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).