Good Morning, Sleeping Giant

It had been a tough week at work, so I decided: What better way to recover than to get up early on Saturday and catch a sunrise in the North Cascades? My destination was the Boulder Creek overpass, on the Baker Lake road; this overpass has a pedestrian walkway and a terrific view of Mount Baker.

A few parts of the drive were a bit dicey - not because of ice or anything, mind you, but because of thick fog, especially on I-5 near Everett and on SR 20 through the Skagit Valley. Add to that the "Elk Crossing" signs (which I believe now, since one almost killed me this summer), and you've got all the ingredients for a stressful commute.

Thankfully, I had left my self enough time to make sunrise, even driving slowly through the fog. The Baker Lake Road itself was frosty but generally not foggy, so not much of a problem at all.

I took a variety of compositions just as the sun was beginning to hit the mountaintop; the one below was my best.

I then had the idea of a composition that would include Boulder Creek and its rocky flood plain. As you can see, lighting was a problem, even at this early hour, with a large contrast between the sunlit part of the mountain and the still-shadowed foreground. Using a graduated neutral density filter would have been impractical, I decided, since it would have darkened the tops of the trees to the left of Mount Baker, which would have looked a bit awkward. Those filters are best when when the boundary between the light and dark areas of the image is more linear. (I did use a polarizing filter to help with the sky).

Still, I got it to the point where, with editing, I think there'd be a tolerable amount of detail in each area. The foreground doesn't need to be super bright; it's sunrise, after all. The water blurred at an exposure time of 1/2 second; the aperture I chose was f/18 to keep everything in focus.

Stay tuned for a post with photos from my second destination yesterday (the Baker River and East Bank Baker Lake trails).

Ghost Post!

Ghost towns and other freestanding historical structures and relics are hard to come by in Western Washington. I am not sure why this is, but I would hypothesize that this is due to extensive development in settled areas; and, in areas allowed to revert to a more natural state, the wet climate, relatively rapid rate of plant regeneration, and, in many areas, events like landslides and washouts. But, with that said, there are a few things here and there remaining from bygone days; usually, it seems, associated with some sort of extractive activity (e.g. logging/mining equipment).

Faithful followers of this blog will note that I usually post pictures of exclusively natural subjects. This post is unique, then, in that I am posting some photographs that show evidence of a couple of natural areas' human past. All but one of the images in this post, which is separately noted, come from the Lime Kiln Trail in Robe Canyon Historical Park.

The first two feature the Lime Kiln itself, which, according to this website, was used to fire limestone (quarried nearby) into lime, which was used in mortar and plaster for the construction of the adjacent Everett & Monte Cristo Railroad. With the first image, I wanted to definitively place the kiln in its natural setting and framed it between two mossy trees. I used a wide aperture of f/5.6 to blur the trees as much as I could and direct attention to the kiln. The second uses a wider angle and a wide depth of field (aperture of f/22) for a different approach.

This…is a thing. From the looks of it, I'd like to say it's a saw blade, but I really couldn't say definitively. I was intrigued by how it was broken and the way moss was growing on it.

The next set of two images comes from Meadowdale Beach Park in Edmonds. As I understand it, the notches in these stumps held boards that loggers would use to stand on while they cut the trees; that way, they wouldn't have to cut it at the much thicker base.

Of course, I would be remiss to omit any of my standard landscapes. They were a bit experimental; such is winter. These first two feature the South Fork Stillaguamish River; I was intrigued by the way the river itself was shaded but reflecting colors from sunlit slopes and trees above it. For both of these images, I used long shutter speeds (5 seconds and 3 seconds, respectively) to blur the motion in the water. I don't like the tiny overexposed spot at the top of the first; otherwise, these turned out reasonably well.

This last image looks down a slope to the aforementioned river. I used an aperture of f/29 because I wanted to get the licorice ferns in the foreground as well as the background trees in focus. The trickiest aspect of this image was the lighting; the contrast between the shadowy foreground trunk and the bright background (particularly the river) was high. I tried using a flash but at a shutter speed of 4 seconds, it wasn't making much difference (I would have needed a floodlight!). Still, the end result wasn't too bad.

I Tolt You So

A funny thing happened the other morning. I was all set for a forest hike in the foothills and, upon checking the weather one last time, decided that conditions were going to be too sunny for that. So I thought I would try my hand at a sunrise from the hills behind Tolt-MacDonald Park on the Snoqualmie River.

Well, I found no sunrise. As I ascended the hill, I could see that the view eastward over the valley, just above a layer of fog, would have been gorgeous. But I could not find a viewpoint in time. I know there is one up there somewhere - I've seen pictures - and I could have kept searching on the trails and gravel roads on the hill, but time was running out and, without a map, I was starting to wander in circles.

My Plan B was to see if I could do anything with the shafts of sunlight that would be coming through the trees at the elevation where fog's edge stood. I managed to make it to that point in time for the cool lighting; this time, the problem was subject matter. The forest at that level was not very scenic or inspiring; it was the less attractive kind of second growth where there are a lot of coniferous trees the same age and there is not much of an understory. I only got one decent picture, and I still didn't really like it, so I'm not going to post it.

