The Other Spring, Pt. 2

This weekend, I visited a place very similar to the place I described in my last post - Washington Park in Anacortes, which is near Deception Pass and whose forests and south-facing rocky meadows share similar characteristics. The southern parts of the park are the highlight, with trails that meander through flowery meadows and feature grand views of Burrows Channel, Burrows Island, the Puget Sound, and the Olympic Mountains. And although the trip was not the bonanza of show-stopping images that the Deception Pass hike was, I did get a few nice ones.

This first one features death camas and the view out to Burrows Channel and Burrows Island. I really like the warm side lighting that this image captures. An aperture of f/6.3 provided a good compromise between selective focus and keeping enough definition in the background to give it a discernible form. It could use a bit of contrast tweaking, but it's alright.

This next one features a much more intimate perspective of death camas. Despite the selective-focus appearance, I used f/18 to keep a bit of definition in the coastline in the background. I think it needs some lighting and contrast work; the filtered sunlight (the sun was partially behind a tree) isn't all that flattering with the blue sky and water in the background. We'll see what happens in editing.

This one was a flower I found growing in the forest. Unlike calypso orchids (see below), which I found throughout the park, I only found this flower once. It was a tricky character to identify, but I think it is spotted coralroot. My plant book says it is "widespread"; I've never seen it outside of the mountains, but my travels are just beginning! I'm finding more and more, though, that native biodiversity has taken a hit near populated areas, and plants that should be widespread can only be found in outlying areas like the mountains, or other areas where there has either been relatively less disruption to the ecosystem or a strong effort to preserve and/or restore it.

The picture uses an aperture of f/5; I wanted some definition in the foreground but anything more than f/5 would have made the background too splotchy. It is already borderline too splotchy; the flowers, unfortunately, were on a rocky and awkward slope near a tree, not giving me much flexibility in choosing where to set up the shot.

The next one is of a calypso orchid, a small and easy-to-miss flower that grows under forest cover. I've never seen them in parks in and around Seattle; apparently, the plant used to be more widespread but is easily killed by trampling or picking. The picture's not quite as sharp as I would have liked, but I really like the sunlit background; I think it creates an interesting, moody atmosphere, without being quite so bright as to distract from the flower itself. Obviously for this one I needed to maximize selective focus, so I opened up to f/4.2.

This one is of field chickweed, I think. I liked the backlighting that was falling on the flowers. I used f/5; narrower apertures added too much distracting detail, and wider apertures lost too much detail in the in-focus flower. I'll be interested to see what I can do with the lighting and color in this shot in post-processing.

Finally, some sea blush growing between some reddish rocks. I tried a few different apertures; f/8, which you see below, provided the most satisfying image. This one isn't a show-stopper, I don't think, but it pleasantly depicts a flower in its context at eye level.

Did you notice a theme? There were several pictures for which I said some contrast post-processing work would be required. This is what happens when you photograph on a sunny day. The lighting is much harder to manage! Additionally, I've realized that you have to be more intentional about how you use lighting. On an overcast day, you can just compose your shot without worrying about it very much, and the lighting brings out the subject. On a sunny day, though, you have to make lighting a "character" in the scene; if you don't use it intentionally, it obscures your subject.

The Other Spring

Spring around most of western Washington brings sensations that should be familiar to all of us. The constant sound - sometimes a gentle murmur, sometimes a thundering roar - of cascading water. Falling from the sky onto leaves, from leaves onto the ground, down the hills and along ravines. The feeling of water, from the sky or the trees, falling on one's head. The sight of the luminescent green of moss, young leaves, and unfurling ferns, punctuated occasionally by a white, pink, or yellow forest flower. Mud, sticky mud, everywhere beneath one's feet.

