Happy Summer!

Well, summer has arrived, at least in spirit and in weather (temporarily), if not in name or in schedule. I made it to Richmond Beach the other night and snapped this one:

The next evening, I wandered around Discovery Park for a while. The vetch are blooming like crazy and the lupines are also blooming. Did you know that there are two kinds of lupine in Discovery Park? Large-leaved lupine and another kind I haven't quite identified. I'll have to look at its leaves more closely. Here are the lupines:

And here are some pictures of vetch. Did you ever think that their flowers look a bit like pig snouts or something? The first one suggests that to me. The second has an interesting backlighting scheme, I think.

There are also a few camas plants scattered throughout the South Meadow. I think they might actually be great camas rather than common camas. Anyway, they are just starting to bloom.

How Blue Was My Valley

My trip last Saturday might be the super-long day trips for a while, largely for financial reasons. so I wanted to go out with a bang. So I took advantage of some camas blooms down south. Lupine and other cool flowers are starting to pop up in local parks now, so I'll have plenty to do close to home in the near future.

I got to Mima Mounds right at sunrise, and there was some very nice light coming across the fields. I took this one with a graduated ND filter - which may have overdone the darkening of the sky, but not irreparably so.

On these next two - and I can't decide which composition I like better, so I'm posting them both, although I 'm instinctively drawn to the first - I should have used a wider aperture. I wanted some definition in the background flower fields, but f/13 cluttered the background a bit more than would have been ideal. Oh well.

Here are a few more from Mima Mounds. Again, the first of this set could have used a narrower aperture.

This next one I took with my wide-angle lens, at its widest focal length. I like the exaggerated perspective, it makes the flowers feel "close":

It was also Prairie Appreciation Day at nearby Glacial Heritage Preserve, which is not ordinarily open to the public. Unfortunately, the preserve was only open from 10-4, not the best timeframe for photography. I found some very nice flowery forest glades that would be very photogenic early in the morning or on an overcast day. If there is ever a Prairie Appreciation Day on a cloudy day, I am definitely returning.

Wildflowers for the Parsimonious

Did you know that you can find camas and other interesting wildflowers within Seattle? I didn't! Carkeek and Magnuson Parks, I have discovered, both have camas meadows! The flowers have to share space with some invasives, but that's the price one pays for staying in the city. The camas at Magnuson aren't as impressive as those at Carkeek.

(But what do we really want when we look for a "natural" area? One would be hard-pressed to find a place both accessible and free from human influence. I am not just talking about things like development, logging, etc. Invasive species, forestry practices, and other effects abound. Even hunting can affect the the look of a natural area - the hunting of herbivores can advantage the plants they normally browse; the hunting of their predators can increase this browsing. I would argue that one would be hard-pressed to find a place, especially in Washington State, free of human influence. Even the first Euro-American explorers and settlers arrived to find a landscape shaped by native fire practices and other such things).

Anyway, the pictures! My favorites were two of backlit camas flowers. By using a very wide aperture I was able to eliminate most of the background clutter, and ended up with a nice yellowish-green. My camera didn't quite capture the deep purple of the flowers, though. I shall have to experiment with white-balance settings, either in camera or in Lightroom.

These next three I also liked, although they are not as spectacular:

I also liked this one of a group of dandelions. I also shot this clump with my wide angle lens, but didn't like the results - there was a fait amount of distortion and I had a hard time getting it focused properly.

Lastly, a couple other flower types that I found in Magnuson. The first I haven't identified yet and the second is a vetch of some sort, probably common vetch, although I'm not 100% sure.

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: