Spring on the Sauk

Yesterday morning, I made a jaunt to the Old Sauk Trail near Darrington. I'd been there before, but only in the late autumn/early winter, and wanted to check out photographic possibilities this time of year. Turns out the forest and river views offer plenty of potential, and if I were to go back, there would also be some nice forest wildflowers to photograph (which I didn't focus on this time).

First is my favorite composition of the day; I'm particularly pleased because I don't get a lot of vertical compositions. F/18.

Next, two compositions involving the Sauk River itself. I used long-ish shutter speeds (1/3 second and 0.8 seconds, respectively) to blur the water's motion a bit. In the case of the first image of this pair, it made it difficult to freeze the motion of the willow leaves, so I had to sacrifice a bit of sharpness.

Finally, an image of some salmonberries in the foreground with an alder grove in the background. I used f/25 to get everything in focus. An aperture this narrow sacrifices a bit of image quality, but the result actually wasn't as bad as I had expected.