Optimistic Naming?

Dramatic names seem to be the order of the day in the areas where I hiked this morning - Cougar Mountain (hardly a mountain) in the Issaquah Alps, and I started out on the Wilderness Creek Trail (second-growth, really). At least, that was what I expected.

The naming turned out to be more realistic I had originally assumed, however - I had to huff and puff up a respectably steep slope for most of the mile and a half coming up the Wilderness Creek Trail. And the forest, while indeed second-growth, was lush, taller than I had expected, and quite lovely. Armed to the teeth with food, water, bug spray, and cold medicine (yes, I hike when I have a cold), I rose to Cougar Mountain's challenge.

The highlights of the trip, photographically speaking, were pictures of water along Wilderness Creek and at Coal Creek Falls. I of course used long exposures to blur the motion.

Here is one of some ferns along Wilderness Creek. The darned things kept moving, and I needed to use a longer exposure to blur the water, but this one was acceptable. Thankfully - for this and other pictures - I was able to wait until an opportune moment when the breeze calmed down.

Next, these ones from Coal Creek Falls. The highlights are a bit overexposed, but not overly so, and not to an extent that couldn't be corrected for if editing from RAW.

Another one I liked was this one of bleeding-heart leaves. Each leaf point had a drip of water on it, something I have never seen/noticed on a leaf before.

Also, I took one of my best-yet unfurling fern close-ups. The curled end and the vertical positioning makes it more appealing than my other pictures of similar subjects, I think.

Next, check out the boulders! There is so much stuff living on the rocks in this park. The forest here may be second-growth, but it's very happy second growth.

Finally, some shots of opening devil's club. They're basically the same; the second has a much wider depth of field, though. I'm not sure which I like better.

I swung by Redtown Meadow briefly, but didn't take any pictures. There aren't many flowers blooming now, just some fawn lilies too far away from the trail to be photographed properly. According to signs, however, plants like great camas, Deltoid balsamroot, and Western red columbine will bloom there later this spring. A place to revisit!

Happy trails!

Check it out!

So I edited one of my pictures from Carkeek Park in Photoshop Lightroom.

Before. Kind of a neat composition, but it obviously has some serious contrast and lighting issues, particularly in the upper half of the frame. I used a graduated neutral density filter when I actually shot it. This helped me keep some semblance of definition in the sky, but unfortunately darkened the branches in a bad way. As a JPEG this might be unsalvageable.

After. I did a number of adjustments in Photoshop, including a few simulated graduated filters adjusting exposure and contrast, and a lot of playing with the Curves feature.

It is obviously far from perfect. It could use some additional brightening, and perhaps a bit of contrast enhancement. (This is a dillema, though, because if I do too much brightening the sky becomes too white and loses its moody gray quality). The bottom half isn't as vibrant as it is in the original picture. But, as you can see, I've recovered definition in the sky and in the flower branches in the top half of the frame. Yes! This is something I can work with.

Orchard Fun

In Carkeek Park, the bleeding heart flowers are still blooming but starting to move downhill; same with the elderberry bushes and other forest flowers. Piper's Orchard, however, is at or near its peak. I chanced to be there yesterday morning.

This first one might be my favorite composition of the morning. I used my wide-angle lens, zoomed out all the way, for the exaggerated perspective. Using a wide angle also helps produce the star effect that you see on the sun:

The next one is basically the same shot, except moved to the right a bit to exclude the sun. The lens flared a bit, but thankfully far enough to the side that I was able to crop it off without losing anything crucial to the image.

The next is another shot of the orchard; it took me a lot of tries to get the trees exactly positioned the way I wanted them whilst excluding any obviously "man-made" objects from the shot. Not too long ago, I would have shot this with a narrow depth of field. But I think using a wide depth of field (f/20 in this case) adds a more vivid feeling of "depth."

Finally, a couple flower shots that turned out well. No interesting stories here:

There are a couple pictures that I liked compositionally but will need to be rehabilitated lighting-wise (one was also a bit tipped). I will be tinkering with their RAW files this week and will post any fantastic results I might happen to have.

Spring Break pt 5.2

On Saturday, after my morning at Mima Mounds, I spent the afternoon at Millersylvania State Park. The park is very nice, but there are a few trails that disappear into horrific piles of branches. Presumably these are from the ice storm that hit the area in January. Some of the trails have already been cleared, hopefully more within the near future. All the debris lying around looks a bit gross, but it's not too bad.

Also, I waas assaulted by a few mosquitoes (seven to be exact). It makes me wonder what mosquitoes do all day - because there are obviously more mosquitoes than can share the limited amount of human flesh that passes through the park's boggy areas. What do they eat, and what are they doing, when they're not lying in wait to ambush a human? And for every mosquito that bit me, moreover, there were about four that hovered around me and thought about it.

One of the day's highlights was the park's abundant vine maples (Acer circinatum), which happened to be blooming while I was there. I got these two interesting photos of their blossoms. I especially like the moody lighting in the first picture. The third of this set captures the sweep of a vine maple's leaves.

