Fun in the Rain

Good evening all! During the past couple weeks, I've had marginal weather on my hiking days, but was able to find fun shorter hikes to visit.

Old Robe Canyon

Most recently, I spent an afternoon at the Old Robe Canyon trail near Granite Falls. Despite its short length, there's a lot to see, with mossy trees galore and diverse river views. I successfully battled rain, ice pellets, and snow for the shots you will see below.

First, a view of the river from near the end of the maintained trail. I like the lines that the river bank and tree trunk create in this one. While I was shooting, I noticed at the last moment that, despite the overcast conditions, the light from the sky was creating a lens flare! It took both my lens hood and hand shading to alleviate this. F/14, 2 seconds.

Here's another shot of the river, again with the mossy-trees theme. I didn't depict the motion of the water as clearly as I'd like, but I like the interaction between the foreground and background trees and branches. F/16, 0.8 seconds.

 

Lastly, below is an interesting swamp/pond along the trail. The later time, and clouds gearing up for another shower, meant that I had quite dark conditions to work with - I used an exposure time of 20 seconds for this shot! Thankfully, there was very little breeze, meaning that most of the image ended up sharp. F/16.

 

 

Spring Lake/Lake Desire

Prior to my Old Robe Canyon trip, I visited the Spring Lake/Lake Desire area near Maple Valley. Below is my one good image from the morning, taken just as rain was starting to fall. F/14. I visited the nice viewpoint on Echo Mountain as well, but had a hard time with photography there, in part because cloudy skies were obscuring some of the views.

 

That's all for tonight. Stay safe, readers, and keep an eye on the forecast - we may yet get a snowpocalypse!