Above the Clouds

From what I understand, the Seattle area was stuck under a stubborn ceiling of clouds and fog yesterday. When I left Seattle before dawn, the fog was quite thick; it dissipated suddenly as I traveled eastward along the road between Arlington and Darrington. Skies were clear in Darrington and along the Mountain Loop Highway; at Goat Lake, my hiking destination, it was warm to boot. When I returned westward the clouds reappeared right where I had left them, although the fog was not as thick.

I've complained on this blog before about sunny conditions making photography more difficult due to high contrast, awkward shadows created by overhead lighting, and other factors. While I stand by my complaints, there are some factors that mitigate the difficulties this time of year. First of all, the angle of the sunlight - even at midday - is lower and the light is less intense. Second, sunrise and sunset are at much more civilized times of day, making it more practical to photograph early morning light. So I had a satisfactory photography trip "despite" the sunshine.

We'll start with pictures not actually taken at the lake, but at various points along the trail. The first comes courtesy of an avalanche chute along one of the switchbacks to the lake. I'd been struggling to incorporate the fall colors on surrounding ridges into an interesting composition, but I think the sidelit trees do the trick. The lighting falling on them is attractive, they give an interesting contrast to the ridge in the background (which is pretty on its own, but would have looked rather flat).

This one is from the farther junction of the upper and lower trails. I had hoped that there would be no sunlight in this composition, but as I set up my equipment and fine-tuned the composition, the sunlight increased as it rose through the trees. Thankfully, the trees still filtered it enough to keep it from ruining the image. And in hindsight, I kind of like it; it adds some texture. The trunks are those of red alder, and the orange tree in the background is a vine maple.

The composition below was my first of the morning, taken along the lower trail looking at Elliott Creek. My original idea had been to exclude the sun from the composition, focusing more attention on the creek and the patchy morning sunlight. But I decided that the sun would add more interest to the composition, and help "balance" it out by providing something of interest in the upper left (the creek is at the bottom, and all the foreground objects are concentrated on the right). At f/13, the sun didn't "star" as much as I expected, but it still works.

In the next image, the sun did star. I used f/22 to both ensure this and to get everything into focus. I found it hard to fine-tune the composition the way I like to, because the sun kept moving! You don't really think about it, but when a composition depends on the sun poking out from behind a tree trunk or other object, it doesn't take long for the sun's position to change enough to force you to move and recompose. I had to do this a few times, and the image below was the best result.

Right below the lake, there is a waterfall on Elliott Creek, accessible via some semi-sketchy side trails. I used an aperture of f/7.1 to blur the foreground leaves, hoping that this would make them seem closer to the camera/viewer. In hindsight, I wished I had used an even wider aperture and blurred them even more, focusing attention on the falls. But it's pleasant, at least, if not a show-stopping image.

Now, Goat Lake itself. My original plan had been to get to Goat Lake at about 9:30 am, to take advantage of (relatively) early morning light. Theoretically, this would have been possible if I had started hiking at 7:30 as I'd planned and had not made any stops along the way. A number of factors, however, conspired against this itinerary. Dense fog, slow drivers, no passing zones, and cruel potholes slowed my drive to the trailhead. Once hiking, photo stops (some of which you've already seen) slowed me further. I didn't make it to the lake until about 11:30.

The sun was in the southern part of the sky, thus more or less shining toward me as I looked at the lake. This created an interesting backlighting situation. In the composition below, I think it actually served me well, enabling me to create a contrast between the vibrant autumn color on the slopes and the snowy mountain in the background. If the mountain had been sunny, too, the composition wouldn't have been as strong. The straight diagonal line in the foreground accentuates this contrast.

I tried a variety of reflection images, and the one below is the best. By this point, the sun was off the lake, helping the reflections to come through more strongly - but this meant that the slope on the right was shaded, which I think weakens the composition. In editing, perhaps I could try to brighten it up a bit and bring out the colors.

This final reflection image doesn't have as strong of a feeling of depth as the one above, but it's still nice.

This final image from the lake was inspired by the way the sunlight was hitting their trees and illuminating their branches. There's some fall color on the opposite side of the lake, but it doesn't show very strongly in this image. Perhaps editing would help bring it out. The mountains in the background on the far left are also a bit overexposed. But I like this compositional idea. Something to play with in editing or, more importantly, try again sometime.

The final three images come from a group of nurse logs along the trail. There are a ton of seedlings growing on the logs, and I wanted to capture this. My compositions weren't as successful as I would have liked, mostly because they ended up being rather busy. I also had a hard time getting the focus point where I wanted it - it was late in the evening at this point, and so dark in the forest that, with the polarizing filter over the lens, I could hardly tell where I was focusing. (I could have tried focusing with the filter off, and then attaching it, but the act of attaching can jostle the tripod or change the zoom just enough to ruin the focus anyhow.)

Nevertheless, I have posted the three best below; they were taken with relatively wide apertures (f/6.3 for the first and last, f/4.2 for the second) to isolate one of the young trees.

A Methow to my Madness

I'm sure you've all visited places of which you've seen pictures or heard wonderful stories, and then found disappointing. There's nothing wrong with them, but they're a bit underwhelming when experienced. The views aren't what they're cracked up to be, or they're just views of clearcut hills; the "old-growth" forest isn't really all that old; the fall color just looks mottled and depressing; the "creek" is a trickle; or any other such scenario. All of these have happened to me.

But last weekend, which I spent in the Methow River Valley, was not one of those times. The fall colors and vistas of the Methow River lived up to the pictures and the stories. It was a whirlwind weekend: I woke up at 4am on Saturday, drove to the campsite, set up cams, and struck off with my camera. I was only able to photograph that evening and Sunday morning; by Sunday afternoon, I had to be on my way home. (I'd had three days free the previous weekend, but it rained every day, of course. I decided I'd rather camp for an overnight in dry conditions than do a longer trip in the rain. I've been camping in the rain all summer, and enough is enough).

Pearrygin Lake

We'll start our journey at Pearrygin Lake State Park. It actually wasn't my first choice for camping; there were some campgrounds on national forest land that seemed more interesting, but the federal shutdown threw a wrench in these plans. Unless you're into launching boats and such, I don't know if I'd necessarily recommend camping at Pearrygin. The campsites are not private at all, and I imagine the place is swarming with RVs during the summer. Nevertheless, on an off-season weekend in one of the lakeside campsites in the East Campground (don't camp in the West Campground unless you enjoy being deafened by boats), you can still have a peaceful camping experience.

Below is the view from a couple campsites over from mine. I used an aperture of f/22 to keep as much as possible in focus, but I cranked the ISO up to 400 to get a shutter speed of 1/10 sec - that created the specific look in the ripples that I wanted to achieve. Any longer and they would have been indistinct; any shorter and they wouldn't have looked smooth enough.

Beaver Pond

Saturday evening, I hiked the Beaver Pond trail and the Sunnyside trail, making them into a kind of loop. The Beaver Pond trail is interesting, as it travels through a moist bottomland and thus a lush forest of aspen, pine, and various shrubs and bushes. The first image encapsulates the nature of this trail, featuring a young ponderosa pine in the foreground, an aspen trunk, and a view across the wetlands to more aspen. True to form, I used a narrow aperture - f/32 in this case - and an in-between focus point to keep everything in focus. I don't think this picture would have been as interesting if the trees in the background had been obscured.

The second images puts ponderosa branches in the foreground, with aspen in the background. In a way, it is similar in concept to the image above, but different in approach. I used f/11 as a compromise - I wanted to isolate the branch in the foreground, but not so much that the trunks and leaves in the background were completely obscured. I tried a variety of camera heights on this one; I've said that your camera's elevation should be just as intentionally chosen as the spot from which you're photographing, and it was really true in this case.

Next are aspen trunks and leaves of other forest plants in various stages of fall color. I struggled a bit to find a good vantage point that would include these elements and not too much forest-floor detritus. Even this is cropped to 8x10; at the original aspect ratio, there was an unattractive area of dead stuff on the right. I used f/22 to get a wide depth of field.