In a few hidden pockets of Western Washington, though, a different spring exists - one characterized by sweeping views of the sky and open, grassy meadows bursting with a kaleidescope of wildflowers. One such place is Deception Pass State Park; this past weekend, I visited the Goose Rock and Lighthouse Point trails. They pass through a variety of ecosystems, including rocky meadows. Ultimately, I didn't escape the rain, but it was still an experience radically different from this year's spring photo trips to date.

According to signs at Goose Rock, its meadows exist because retreating glaciers scraped the hills down to bedrock, and plants grew as soil gradually accumulated.  I have read in other places that thin, rocky soil precludes the growth of trees and large, woody plants due to the lack of water retention throughout the year (very little rain falls during the summer); I would assume that the same principle holds true here. This, in addition to the northward direction of glacial retreat, helps explain why these meadows particularly exist on sunny southern slopes. You can see this on Google Earth - check out Goose Rock, Rosario Head, Burrows Island, and Fidalgo Head to see this phenomenon at work.

Let's move on to some pictures! As usual, I'm going to start with my favorites. This first one features some variety of desert parsley, a flower that I saw several times last year but never photographed in its own right. This first composition ran the risk of being too busy, but at f/4 I was able to eliminate enough background detail to keep the composition harmonious. I like the vertical lines of the grass against the horizontal lines created by the flower clusters.

Next, a few camas shots that I like. Camas are native and grow in spring-wet, summer-dry meadows in the region; their bulbs are not only edible but were a staple for the diets of many First Nations in the Pacific Northwest. They were so valuable, in fact, that some groups periodically burned meadows to prevent forest encroachment and maintain a favorable habitat for the camas.

The first images comes from the Lighthouse Point trail; the yellow flowers in the background are buttercups and desert parsley. I used f/5.6 - not quite the widest aperture, because I didn't want to lose quite that much detail in the foreground flower. In this case, f/5.6 still provided satisfactory background blur.

The second comes from the summit of Goose Rock. I like the simplicity of the composition and the loneliness of the flower; I only wish I had used a wider aperture (f/5.6, what I used, is pretty wide, but I could have used even a bit less detail in the background). Still, I like how it turned out.

This final camas shot also came from the Lighthouse Point area; one of its large rock faces is in the background. As in an earlier shot, I like the contrasting line directions; the camas stem is straight up, but the grass and rock slope are diagonal, as are the desert parsley flower clusters. I think this adds depth to the composition. I actually stopped down all the way to f/10, so that the flowers and rocks in the background wouldn't be totally formless; I had tried a wider aperture but didn't like it.

...And then there was this plant, which I don't think I've seen before. I'm thinking it's a meadow death camas. It's called "death camas" because its poisonous bulbs closely resemble the edible bulbs of the camas. I like this picture because the out-of-focus yellow flowers in the background give it an interesting texture, I think. I stopped down to f/9 to maintain plenty of detail in the flower cluster itself, and to keep the background flowers a bit more distinct.

There were also some paintbrush blooming around Goose Rock (I think these are harsh paintbrush). For this picture, I used f/7.1. In hindsight, I wish I had used a wider aperture to reduce the background splotchiness. It doesn't kill the composition, but it makes it less compelling than it should be. Still, I like it, and the diffuse backlighting makes the flowers seem luminescent against the shaded background.

This shot of desert parsley isn't as captivating as the first, but I thought I'd post it. I think the aperture of f/5 that I chose serves it well.

Although most of my photographs came from the meadows, I did take a few in Deception Pass's forests. The first features the flowers of what I believe to be red elderberry, with a Douglas fir trunk in the background. I used f/9 to keep the trunk and flowers in the background discernible.

The next one features a blooming madrone (arbutus) tree. I have never seen one of these trees with such picturesque blossoms. They usually look pretty scraggly, even in the spring. I would have liked to try out some pictures closer to the tree, but alas, I could not have done so without trampling the meadows.  The picture was more difficult to take than it looks - to get both the madrone and the firs in the background in focus, I had to stop all the way down to f/20 and set the focus point between them (intentionally rendering them both blurry in the viewfinder, which is always an interesting experience).

