Frosty Spring

I made an early-morning swing to Discovery Park yesterday. On the one hand, my pictures were not quite as successful as I would have liked in some respects. On the other hand, I was a bit adventurous and was pleased with the results given that I was pushing my boundaries, even if only slightly.

1) Pictures of frosty red flowering currant buds
I took these just before sunrise, which is something I usually don't do with close-up photography due to the long shutter speeds required and the possibility of slight breeze ruining the photo. I knew, though, that the frost wouldn't last long on these little buds.

Of all my tries, these two were the best. Neither is ideally sharp, but both are within an acceptable range. Also, in the second picture, I had been hoping to move the point of focus a bit closer, i.e. to the closest extension of the bud cluster. None of my attempts to do this worked, so I posted the best of those with the farther focus point. It's not perfect, but I think it works okay.

2) Backlit flowers
This is actually the same bush that I shot backlit last time I went to Discovery. This time, however, there were flowers on the branches, which I think made the shot much more interesting. The background is a bit dark, but that can be remedied somewhat, although the picture is pretty high-contrast and some blacks might have gotten lost. Also, I would want to tweak the white balance to bring out the green of the leaves more, I think. This could also be remedied, particularly since I have a copy of this image in RAW format. (Been busy lately and still haven't mastered editing in RAW. But we'll get there!) I like the composition, although the dead space in the top left and especially bottom right corners is unfortunate.

Next time, I will obviously better attend to white balance in the field. Also, I might try getting closer to a flower or group of flowers.

3) Flowers - worm's eye view
This one needs some work. The first thing you will notice is that it is way dark. But there isn't too much contrast in the picture, so this will be an easy fix. I stopped the aperture down to F9 and still the depth of field was quite narrow. There's a bit more definition in the background than is ideal, but for the flowers' sake, I wouldn't really want a depth of field much narrower than this. I think this is a concept worth trying again sometime. In the picture below, my composition wasn't fantastic - what you see is a vertical crop out of a horizontal picture! And it still has a bit of dead space at the top. Maybe with some creative cropping (along with the brightening) this picture could be fully salvaged. Still, I think it's a good start.

In other news, in a few days we might get another cold spell with snow levels at 500-1,000 feet! NO! I am so done with that winter weather nonsense! That would have been okay in early February, but not now!!

Spring?

Spring is so close, and yet so far...

It snowed a bit overnight, and I was able to snap a few shots before it melted (it melted off the flowers considerably even during the few minutes I was out taking pictures). The NWS claimed this morning that it temperatures might climb as high as 60 degrees by Thursday, a remarkable turnaround to spring-like weather. Not a moment too soon.

A Teaser of Spring

Spring has sprung in the Pacific Northwest, if just a little bit! The Indian Plum bushes are budding, a few of them even showing some leaves. This is usually one of our first native signs of spring around here. I also saw one red-flowering currant bush blooming - early for that type!

I took advantage of our sunny morning to go take pictures in Discovery Park. I was scoffed at when I announced my destination - why was I not heading to a place with an east-facing view, as I so often do for sunrises?

The answer was that I wanted to catch first light on the Olympic Mountains, and Discovery Park seemed like a perfect place to do so. This next picture is my best: the mountains through berries (snowberries?). The picture could stand a bit of editing, or perhaps even a lot of it. The color balance needs tweaking and the lighting needs a lot of help. (Readers should note that I edit pictures either barely or not at all before I post them online). A good start nonetheless, and I like it compositionally:

Now onto some spring business! I got some shots of opening Indian Plum leaves with some very interesting sunlight. In this first one, I can't decide if the circles in the background add to the picture or distract. (Actually, they're not quite circles since I didn't have my aperture all the way open - you can see the polygonal structure if you look closely; this makes them even more problematic visually in my opinion). They make it seem a bit "busy," but also add a dewy, spring-like aesthetic to the picture. Hmm.

Could also use some lighting work here.

