Tag: green

Keep on Moving

Last weekend I made a short two day trip to the Palouse – an area in Eastern Washington famous for its rolling hills covered with patches of fields. It is very beautiful and photogenic place. Some call it American Toscana.

My first day of the trip in the Palouse was dreadful. Grey solid sky, no light, little color. Just as if it could not get any more discouraging, suddenly the rain started. It was pouring down heavily. Most people would stay home in that weather. Not me. I went on scouting around.

The rain stopped just as suddenly as it started. Heavy clouds and soft light were majestic.

I even caught a glimpse of warm pink glow in the sky from a light of the Sun settling for the night.

Just one small piece of advice: don’t drive dirt roads there when it is wet. The dirt is a fine grain clay that becomes extremely slippery when wet. You’ll lose any control over your car. I am talking about it from experience.

Rhododendrons or Not?

Recently I went with a fellow photographers to photograph rhododendrons which are common on eastern hills of Olympic mountains. We were hoping for fog to have a good separation of rhododendron bushes from trees in background.

There was fog but not where we needed it. The only option left was to use shallow depth of field. My fixed 50mm lens got second life. I had not used it for a while but it was most appropriate in that case since it had the widest aperture of all my lenses.

Rhododendron
Rhododendron

The other options was to let it blend with with forest, make it part of it.

Spring Green
Spring Green

Did I mention there was fog but not where we needed it? Well, we ended up spending most of the time photographing that fog that was somewhere else:

Fog Over Lowlands
Fog Over Lowlands

Fog Over Puget Sound
Fog Over Puget Sound

Freeway Poppies

California poppies can be found in Western Washington only along roads. I’ve spotted one of such places along one of freeways while driving my son to gymnastics. The hills was burning orange covered with poppies.

The next morning I woke up a little bit earlier to get to that hill and photograph poppies before work. I parked the car at the nearest parking lot next to a store and walked to that hill. The poppies were as good as the day before – an island of the Nature beauty in the middle of a city.

So, there I was, lying on a ground photographing poppies with cars passing by at a high speed. Here are a few photos I took:

Flower Hill

As I wrote in my previous post (Good Night, Ladybug) there is a hill close to my house that has various wild flowers blooming every year. Here are a couple more photos that I took at that hill recently.

Soft Light

There is no such thing as bad light.

When I just started photographing the only good light I knew was a sunset or sunrise. Then I added daylight with sunlight breaking thru the clouds which was creating an interplay of shadow and light on the ground. But for longest time I thought grey overcast day is bad light that is not suitable for photographing anything.

Well, I was wrong. I just did not develop my eye enough to see what a beautiful soft light an overcast day can give. That’s the best light for photographing deep in the forest where direct sunlight falling down thru a thick canopy of leaves and branches create extreme contrast.

Overcast day on the other hand creates nice soft light that is smoothly descending thru every opening and canvasing the ground with soft highlights.

What a perfect opportunity to photograph this flower that is blooming deep in Pacific Northwest forests whole spring and summer. I love its perfect triangle of three petals and three leaves.

Magnolia

Spring time in Seattle is a time of blossom. Lots of trees in parks, in back yards and along the roads are in blossom. As I drive I note places with a nice display of flowers and then return back with a camera.

One of the local favorites is magnolia with its big flowers. One of the challenges photographing magnolia is its really bright petals. This particular tree was in deep shade while background was in an open space with more light. This allowed for some well-balanced photographs.

Spring Is In The Air

Spring… What do you do to us. Emotions over the top. Creativity spruces.

After dreadful winter rains nice spring weather came to Pacific Northwest. And I cannot stop photographing. I have not sorted thru all the photos from Death Valley trip yet and I already took photos of cherry blossom, that I have not even looked thru, tulip festival, that I only quickly looked thru.

Today I wanted to hike up to some waterfalls, stopped on the way there to check out a creek running over the rocks and got stuck there for hours photographing the creek, rocks, flowers, reflections. I have not even made to the trailhead to the waterfalls that I was originally planning to go to.

Here is one of the photos from today’s trip:

_MG_7538

I really need to step up processing of all my photos.

PS And today while reviewing photos in camera I accidently navigated to the first photos on the card a discovered interesting images of plum blossom that I have not even download off the card yet.