Finally, some shoots of new growth on a salal plant. This picture uses f/4; I had one with a slightly wider aperture that I liked better but in it the foreground didn't end up sharp for some reason. Still, kind of a cool scene, even if the background gets a bit distracting.

Before I sign off, I'll just say a word about a couple pieces of equipment (besides camera and lenses, of course) without which many of today's pictures would have been painful and/or impossible to take. The first was my small tripod, whose legs are only a few inches long and can be spread out so that the camera's point of few is only a few inches above the ground. The second was a viewfinder attachment that allows me to look through the viewfinder at right angles to my camera. Thus, if I have my camera flat close to the ground, I can point this attachment straight up and look through the viewfinder through this attachment rather than having to get my eyes down to the camera's level. This saves my body a lot of wear and tear on the trail!

Alright, we're done! Bonus points to anyone who actually read the entire post...!

Stillaguamish Spring

There are different ways to enjoy rivers on foot in the Puget Sound. One is more classic hiking trails that feature big rocks, narrow canyons, big trees and crashing rapids. Another is via walking trails, sometimes in parks and sometimes not, in a more pastoral setting. The rivers are broad and pass through majestic colonnades of cottonwood and alder. River Meadows County Park, in Snohomish County near Arlington, fits into the latter scenario.

The park adjoins the South Fork Stillaguamish River, with broad lawns, grassy meadows, and cheery deciduous forests. The morning featured frequent rain showers - not downpours, but enough to be a nuisance. But, happily, the rain cleared up for a few hours, and there were even a few minutes of "sunshine" (brighter clouds) before they darkened again and rain resumed.

I'll start things off with my most interesting two shots. The first is of Pacific bleeding heart. The selective focus of the image belies the aperture I used - no less than f/18! I didn't want the trees in the background to be a formless blur; I wanted to put the flowers in some context. Since I was already so close to them, I needed to stop that far down to get it.

This second combines salmonberry flowers with a nice view of the river. As in the last picture, for similar reasons (even though I was not quite as close to the subject), I used an aperture of f/18 to make the river and trees in the background discernible.

The rest of the images are experiments, the results of which I consider to be less than stellar but still worth posting.

Bleeding heart, once again f/18 (this seems to have been the aperture of the day!). I want to capture the sweep of a large cluster of the flowers.

In the next two, I attempted to capture the contrast between alder leaves, which are green, and cottonwood leaves, which are much more yellowish early in the spring. I used very narrow apertures for both (f/22 and f/32, respectively) to maximize depth of field. I'm not sure how compelling the compositions are, but the color contrast comes through. I took a vertical version of the last picture, to conform more to the contour of the alder in the foreground, but liked the horizontal version better.

That's all for now, folks. Perhaps the advertised nice weather this week will provide some sunrise/sunset opportunities; otherwise, next weekend will bring more adventures. Cheers!

The Trouble With Trillium

This past weekend, I made an early morning trip to Cougar Mountain, the Wilderness Creek trail in particular (I explored a couple others, ultimately, but all of my pictures came from the former). Spring has sprung, with even some trillium flowers beginning to pop up! The majority have not, but a few are brightening the forest. They were joined in a few places by some sort of yellow violet, with maroon lines on the petals (unfortunately, no pictures turned out).

I actually found it quite difficult to take satisfactory pictures of the trillium flowers, despite their seemingly very picturesque qualities. The troubles were twofold as follows.

• Technical: The trillium flowers all fell in my tripod coverage's gap. I have a small tripod that's only a few inches high, and a large tripod that ranges from about six feet down to about one foot. The trillium flowers were taller than my small tripod, and too short to photograph with my large tripod (at least with the compositions I had in mind - none of the flowers that morning lent themselves well to a birds-eye-view perspective). The first shot I am posting I took with my small tripod, but with the legs bunched together to add height. The second shot  was handheld. In both cases, I lost the tripod stability that I prefer, thus losing some sharpness. To bump up shutter speed, had to boot up the ISO to 500, which adds some noise, and underexpose slightly, which worsens that problem.