The image below was almost impossible to capture, and I wasn't able to do it exactly the way I'd have wanted. What you see was taken with an aperture of f/22. I liked f/29 better compositionally, because the aspen trunks in the background showed up more clearly. But even at ISO 400, that required a shutter speed too long for the breeze at the time (and above ISO 400 quality seems to degrade). 

Now, a view of the Beaver Pond itself. I thought that including the mountain, but not all of it, would add a little contrast to the muted yellows, browns, and greens. Aperture? F/25. As usual, I wanted to keep as much in focus as possible.

Next is another view across the beaver pond. Lately, I've tended to avoid using dead things such as snags, stumps, dead plants, and others for a subject. I find living matter more interesting to photograph on the whole. In this case, though, I thought the dead branches made an interesting shape, and created some striking contrast. 

The most difficult aspect of the next image was choosing a focus point. Even at f/32, I couldn't get everything into perfect focus - I had to sacrifice a bit of sharpness in either the background or the rose hips in the foreground. The image I've posted is the one that preserves sharpness in the rose hips and loses a bit in the background - I decided the image would make the most sense if the foreground were all as sharp as possible.

They're watching you! The whiteness of the aspen trunks, along with the eye-like places where branches used to be (I'm assuming), are the features of this image. I used f/25 to keep everything in focus. I actually think that a wider aperture wouldn't have necessarily hurt the image, but I still like having a wide depth of field and a clear context for the trunks.

Sunnyside

To hike the Sunnyside trail is to travel through a different world. If you are heading east, from its junction with the Beaver Pond trail, you'll start in a mixed forest but climb into a purer ponderosa pine forest and then, eventually, a more open and grassy environment. On this better-drained, south-facing slope, only a scattering of pine and aspen grow. It's different, but still lovely, and the views across the basin are still very nice. The one image that turned out well from that trail is one such view.

Methow River

Finally, I hiked a portion of the Methow Valley Community Trail on Sunday morning, which follows its eponymous river with frequent views of it. Like the Beaver Pond area, this is a bit of an ecological world apart. There are plenty of the ubiquitous ponderosa pine, to be sure, but there are lots of cottonwood and deciduous bushes. There are a few (relatively) lush grassy meadows, some aspen groves, and - if you look carefully - a few guests more commonly seen on the west side: red alder and western red cedar!

I got a late start, because I had expected the previous evening that clouds would be moving in...but they didn't. Not really, anyway. So I was stuck with less-than-ideal sunny mid-morning conditions.

Below is my favorite image, setting cottonwoods against a ridge across the valley. Contrast the steep, dry, sparsely vegetated hillside with the deciduous trees on the valley bottom. What a difference geography makes! Although it was already getting rather late, the side lighting helps bring out the contours of the hill and make the image interesting (front lighting would have flattened it all out). I used f/18 to keep everything in focus; I didn't need to go any narrower because all the subject matter was fairly far away.

Now we see the Methow River itself. I used f/32 to get a longer shutter speed to blur the water a bit. I liked the way angled sunlight was hitting the cottonwood in the foreground.

Fall color extravaganza! This image comes from a swampy area along the trail. Again, the sun was a lot higher than I would have preferred for shooting a scene like this, but the side lighting helps a bit. I like how the areas of color are pretty clearly delineated; blue, yellow-and-green, red.

Harbor Eat 'Em

I took advantage of yesterday's dry weather to take a little traipse through the Arboretum in Seattle. As I always do in the autumn, I had a lot of fun with color. Occasionally, usually when sitting at home thinking, I'll convince myself that I need to take on a challenge and do some black-and-white photography. But then, I get to a location and - especially in the spring and fall, but really all year - my brain goes "COLOR!" and I forget all about my commitment to try out black and white. Oh well.

(This isn't to say that you can't take black-and-white autumn photographs effectively. You can, and indeed, I've seen some - including, of course, some by Ansel Adams. It's tricky, but with careful choices of subject matter, lighting, and control over how the black and white comes out, it can definitely be done, and the autumn leaves stand out as vividly as they would in a color photograph. It's just to say that I love color too much!)

