A Very Green Adventure

Whoever is in charge of the weather made up for last weekend's unwelcome sunshine and wind by giving me an entire day of perfect photographic conditions - bright-cloudy skies, almost no breeze, and raindrops on grass and flowers to boot. I headed on over to Goat Lake to take advantage of these conditions.

The first image comes from Goat Lake itself. This is the only image I made at the lake - stratus clouds were obscuring most of the peaks surrounding the lake, limiting my photographic possibilities. Still, the lake was pretty in a different way with the low clouds. The image below looks across the lake to one of the snowfields; the leaves in the foreground belong to vine maple. I tried this composition at f/29 to get everything in focus, but decided that a wider aperture - f/6.3 - was more interesting, and that is what you see below. In this case, I think blurring some of the background detail enhances the feeling of mystery and stillness.

Below is a forest of red alder, with an understory of devil's club (aka "Dinosaur Plant") in the foreground. I set up the tripod fairly low to fill up the foreground with the devil's club and get a more interesting perspective. From beneath, the devil's club leaves seem to glow, and I wanted to capture that. I used f/22 to keep everything in focus.

(The trees in the background, due to their whitish trunks, are sometimes mistaken for birch or aspen. But in this case they are red alder; the whitish color is not an intrinsic property of the trunk itself but due to lichen).

The old-growth trunks below are just before the official wilderness boundary along the trail. I think the vine maple leaves in the foreground add some needed contrast to what otherwise would be a much blander image, as well as a bit of scale. F/18 to keep everything in focus.

The image below looks across Elliott Creek. The tree trunks belong to red alder. All in all, I like the very lush look of the image. I needed to use f/29 to keep everything in focus, and the shutter speed of 4 seconds blurred the water's motion.

The image below highlights the beautiful new growth on what I think is a young hemlock. F/22 to keep everything in focus. Red alder are the trees in the background.

Now a few closeups from the hike. The first is a grass or sedge of some kind that I saw in open areas throughout the hike. I used f/3.8 to maximize foreground isolation. I think the curved leaves/blades, as well as the elements in the background add a good linear dimension to the photograph. The raindrops were the icing on the cake.

This little plant is fringecup (Tellima grandiflora), I think. The flowers are usually white or greenish; I've never seen them this pink before, so I just had to do a picture. The vivid pink was such a strong contrast against the day's general green-ness. F/4.5.

Below is western red columbine (Aquilegia formosa).  I used f/4.5; I would have liked even more background blur but wider apertures resulted in too small of an area in focus on the flower, and that wouldn't do. I decided to prioritize that.

And the final image, while not particularly captivating artistically, is still cool - check out all the growth on this complex of nurse logs!