Snowy Lake

Yesterday, I had the good fortune to hike the Lake Twenty-Two trail, off the Mountain Loop Highway. I say "good fortune" particularly because of quite favorable conditions - most of the trail was clear, with a few inches of picturesque and easily hikeable snow around the lake. I did not even end up needing the traction devices I brought. It's not often that you can visit a mountain lake in those conditions in late December!

Lighting is tough in snowy weather conditions. Snow is very bright, increasing contrast and making it harder to expose many compositions properly. Moreover, the snow plays havoc with the camera's metering - it wants to read the snow as a neutral tone, when in fact it should be brighter than neutral. Since I generally set exposure settings manually, the solution was to stop up and just be prepared for my camera to yell at me for "overexposing" the scene.

The first photographic highlight of the trip was the views along the way. About two-thirds or three-quarters of the way up (don't ask me the distance, I'm terrible at estimating distances), the trail breaks out into an open rocky slope with great views to the north and northeast, including various peaks and the South Fork Stillaguamish River Valley. I liked the rugged trees growing on the slope as well as the views, and tried to include both in my composition. The patchy fog in the valley was really the magic ingredient here, making these compositions much more interesting than they otherwise would have been.

At the lake, there were lots of huge boulders lining it, especially on the south side. Lined with snow, I thought they were quite picturesque, particularly with snowy trees and cliffs in the background. I am unsure which of these next two compositions is the best, so I will post both. In both cases, I used a narrow aperture because I wanted the boulders, trees, and cliffs to all be in focus.

Finally, two views of the lake itself. In the case of the first image, I had to get out the heavy artillery - my ultra-wide lens - to include more of the peaks above. I tried including all of the peaks, but that made them seem too small. Cutting off the top of one of them helped achieve the sense of scale that I wanted. In both cases, I used narrow apertures for a wide depth of field.