And, finally, some other plants are showing less ostentatious signs of life. The first is a picture of a red alder, the second of a...well, I don't know! I'll find out this summer when it actually has leaves and/or flowers!!

Again, could use some color work.

SNOWPOCALYPSE Part 3: Bulldog Edition

Day Four (today, Wednesday) of our snow fun saw heavy snow in the early morning, slowly tapering off to only a very light snow for the afternoon. In mid-afternoon, I decided to take out a step out of my comfort zone and photograph a local elementary school. The heavy snow, combined with a decent breeze, made the snow on trees and branches a bit lumpy and inconsistent; moreover, the breeze itself would have made plant shots a bit dicey. The school building has a lot of red on the exterior, which made for some good color. I made good use of my main lens' wide angle capabilities in a number of the shots (maximum 18mm; equivalent to 27mm since my camera isn't a full-frame).

One of the buildings on the campus has a cute sign in the window; the reflections of the snowy scene completed the image. I turned the polarizer down to maximize the reflections. I must admit, I thought myself quite clever.

So do I...

I liked these colorful birdhouses in the snow. The dark windows make the image more contrasty than I'd like, but there was nothing I could do about it.

Initially, I was irritated that people had already walked down the walkway in the next one; soon, however, I decided that the footsteps enhanced the composition. I also took a version of this with the camera in the center of the walkway. I like this one better, though, since one of the red posts ends up in obscuring an ugly broken yellow basketball hoop.

On close examination, you'd find that the next one wasn't as sharp as it should have been. I was having some focusing difficulties this morning. Still, I liked the composition enough to post it.

The next few don't have any stories behind them; so I'll just post them and leave them with you! Enjoy the rest of the snow, those of you reading this who live in Western WA.

SNOWPOCALYPSE Part 2, or Snowflakes Keep Falling On My Head

I am calling last Sunday Day 1 of our snow adventures (we got some snow on Saturday, but it didn't really amount to anything). Day 2 was rather unimpressive, with a few light flurries and a lot of melting in between. Day 3 was fascinating - the local school district was scheduled for a late start, but heavy snow showers caused the district to cancel school as middle- and high-schoolers were en route to school, and after some elementary children had already been dropped off at before-school daycare. Some parents were a bit put out about the last-minute cancellation, and understandably so...but what can you do? The heavy snow showers were not in the forecast (the central Puget Sound area was supposed to be in the Olympics' precipitation shadow), so the school district did the best it could.

Once it stopped snowing (about midday) the temps climbed above freezing and the snow that had fallen started to melt and fall off the trees. Undaunted, I went to Grace Cole Nature Park and was able to squeeze out a few pictures as I got very wet from the trees' deluge of snowy debris.

First, a snowy berry bush (I am not sure what kind; I'll look later when it has some leaves). The berries turned out a bit dark, but not so much so that I couldn't fix it in postprocessing.

Next, some more "conventional" forest shots. They ended up looking a bit more monochromatic than I had intended, possibly due to the high contrast between snow and non-snowy, shaded surfaces. I think a lot of them are a bit underexposed, as well. It's easy to underexpose pictures of snow, since the camera will meter for the snow (whose values should in fact be brighter, closer to the right of the histogram if you know what I'm talking about). If I decide any of these pictures deserve serious editing, I'll have to play around with the tone curves in Lightroom to try to bring out the colors. Still, I think they're interesting:

There were a few madrone trees in the park, and since they keep their leaves all year, they looked quite odd in the snow. Definitely worth some more focused work the next time it snows (tomorrow?next...week? month? year? in two years? Who knows).

I thought the way this tree's branches looked with snow on them was very cool, and the suspended fallen leaves added some color contrast. Could have been a bit more pronounced, but hey.

A classic cedar branch shot. I love cedar branches. It was a bit breezy, so most of my shots along these lines were abject failures, but this one ended up acceptable.

Finally, a bush whose brown branches and suspended leaves (not from itself, but from a maple tree) made for an interesting shot.

