Adventures in Sunshine

It was forecast to be a warm day, so I decided to beat the heat by hiking the Lake Twenty-Two trail in hopes of timing my travels so that I could do the climbing and photographing before things got too hot and, more importantly, while the lighting was still good on this bright and sunny day. Thus, I got up early - at 3:30 - and with the help of an uncharacteristically (for me) large dose of coffee, I was the first one to hit the trail and did indeed manage to get some nice light.

For the first one, I took advantage of some fortuitously placed side lighting to set some blooming fireweed against the cliffs ringing the lake. This is probably my favorite composition of the bunch, and I think the contrast between the sunlit fireweed and shaded cliffs worked well. F/22.

The next one is from the trail up to the lake. I wanted to juxtapose the old-growth cedar trunk in the foreground with the background forest beginning to be lit by the rising sun. It works, but I think editing would help bring this out more. F/25.

We'll end with two closeups. The first is western red columbine, which I've photographed before but never very well. Finally, I have a closeup of columbine in which the background is not splotchy. I've had more interesting compositional ideas with these flowers, but this is something that I can actually use, unlike my other images of columbine to date. F/5.6.

This last one I've seen under two names - Tofieldia glutinosa and triantha occidentalis. I don't have my plant book right now, but hopefully it will help me sort through it all. F/5.