Discovery Fireweed, Round 2

We'll begin with some closeups, the first one of fireweed, as the title promised. I did this one looking up at the flower, which I don't often do in flower closeups, and I think it works well and makes the perspective rather dramatic. F/5 was enough to isolate the stigma and put the rest of the flower well out of focus.

The flowers below belong to thimbleberry; I really liked the way the sunlight was falling on them. Additionally, there wasn't too much right behind them, enabling me to isolate them against the sky, which served as a good background. F/4.5.

Bellow is a yarrow near the beach. There are quite a few unusually pink and purple yarrow down there; I'm not sure whether this is just an endemic natural feature or the result of escaped cultivated varieties. Regardless, they're very lovely. F/5.6.

Next is some sort of weedy pea flower; again, I liked the light that was falling on them. They were backlit, but some trees and leaves helped soften the sunlight. F/4.5.

Below, some more landscape-like images of fireweed. The first is looking from the South Meadow area out to Puget Sound. You might notice that I cropped it pretty significantly - to a 4x8 ratio, to be exact. That was the best thing for the composition. I seldom do sunlit landscape shots anymore, but this one was early enough that the sunlight was still an asset rather than a liability. I used f/32 to really get everything in focus.

The next one was right at sunrise. Initially I was worried about the high clouds; I didn't want them to be distracting or, worse, block the sun itself. In retrospect, though, I think they make the image more interesting than it would have been with a clear sky. A narrow aperture - f/22 - enabled me to get the star effect on the sun.

Finally, a shot of the fireweed looking across the meadow. F/22 to get everything into focus.