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: