Autumn in the Canyon

Well, after delay of more days and weeks than I care to count, I was recently able to get out on a photo adventure. The destination was the Deep Creek Canyon area of Riverside State Park, near Spokane. I didn't have the entire day, so I chose this area due to the relatively short mileage of the trails.

If you can find the right spots, central and Eastern Washington can be spectacular in the autumn. One thing that helps is to "just follow the water" - look for creeks or creekbeds, rivers, lakes, wetlands, depressions, and other places with more moisture and you have a good chance of finding some deciduous trees. Cottonwoods, for example, love water and frequently grow along riverbanks. Quaking aspen aren't as tolerant of flooding as cottonwoods are, but they also like moister areas. A host of other trees and shrubs, too, grow in these places.

Below is a view into the Deep Creek Canyon from one of the trails. As you can see from this and the following images, the fall colors were amazing. I used f/22 to get the grass in the foreground and the canyon in the background in focus. I set the tripod pretty low for a better sense of depth - but not too low, not all the way down, because that would have brought the rocks and grass in the foreground too high and obscured too much of the view into the canyon.

Below is another view across the canyon, with cottonwoods (Populus trichocarpa) in full autumn raiment, and a bit of one of the canyon walls visible on the right. I used f/22 to get the whole thing in focus.

What's great about this area, though, is that you don't merely get to see the canyon - there are trails that take you directly into it. Further exploration is possible by wandering around on the rocky canyon floor. This next photograph was one such image I found while wandering up the canyon. I used f/20 because I wanted to get some definition in the canyon and trees in the background - that context, I thought, was important to this image. The leaves in the foreground - I am guessing that they belong to a willow of some kind.

And a final view from within the canyon, f/22 for everything in focus. I usually try to avoid overexposed sky in images like this, but I don't think it's a huge detriment to this particular image. In this case, I didn't want to cut off the top of the bush at center top, so I had to make that compromise.

I used a polarizing filter in all images, primarily to cut the glare from the leaves and the rocks, thus saturating their colors.

And then it was back. Driving through Spokane, where the trees are as prickly as the drivers on the road, and back to my home away from home to hit the books once more.