, and you don't want to lose too much depth of field, so it's often a good idea to stop down, even just a bit.

This one looks at an entire flower stalk. I used f/4.5 for this one, to achieve selective focus.

We'll close with another early flower, grass widow. There seem to be a lot of scientific names associated with grass widow, and the Internet is only confusing me more, so I'm just going to stick with the  common name. These flowers were hard to photograph because their flowers are small and near the ground, face down, and mostly faced away from the trail. I had to lie on the ground to take the flower below. I used f/4 to blur the background, and keep detail only in the flower and a bit in the leaves at bottom.