• Compositional: Careful readers of this blog will remember my discussion of the difficulties with flower portraits. How do you place the flower either in an interesting context or present it in a compelling way, that's not just a flat picture of the flower? Context was hard with the trilliums, as the forest floor was still rather brown and cluttered, and the trees were sunlit and thus too contrasty. Also, trillium flowers are so perfectly shaped - with three nearly identical petals immediately above three nearly identical leaves - that they are hard to present in a manner more interesting than a straight-on, top-down shot.

By far my most interesting composition of the morning was of an opening trillium, with the two leaves in the background cradling the bud (this was the only flower I saw that morning that had its leaves arranged in this way). It's not as sharp as I prefer, but I think it might be adequate, and anyway, it's an interesting composition. Dost ask which aperture I used? F/4.5. I started with a narrower aperture, because I wanted more detail in the bud, but this cluttered up the background too much.

This next was the best of my trillium portraits, both compositionally and technically in terms of sharpness. Since I wasn't directly in front of the plant, and since the flower came out diagonally a bit relative to the leaves, the photograph has a side perspective and off-center subject placement that I've found difficult to do convincingly with other trillium shots.

Happy April! Until next time...

Boeing Creek Spring

I was hardly able to believe my luck - two days of good lighting in a row! Sunday afternoon saw lightly filtered sunshine. And although there was a light breeze, I fortunately wasn't focusing on closeups. I ambled down to Boeing Creek Park, one of my favorites, to see what was going on.

For this first image, I was attracted by the backlit Indian Plum leaves, and I wanted to find a way to incorporate them with the mossy trees in the background. My first composition from this spot actually set the leaves all around the frame, with the trees showing up in the center. Theoretically, this would have worked. In practice, though, two factors conspired against it: A splotchy patch of white sky showed up at the top of the frame, and the composition included a big ugly dead maple leaf hanging in the bush (and there was no way I could remove it without killing about a hundred plants).

So I brought the camera higher and chose this composition. There was still a problem: at f/9, not all of the background was in focus! I didn't want to stop down past f/9 because I didn't want any more deetail in the foreground. I tried a few different focus points; my most pleasing results came from focusing on the tree on the right, which is the most prominent.

This second image is not quite as striking as I had envisioned but I thought I would post it anyway. I think the bush opening up is a red elderberry, with a big old Douglas fir in the background (one of the park's remnant giants). I used f/5 to achieve as much selective focus as I could. The trunk doesn't show up as vividly as I had imagined it would...but I still think it's an interesting shot.

Toodle-oo!

Return of the Salmonberry

Today, while not quite as paradoxical as its immediate predecessor, was close. The morning dawned with the underside of high clouds aflame with red and pink. Soon the color faded, however, and what remained was an overcast and unusually frigid March morning. Frost hung on the grass. Even a few patches of snow remained from yesterday morning's snowstorm, which had ended as oddly and abruptly as it had begun, giving way to a cheery spring sun still not warm, high, or long-lasting enough to reach all of shadow's cold refuges.

I returned to Meadowdale Beach Park to finish last week's unfinished business. The salmonberry flowers were undaunted by the cold. Indeed, I got one of my best salmonberry portraits to date. Flower portraits are tricky; you want to have some sort of unique context or perspective without distracting from the flower itself - but you need that extra component, otherwise the photograph is pretty but relatively uninspiring. I think this first image does the trick by incorporating a second flower and a bud in the background. They give the image some context while not compromising the centrality of the foreground flower. I used f/6.3 to keep the aforementioned background objects from becoming formless blobs.

This second image is a different angle of the same flowers, also at f/6.3. It's less perfect, but it has a different feel to it, due to the vertical perspective and the inclusion of a bit of sky in the background.

