Old-Growth Adventures

The Mountain Loop Highway has many advantages; one of these is easy access to some very nice areas of old-growth forest. The images in this post are from the Youth-on-Age Nature Trail and the Lake Twenty-Two trail.

Close-Ups

First is a bunchberry flower (Cornus canadensis) that I foundgrowing on a tree trunk. I really liked how it was nestled within the surrounding leaves. I used as wide of an aperture as I could in this case, f/3.5, because I wanted to isolate the flower as much as I could. A decent area of the flower was still in focus at that distance, and the wide aperture helped blur any distracting detail on the leaves.

Next is a ripe salmonberry. Ripe salmonberries sport a variety of colors, from yellowish to deep red, and I thought one of the red ones would be fun to photograph. In this particular case, there was some filtered sunlight falling onto the berry; this would have washed out the color. So I blocked it with my hat; the red of the berry is much more striking that way, particularly against a partially sunlit background. I used f/6.3 so I could get a decent amount of the berry in focus.

Next is a wild rose; I think it's baldhip rose (Rosa gymnocarpa). I like how this composition turns out; it keeps main attention on the flower while including enough leaves to give some context. I used f/5, because opening all the way would have resulted in a smaller area of the flower in focus than I wanted.

The final closeup is of a flower I hadn't seen or noticed before - I think it's Coast boykinia (Boykinia elata). F/4.5.

Landscapes

We'll begin with a shot of an old-growth cedar trunk with bunchberry growing on it (this provided the location for the first close-up of this post). I really liked how covered this particular trunk was with lush growth. Move over, nurse logs; this tree has a head start! I included the trunk in the background to provide some context. I used f/25 to get the whole shot in focus.

This landscape features vine maple in the foreground, along with the old-growth trunk of what I think is a Douglas fir. I included the background trunks on the left for some balance and contrast. I used f/18 to keep the whole scene in focus. At a shutter speed of 1/3 second, it took some patience waiting for a lull in the breeze (I wanted the leaves to be sharp).