Now down to business. Although most of the trees and shrubs at the Arboretum were still green, I did happen upon a few nice autumn scenes. The first comes from the north part of the arboretum, from the bridge to Foster Island. Taking pictures on a bridge in a crowded park can be tough, due to the vibrations caused by others' movement, but there were sufficient pauses in the armies of stroller-pushing parents to take some successful pictures.

I was attracted to the way changing leaves were framing four ivy-clad cottonwood trunks, and tried several different perspectives. The best two are below. Even though the second has a stronger sense of depth, since the trunks are more spread out, I think I like the first one better - the color is more balanced, with red leaves on the right as well as the left. The yellow leaves are also more prominent. And it's the color contrasts, really, that give the scene the zest it needs to be interesting.

Next is a photograph of one of the ornamental maples in the main part of the Arboretum. I liked how the red seed pods contrasted against the still-green leaves (something I've seen occasionally in native vine maples). There were some bushes right in front of the tree, so it was actually difficult to get to a spot where I could make a good composition. Below was my best attempt, and though a bit busy, I think it captures the contrast, and the sweep of the leaves, somewhat effectively. Since I was far away from the seeds (relatively speaking, due to the bushes underfoot) I used a very wide aperture of f/3.2 to achieve maximum background blur. Even more would have been nice, if my lens had been able.

For the third image, we are back to Foster Island, this time the open wetland area on the north end. I liked the changing colors of some of the hardhack leaves, and the way the flower/seed heads all leaned the same way. I opened up to f/4.8, which I believe was as far as the lens would let me go at this particular focal length.

Finally, we are back again to the main part of the Arboretum, and there were a few beautiful shrubs that had both red leaves and berry clusters. The background is a bit splotchy, as I knew it would be, but this particular composition was my best bet. I opened up the aperture to f/4 - which is not quite as wide as I could have gone, but I needed to preserve a bit of detail on the berries.

Toodle-oo!

Discovery Sunshine

Saturday's rainy trek to Gold Creek was redeemed last night by some sunshine at Discovery Park. When I arrived, the parking lot was almost completely full, and I was worried about the park itself being discouragingly crowded. In fact, I felt as though I had the park to myself for most of the evening. I guess it's big enough to absorb the throngs that visit it.

In the first image, I wanted to incorporate some of the dandelion seed heads into different perspective. I used my ultrawide lens, with a closeup filter attached, to get as close as I was while still having an expansive background. My original thought was to have one of the historic buildings in the background, but I never ended up finding an angle that both did that and presented the dandelions in an attractive way. Below is my second choice; I like the way the tree shapes fill up the upper part of the image. I settled on an aperture of f/7.1 to put the background of focus but not lose too much detail in the foremost seed head.

This second one is of lupine plants, gone to seed. I hadn't originally intended to do a square crop with this image, but upon viewing it on my computer, decided that wider crops didn't serve it as well. There was too much dark detail on the sides, which distracted from the sunset and from the less jumbled stalks in the middle. I used the narrow aperture of f/25, because I wanted all the lupine seeds to be in focus. An upshot of this aperture was the rays that are visible coming out of the sun.

For me, what was attractive about the next scene was the color. I wanted to work the yellow-green backlit leaves, shaded dark green maples, and beige grass into a single composition. Below is my best result. I wanted everything to be in focus so I used f/18. Ultimately, I'm not sure how interesting of an image it is, but it was an interesting idea, so I thought I'd go ahead and post it.

Finally, a wide-angle perspective of the historic buildings area. The contrast ended up less than satisfactory; it was pretty late in the evening, but I was shooting toward the sun; that and the filmy high clouds conspired to make me overexpose some of the sky. Post-processing would perhaps partially alleviate this problem. Even so, I like the composition, and how the foreground tree frames everything. F/18 was sufficient to get everything into focus.

Fog Fun

I don't recall whether I've written about this before, but September is actually a tricky month for nature photography. It's beautiful to experience - cool, fresh mornings; afternoons that are warm but not hot; leaves starting to change - but not as photogenic as one might expect.  For the most part, summer flowers have faded. A few leaves have changed color, but more are just looking withered and mottled. Certainly, there are good pictures to be had, but they require more patience to find than in August or October, when one can go for the easy money of wildflowers or abundant fall foliage.