The park is also kind of old-growthy and has some big ol' trees. This next one is probably my favorite forest composition. I used f/22 to keep the tree trunk and the background in focus. In this case, I think it adds to the image's depth to have detail in the lush surrounding forest.

Here are a couple other ones that capture the old-growth essence of the park:

This next one I took with my wide angle lens, to give a sense of the lush forest floor in some parts of the park:

Finally, this last one of a sword fern unfurling, taken with my wide-angle lens:

Spring Break pt 5.1

On Saturday, as a last hurrah for my Spring Break, I drove down to Mima Mounds Natural Preserve in the hopes of catching some flowers.

According to park signs, this and other prairies in the south Puget Sound area formed after glacial meltwater, from the ending of the Ice Ages, washed up a lot of rocks and created some areas of very rocky soil that don't hold water relatively well. Later, during a warm period (10,000ya-4,000ya according to the park) prairie plants established themselves. After that, a wetter and cooler climate occurred, but the prairies were already there and maintained by local Native Americans, who burned the prairies to preserve camas habitat (the bulbs are edible).

Maintaining a native environment like this takes work, particularly in the wake of human disturbance and introduced species. While I was there, I saw volunteers yanking invasive plants out of the ground. Signs described how, in 2009, some Douglas firs were removed to allow Garry oaks to grow. Even before white settlement, native residents burned many prairies regularly to keep forest from encroaching.

There were a few camas blooming, though most of those flowers have yet to bloom in the park.

The real highlights were the shooting star flowers blooming all over the park. Here are the best pictures I took of them. Like camas flowers, these shooting star were too short for the use of my tripod; therefore, all of the pictures you see (in fact, all of the pictures I took at the preserve) were handheld.

I was also able to use my wide-angle lens for a shot. There is a little patch of dandelions growing along one of the trails in the middle of the park. Given how bright the sky was, it turned out better-defined than I had expected. I used an apterture of f/16 to get everything in focus. Were I to edit it, I would probably brighten up the foreground a bit.

There are also a lot of early blue violet (Viola adunca) blooming. Some of the flowers looked a bit motley - they seemed to already have been blooming for a while - but I found some nice ones. I'm finding more and more that I have to be very picky with the flowers I photograph close-up. I took a couple of camas pictures on Saturday, but ended up displeased with them. One of the flowers only had five petals (instead of the normal six). The other flower had all six petals, but some of them had holes and bites out of them. Everything "worked" in those pictures' technical respects, but the characteristics of the flowers themselves ruined the images.

Spring Break Pt 4

My latest photography adventure was a bit of a wild goose chase. I had read on WTA trail reports that flowers such as camas and paintbrush were blooming at Deception Pass State Park. Somehow, I assumed that camas must also be growing at Ebey's Landing, which is nearby. Incorrect! Other than common weeds, there were very few flowers blooming. The pictures I did take, to boot, didn't turn out very well.

I did, however, get this cool wide-angle shot of mustard flowers blooming:

Luckily, I had drawn a characteristically primitive road map to a trailhead in Deception Pass State Park just in case Ebey's Landing didn't pay off. I hiked the Rosario Point and Lighthouse Point trails; this venture proved much more fruitful.

I got a sweet top-down view of a paintbrush (Harsh paintrbush, or Castilleja hispida...I think). There was a little patch of these blooming on trail to Rosario Point. This marked the first time I had ever seen a paintbrush of this variety.

And another first: I finally found camas flowers! I believe they are common camas (Camassia quamash). They are just beginning to bloom on the bluffs of both points.

This was my favorite composition. I think the yellow flowers in the background add interest:

There's one little problem with photographing camas: the plants themselves are so short that I cannot use a tripod to photograph them! All the camas pictures you see tonight were shot handheld at ISO 500, which is a higher setting than I generally prefer.

Here are a few others:

I will definitely be returning to Deception Pass State Park in the near future - both for all the nice flowers and also for the forests. The forests are not all as lush as some in the Puget Sound area, due to the fact that the park sits in the Olympic Mountains' rainshadow. But still, they're very nice, have some interesting plants, and have some big ol' trees in the old-growth areas. It was so late in the day when I visited that I didn't really have time to photograph the forests (I started at Ebey's Landing in the early afternoon, and didn't get to Deception Pass until after 5pm). Shame. Next time!!

Spring Break pt3

Third straight day of photo-making! I like spring break so far. I also like this spring's weather so far. Quite an improvement over April 2011.

First of all, I was able to conjure up a much better Pacific bleeding-heart composition than last time I visited Carkeek. I used a narrow aperture of f/16 to get some definition in the leaves. The flowers stayed remarkably still for the 1.3 seconds my shutter was open.

Secondly, I got this interesting shot of a lilac bush beginning to flower. The first is at f/7.1, the second at f/22. They're both good, but I think the narrower depth of field accentuates the one open flower a bit more. I don't know. Still thinking.