Next up, I step out of my comfort zone and take some pictures of human creations!

SNOWPOCALYPSE (part 1...?)

Well, it finally happened, we finally got snow down here! Perhaps it was karma after my failed snow search last time I went out picturing - I couldn't climb to the snow level, so now the snow level descended to me! It snowed for a while yesterday morning, enough to make for some nice pictures. I was also fortunate enough to take them before the air warmed up in the early afternoon and melted some of of the snow on the trees (this makes things a bit less pretty). Upon review, some of my pictures actually need more contrast, but this is an easy problem to fix in postprocessing. Some of my pictures also weren't as sharp as I would have liked them. There were a few times when I had to clean water off of the lens surface, and the loss of sharpness could have been due to residue from that.

First, this one from the rosemary plant in our yard:

I walked to Hamlin Park a bit later. One of the things I tried to do was take pictures of snowy cedar branches - from behind. In addition to the usual challenge of getting things to hold still, I had the additional problem of getting inside a cedar tree and using my camera/tripod without bumping the branches. I was not always successful, but here are my better ones:

This one especially needs more contrast. This will, in turn, bring out the green of the branches. An easy fix in Lightroom, thankfully.

There is a little grove of cottonwood trees at Hamlin, and I liked the way the colors of their trunks stood out in the snow:

The rest (no good stories with these, but worth posting):

The forecasters are saying snow showers will pick up this afternoon and tonight. Hopefully this will mean more opportunities for snow photography, probably tomorrow. Stay warm, everyone!

Winter's Green

Well, this is a bit embarrassing, but only a few read this blog, and a significant portion are out of the United States (The Irish readers were easy to figure out, but I have recurring hits from Germany and Russia as well. Hmm.)

A few days ago I devised Operation Find Snow And Take Pictures Of It Without Dying Or Having To Buy Anything. The snow levels earlier in the week had been rather high, but dropped with the passage of a cold front. National Weather Service forecasts for the snow level had kept changing, but generally ran between 1600 and 2500 feet above sea level for the day before I was planning to go out. I had a brilliant idea to visit Wallace Falls State Park; the trailhead is at 300' or 400', well below snow level (i.e. I wouldn't have to drive in any snow), but the lakes and upper reaches of the park are about 1800-1900'. The low snow levels after a warmer week would mean that I would find snow, but not so much that I wouldn't be able to hike in it without snowshoes or other gear. I'd seen trip reports on the WTA website that described snow at the higher levels of the park and featured some very nice pictures. I was hoping for a similar experience.

But doing photo trips counting on a specific kind of weather is always a gamble, and this time I rolled a snake eyes. There was no snow at the top of the park, and a glorious cold, sleety drizzle started falling on me after a few minutes. I hadn't taken any pictures on the way up because I was in such a hurry to get to the non-existent snow. On the way down, however, I took a few, hoping to at least partially mitigate my failure.

First of all, some pictures of mossy things. This first one I really like; the foreground is a bit dark, but not so dark that I couldn't successfully tweak the lighting. The second one is okay; I would have preferred the ferns to be sharp, but there was too much breeze (it was dark and the shutter speed had to be very long - I think it was 5 or 6 seconds).

Next, some interesting color contrasts that one would only see in the winter. The second of this pair turned out better than I had expected, and better than it looked in my camera's little playback screen. I wish I had taken more along those lines. The red of the bushes (salmonberry? I didn't actually look closely enough to figure it out) stands out well. Winter is long, though...

Next, these interesting trees:

And finally, these semi-close-ups of young tree shoots on a mossy log. The moss in the background didn't show up as well as I would have liked. Still, they turned out acceptably well.

...So, all in all, a bit of a disappointing day but not entirely unproductive. Maybe sometime soon I'll get another shot at low snow levels. Maybe even (gasp) there'll be snow in the lowlands! Barring that, though, at least I can have a good time in a wintry forest even without any white stuff.

TTFN!