The Gold Creek trail yesterday was quite damp, and rain was falling more often than not. But the upshot of the rain and clouds was an attractive fog that danced in and out of the valley. This first image comes from the viewpoint; I wanted to find a way to include the fog and the colorful vine maples in a composition. This was my best result, and although the contours of the fog do not show up as crisply as I might have preferred, I still like it. I also like how the branches essentially provide lines that lead toward the background trees. I used f/22 and set the focus point between the foreground and background trees to get everything into focus.

There were still some berries remaining on the bunchberry plants, and I finally found some at a height that my little tripod could feasibly photograph. I used f/7.1 in order to keep a decent amount of the foreground berry in focus.

For the next two images, we'll return to the fog theme. This first one looks down the Gold Creek Valley. It was actually raining at the time, so I had to crouch down under a tree to take this picture. Upon doing so, I waited until the fog was just right; I wanted some of the trees in the background to be visible and thus bring out the contour of the hillside. Since everything was fairly far away, and aperture of f/16 sufficed to bring everything into focus.

This last one was a bit of an experiment; it doesn't suggest a whole lot of depth, but I still like the way it turned out. As in the above photograph, I had to wait a few minutes for the fog to be just right - there were certain trees that I wanted to stand out, so I waited until a gap in the fog was between me and them. I think the light gray trunks complement the fog and add to the mysterious aesthetic. Since everything was far away and basically at the same distance from the camera, f/14 sufficed to get everything into focus.

Summer's Final Bonanza

Last week, I went on a camping trip, which was significant in that it was the first camping trip I've ever taken completely on my own. It's not that I mind having other people along, but all the best candidates were working, out of town, or otherwise occupied. My destination was Paradise Meadows in Mount Rainier National Park; I camped in the nearby Cougar Rock Campground.

In The Wild Cascades: Forgotten Parkland, Harvey Manning wrote of the importance of taking one's time in ascending through the Cascades' ecological zones, in order to fully experience the mountains. Preferably this would be done over a matter of days on foot or, if in an automobile, with plenty of stops along the way to take in the transitions.

This is all well and good if you have plenty of time, and your summer has been free enough of commitments that you can be patient with this approach, since you've had plenty of opportunities already to explore different facets of the Cascades on your own time. Sometimes, though, you realize that you haven't hiked or photographed nearly as much as you wanted to this summer, that you start work in a few days, and that the wildflowers are almost all gone. With your eyes on the prize, you skip the endless switchbacks through silver fir and avalanche chutes, and you drive up to the high country to get that last glimpse of summer's glory. I was in this latter situation, and although the wildflowers were past peak, they still amply rewarded my efforts.

Let's get to some images, shall we?

We'll begin with the obligatory flowering-meadow-with-Mount-Rainier-in-the-background shot. I'm sure you've seen pictures like this. I faced a bit of a challenge due to the fact that Rainier was in fact hardly visible at all. While this was initially disappointing, I soon realized that the partially shrouded mountain was interesting in a different way, lending some mystery and intimacy to the images.

I actually produced three satisfactory iterations of this concept, so I will post them all. For all of them. I used a similar exposure strategy - a narrow aperture, and a focus point between the foreground and background. In all three cases, I also had the camera fairly close to the ground; the exact height differed a bit in each case, but it was much closer to thigh or even knee level than eye level. I think the first, from near the visitor center, is the most striking compositionally, due to the closeness and vividness of the flowers. The second one, from Mazama Ridge, is also exciting. It represented one of the few intact lupine-and-paintbrush meadows in the area - in most meadows, the majority of lupine plants had already gone to seed, and the paintbrush were withering.

Following are two more experimental images with the shrouded mountain in the background. I am going to post both focus points that I tried - the mountain and the foreground flowers. I'm not sure which I like better. Apertures of f/14 and f/13, respectively, prevented too much detail loss in whatever was out of focus. I wanted the flowers and mountain to provide a meaningful counterpoint to one another.