The next photograph puts salmonberry flowers in a bit more context. I wanted a flower shot with some mossy trunks and branches in the background. I actually tried this shot on two occasions during my hike. The first time, the air was a bit breezy and I had to use a quite high ISO to get a reasonable shutter speed at f/20, the aperture I needed to get adequate background detail (I actually would have liked more, but that would have been even more difficult). My results were still not very sharp and the noise was high. On my way back, I was able to use "only" ISO 500. It's not as awesome as it was in my mind's eye; I'll have to come back to it eventually to decide whether it was worth all the trouble.

The next one I rather like. The morning sunlight was beginning to burn through the clouds, although it was still diffused a bit; it was also still angled. All this made for some very interesting lighting. I wanted to put the salmonberry flowers out of focus to emphasize the idea of the forest. I stopped down to f/9, though, so they would retain something of a discernible form. They give the forest a cheery aesthetic. I don't like the half-trunk on the right side. This partially has to do with the crop; I cropped it to a standard 8x10 dimension. It would obviously look different at other sizes. In a final edit, I might crop a bit more out from an 8x10; the bottom could afford to lose a bit. Other than that, I think this one turned out well.

Next is a shot of the same plant and the same background, from a slightly different angle and with the flowers in focus this time. The filtered sunshine brings out the salmonberry plant more than overcast lighting would have. I used f/9 to keep some detail in the background trunks, thus preserving the image's context.

Finally, a shot of a broadleaf maple overlooking the alder and salmonberry forest. A bit of slight, filtered backlighting made the mossy maple branches stand out.

Eventually, the filtered, angled sunlight changed into overhead, direct sunlight, rendering the forests a contrasty mess to a camera's sensor. I was fortunate to have been outside with my camera during such choice conditions!

A Post-Literate Park

Today, for the first time, I visited Washington Park in Anacortes. Its hiking trails are more extensive - and more rugged - than I had expected. I jumped the gun on the specific varieties of meadow flowers that I wanted to photograph, so I didn't come away with any show-stopping pictures. I am more excited for the possibilities that this park might hold. If pictures are to be believed, the rocky meadows on the southern slopes have quite the array of wildflowers later in the spring. I certainly hope so, because it's a cooler setting than the Ebey's Landing, or even the rocky meadows in Deception Pass...and both of those places are farther away!

I will post one photograph from the afternoon. This is a red-flowering currant bush. Even after I had waited about 20 minutes for the right lighting, this picture was still almost impossible to pull off - there was a slight breeze, there wasn't a ton of light in the shade, and I needed a wide depth of field (f/10 was the aperture on which I ultimately settled). I had to crank the ISO all the way to 800 and still couldn't go any faster than f/50 of a second - and it was still a bit underexposed. So it's dark and, worse, there's a lot of noise. Still, I kind of like the composition.

Also, if you ever visit this park, there are two things to note. First, I wouldn't really recommend driving the loop road through the park - it's narrow, it has some sharp turns, and you'll be dodging pedestrians and bicyclists. (Similarly, if you walk the loop road, you'll have to dodge cars, but this is not as stressful). The park is much more fun to enjoy on foot, so set the time aside and walk!

A second thing to note: Beware of the trail signs. At almost every other park that I have ever been to, trail signs feature the names of the trails and/or the names of landmarks accessed by a particular trail, along with arrows and numerical distances in labeled units. Hardly any of the trail signs in Washington Park are so equipped. Rather, they use colored symbols to guide the hiker. At first, I was bewildered and navigated using my map and my position relative to Burrows Channel and the development to the east of the park. Eventually, I noticed that some of the symbols recurred (although sometimes backward or rotated), so there is a logic to this system. I don't understand why they couldn't have used a more conventional marking system, though. So if you visit, I would highly recommend using a map - and your wits, given the presence of some unmarked side trails.