More interesting, in my opinion, were a couple images I took in the park's lower elevations along the river. The forest here was also second-growth but much wetter (due to its position on moist flats near the river) and thus dominated by more interesting maple, alder, cottonwood, and cedar trees, complete with lots of moss.

Both of these images were taken with a narrow aperture to achieve a wide depth of field. In the first, I like the color contrast between the green foreground and the yellows and reds in the background. This one needs a bit of contrast and lighting work to bring out the green moss in the foreground, but it could be done.

For the second, the fog was beginning to break up and thus had a very warm quality to it. I wanted to make an image that captured the mossy trunks at varying distances.

Flaming Geyser State Park

The park gets its names from two methane seeps; the methane is deep underground and was first unearthed during exploration for coal. One seep burns ("flaming geyser") and another is underwater and produces bubbles ("bubbling geyser"). Although I didn't take any pictures of them, I did end up visiting the two geysers out of curiosity. The "flaming geyser" is a few inches high and only faintly visible. The "bubbling geyser" is also very small and, although the gray chemical deposits it leaves are interesting, releases quite a stench. It was interesting, to be sure, to see them and read about where the gas comes from and how coal exploration helped provide the gas a pathway to the surface. They weren't, however, an overriding photographic destination.

But I had other goals in mind. The park sits on the Green River, with numerous trails through nice forest with periodic river access.

We'll start with a couple of images overlooking the Green River through some characteristically mossy branches. In this case, I was particularly attracted to the chance to set the mossy branches in the foreground against other mossy branches on the opposite side of the river, all the while including the river in the composition. In both of these images, I used f/18 to keep everything in focus - any loss of detail would have obscured the mossy branches in the background and thus deprived this image of its context, which in this case was part of the interest.

The treat at the end of the trail is a view up the steep walls of the Green River Gorge. One thing that caught my eye was a mossy tree - a maple, I believe - growing from a little ledge on the canyon wall. I was attracted to the contrast between the green gnarly branches and the stark reddish-brown cliffs. I  photographed this scene at a variety of focal lengths; what you see below is the closest. Farther focal lengths minimized the tree too much and lacked a clear subject.

There are some wetlands in the park, too, and while the trails generally keep their distance, you can catch a few glimpses. The lichen-covered trees on the edges of the marshes and ponds caught my eye; I wanted to set them against the numerous cattails. Below is my best composition. I used f/32 to keep everything in focus; any background blur would have reduced the lichen-covered branches to a formless blob. Not okay!

The next image gives a sense of what the forest was like. I thought the split in the foreground trunk was interesting, as was the general lushness and mossiness of the scene.

Finally, an image of Christy Creek. This waterway, which flows into the Green River, spreads out and flows around some little islands of trees as it approaches the river. I had a tough time making an image that captured this; my best result is below. I included the cedar branch to add a bit of depth. I used f/20 to keep everything in focus. My shutter speed was 1.6 seconds. (I had to use ISO 500 to get this speed; at ISO 200, which is my camera's default setting, the shutter speed was actually too long, creating a smoother blur than I wanted).

At this point, you've probably noticed the glare on the cedar branches and are asking, "Well, why didn't you use your polarizing filter?" I did, but I couldn't use it at its full intensity - to do so would have cut out too much of the water's reflection, eliminating any sense of the water's motion at the bottom right of the frame. I needed to dial it back a bit, at the cost of a bit of glare on leaves and branches.

This may or may not end up being my last post of 2013. If so, thanks for putting up with me this year, and happy new year!

Epiphytes Never Sleep, Ep. 2

Winter in the Puget Sound forests is hardly worthy of the name, at least compared to so many winters elsewhere, and even nearby in the mountains. It would be more accurate to say that the growing season just takes a short nap, and the woods exchange one green garment for another. Whereas in spring and summer, leaves and bright new needles steal the show, epiphytes - such as moss and licorice ferns - are the green attraction in the winter. In Saint Edward State Park, epiphytes light up groves of deciduous trees that would otherwise be bare and dreary.

This first image is of a bigleaf maple trunk thus festooned. I tried it at two different apertures: f/5.6 (pictured) and f/22. I decided to post the wider of the two because the selective focus helps to simplify the image, keeping attention on the trunk and the mossy branches by eliminating distracting detail from the background. (The Picasa uploading process, with its automatic adjustments, has changed the contrast and saturation a bit. The air was a bit foggy, and if I were to fully process this image, that would come out more clearly, adding to the isolation of the foreground elements.)

This second image involves more maple (and I think some alder) trunks. I set the aperture to f/16 to get everything in focus; all the elements were too far away to effectively try anything involving selective focus. I like the way the trunks all converge; a thicker fog would have made this image more effective, but I only have so much control over weather conditions. I also like the contrast between the greens on the trees and the reddish dormant shrub cover toward the bottom.

Sauk It To Me!