Mountain challenges notwithstanding, the cloudy skies provided some obvious advantages, the foremost of which was even lighting. I've talked about this before - how overcast lighting is very versatile, and particularly useful the for photographing streams and forests (two frequent situations in this part of the world).

Below are two creek images. The first comes from Myrtle Falls (on Edith Creek), the second from a smaller creek farther along the trail. The pink flowers are monkey flowers. These compositions were challenging due to my location - the trail in both cases was relatively far from the water, so I could not use my usual technique of getting low and close to a chosen foreground. I instead had to zoom as far as my lens would allow, which can compress distant objects and detract from an appearance of depth.

For the first image, I was viewing the falling water at enough of an angle that a feeling of depth persists.  The second is a bit flatter, but since the camera was angled up toward the falls, a feeling of depth persists as well. In both cases, a more straight-on perspective would have been less compelling - but in both cases, that was ultimately out of my control. While it's true that I tried to choose the best shots from each vantage point, I didn't have my usual flexibility in choosing or modifying said vantage point.

The next image comes from Mazama Ridge; I wanted to capture the way the trees were festooned with fruticose lichen. I had a tough time doing so in a way that didn't include unsightly white blotches of overexposed sky. What you see below was my best result. I used a narrow aperture to keep everything in focus; it took some patience because, with an exposure time of one second, even slight movement of any of the branches would have blurred them, and I wanted them to be all sharp. I had to wait until the air was perfectly still. The image looks a bit busy, I'll admit, but I think it would make more sense at a larger size; all the different shapes would be more distinguishable.

Now we'll look at some images that go a bit closer in. The first is of aster, taken very early in the morning when the previous night's rain was still on the petals. I tried to set the focus point to include some of the drops. I used f/9, which isn't a very wide aperture, because I wanted good depth of field in the foreground flower and wanted the two background flowers to fade out of focus only gradually.

For the next image, I wanted to capture the way a paintbrush flower and a sedge were growing near each other. I would have preferred something with a straight green background, but there was no way to compose the shot without including other flowers. Below is the best result. I used f/7.1 to keep some form in the background flowers; at a wider aperture, they would have been unidentifiable blobs. I've been going back and forth in my mind on whether I like this image, due to the busy background.

This next one I like a bit better, since foreground and background are a bit more unified. It's still "busy," in a way, but it fits together more nicely. I used f/11 to once again preserve some shape in the background flowers. I like the contrast between the lupine and the daisies.

The next one features pasqueflower, I believe, already gone to seed, with Rainier in the background. I stopped all the way down to f/18 to preserve background detail, especially in the mountain. I had to do so because I was quite close to the pasqueflower in the foreground. Even though the colors are a bit muted in this one, I like the way they contrast - the green of the meadow, the beige of the pasqueflower, and the white of Rainier's glaciers.

I'll close the post with some more experimental images. With the first one, I wanted to incorporate the somewhat stormy and dramatic sky into a view of one of the flowering meadows on Mazama Ridge. I used a graduated neutral density filter to darken the sky. The trees on the far right look a bit too dark; other than that, though, the trees and the mountain didn't end up excessively darkened. Those too-dark trees on the right can probably be corrected without too much trouble. I would have preferred a more extensive group of flowers for my foreground, but this was the most interesting view that I could find in time and that incorporated flowers, mountain, and the interesting clouds.

The next image is similar, but it was done sans filter. Incidentally, it follows the rule of thirds prety nicely, at least vertically. The tree in the middle doesn't really, but sometimes strong shapes can override the rule of thirds.

For this one, I wanted to use a narrow depth of field (f/5.6) to isolate a red paintbrush flower from its purple, white, and green surroundings. Frankly, the result isn't as compelling as I had envisioned, but I like how the paintbrush is framed by different species of flowers.

Finally, another meadow shot. I wanted to juxtapose the meadow, with subalpine daisy featured in the foreground, against the gnarly trees in the background. In retrospect, they aren't as prominent in the composition as I'd have liked. Still, it's a nice picture. I used f/25 and an in-between focus point...you know the drill by now!