Although I wouldn't consider myself a believer in astrology, I sometimes look at my horoscope online - it shows up automatically when I open up Yahoo. It's funny to see whether it comes true - and even funnier, when it gives advice, to see how my mind bends and twists that advice to reinforce whatever I was going to do in a given day anyway. For instance, this morning, it told me to "hunker down with [my] favorite entertainment," and suggested "binge-watching" a television show or going to a movie theater.

Binge-watch a TV show? Really? On a Saturday morning? And one that, by the way, was forecast to be dry? I don't think so! In my characteristic fashion, I chose to interpret the astrological advice broadly enough to include hiking. After all, that's how I like to entertain myself!

And a funny thing happened to me on my way to the Old Sauk River Trail - and again on the way back: I stopped at a conveniently located city park in Darrington to take pictures of Whitehorse Mountain, which was partially shrouded in clouds. I don't usually do straight-on mountain shots; I like to have something framing the mountain or otherwise providing a foreground. But Whitehorse is interesting on its own, and the clouds helped provide some depth and contrast. I experimented with several different focal lengths; the one you see below, the one I liked the best, was zoomed the farthest in of any of them. (This image is also from the morning. When I stopped to take a second stab at it on my way back in the afternoon, the clouds were still interesting but the lighting was not as good.)

The scenic highlight of the trail was probably the ice-coated boulders in the Sauk River, so I'll start with those images. I tried two different apertures with this first angle, so I'm going to post them both. The first is f/18 at 1/3 second; the second is f/7.1 at 1/8 second. (The shutter speeds are relatively similar because I wanted to keep the level of blur somewhat consistent; I changed ISO settings to keep them close). I'm not sure whether I like the wide or narrow depth of field better, which is why I posted both.

The next image looks at an ice-covered boulder in isolation. I originally tried using a shutter speed of 2 seconds - my usual approach with set-ups like this is to get as long of a shutter speed as I can and maximize the blur of the water. But in this case, the waves were so rapid and choppy that 2 seconds created too much blur, and the water was basically a formless gray area. So I opened up the aperture to f/7.1 and used a shutter speed of 1/4 second. The upshot was a narrower depth of field, which I actually like as well.

For this next image, I used a shutter speed of 1.6 seconds to smoothly blur the motion of the water (in contrast to the approach I used above).

The second scenic highlight of the trail was the moss that covered most of the trees and their branches. The attracting feature of this first moss shot was the backlighting; the camera is pointing toward a clearing, hence the light coming from behind the subjects. I used f/5.6 to blur the background and emphasize the front clump of moss.

Here is a broader view of the mossy forest. This gives you more of an idea of what the more thickly forested portions of the trail looked like. I used f/16 to get everything in focus. Compositions like this are always difficult to pull off, because they tend to get a bit busy. This one isn't too bad, though, because I managed to capture a lot of branches that were going the same way.

This next one has an epiphyte-covered snag in the foreground with alders in the background. I think the snag is of a cottonwood tree, although I could easily be wrong. I used f/5.6 to blur the background and emphasize the fern-covered trunk.

Finally, one more view of the river. This shot isn't terribly interesting, although I like the perspective. I used a shutter speed of 1.3 seconds to smoothly blur the water's motion.

Ice Is Not Enough

This Saturday's photo excursion created a bit of a quandary when it came to choosing a location. It was going to be sunny, so a pure forest destination was out. It was so dry that, despite the cold temperatures,  I was going to be hard-pressed to find interesting frost formations. Finally, I didn't have the time for a long drive. I settled on the Wilderness Creek/Peak area of Cougar Mountain, setting my sights on the modest goal of photographing ice formations along the creek itself.

But the ice formations along the creek, at least at the points accessible by trail, were not as photogenic as I had hoped. I found some snow up high, but much of it was rather lumpy and patchy. And the valley I was in received more morning sunlight than I had assumed. So I only came away with a couple interesting pictures.

Still, it was nice to be out and about in the great outdoors, even if it was quite chilly. The cold air and sunshine were refreshing.And there was no mud on the trail anywhere! Earth stood hard as iron, as the poet says. But the air was so cold that, by midmorning, there were significant ice formations inside my water bottle, and it was getting hard to open. So, though it was beautiful and surprisingly pleasant, I wanted to get out before my water became like a stone!

The first image is of some sort of fungus growing on a dead, decaying log. I had to work quickly to capture the speckled light coming through the trees - I've frequently attempted images in lighting conditions like this, only to have the sun move and put my subject either in the shade or in full sunlight. Thankfully, this one worked. I used f/9 to compromise between isolating the fungus in front, and keeping the background discernible.

The second one is of the trail near the summit of Wilderness Peak. I usually don't do trail shots, but I really liked how the sunlight was shafting along it; the snow on either side accentuated this effect. I accomplished the star effect by stopping down to f/18, using the widest angle I had available, and positioning the camera so that the sun was just peeking around a tree - in sum, turning the sun into a point source of light.

Cheers, and happy winter!