Archive for September, 2008
I went up to Picture Lake yesterday for autumn photos of Mt. Shuksan. The place was mobbed in mid-afternoon when the light was nice on the mountain, with photographers everywhere. Many failed to heed the “stay on the trail” signs, trampling a delicate resource. Shame on them.
I made my sunny afternoon photos, then headed on up to Artist Point for more variations. Did I need more Shuksans? Probably not. Could I resist a beautiful sunny day under blue skies with early-peak fall color? No. So I shot with a variety of foregrounds until the sun went down. Then I headed back down the road to Picture Lake.
By this time the sun was off the mountain but the sky was still light. There were two other photographers still working from the paved viewing platform and I eventually joined them for the view of the mountain reflected in the perfectly calm lake. Both of the others were advanced hobbiests, one shooting with a 6×17cm back on a 4×5 view camera and the other an advanced Canon digital body. They were both planning to stick around to shoot star trails on the moonless night. I was tired and hungry (you’d think I’d learn to always keep some food in my camera pack) so I didn’t stay that long.
The photo here was made about 7:45 pm, with a 90-second exposure. One of the really nice things about digital is there’s no reciprocity law failure like there was with film. No extra exposure needed, no weird color shifts. In the original you can see the beginnings of star trails. I couldn’t see the stars above Shuksan with my naked eyes while I was shooting. Speaking eyes, mine are getting definitely older so I have more trouble focusing than I used to. Autofocus doesn’t work very well in near darkness. Note for the future: prefocus the camera before it gets dark and then turn autofocus off.
September 29 2008 | Photography | 3 Comments »
The last week has been a whirlwind of garden touring. While I may not have visited a full sixty gardens there sure were a lot.
I started last Thursday with an afternoon in Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Park where the lush tapestry of annuals and a modicum of perennials were in their late summer glory. The photo here is of gloriosa daisies with sweet potato vine, shot with my 90mm tilt-shift lens cranked over for a selective focus effect rather than to keep the entire subject sharp. The soft overcast light was very welcome.
On Friday I headed down to Portland, Oregon for the annual Garden Writers Association annual symposium. Saturday we toured several northeast Portland gardens. David Perry and I photographed each other photographing the gardens for the intro slide show to our Sunday morning presentation on making magic with your point & shoot camera. It was a lot of fun working quickly and hand-held. David and I shot some of the same subjects, but saw them completely differently. We each got lots of pats on the back for our program and we saw people putting our suggestions to use when we headed out for the afternoon’s tour.
Sunday afternoon we visited Iseli Nursery and Terra Nova Nurseries, both wholesale growers with well-designed display gardens and fantastic plants. The rain held off until we got back on the bus. Isley specializes in dwarf conifers and Japanese Maples; Terra Nova is best known for introducing exciting Heucheras and other perennials to the marketplace.
Monday our busses took us to the Portland Classical Chinese Garden, the Portland Japanese Garden, the International Rose Test Garden, and the Oregon Zoo where we had dinner. Tuesday we went to several private gardens in Eugene. This morning I went back to the rose garden to make some specimen photos and worked until the wind picked up and I decided I needed to start north to get through Seattle before the traffic got too bad.
September 24 2008 | Gardens and Photography | No Comments »
I was in Seattle earlier this week and stopped by the Washington Park Arboretum to see what I could find. It was what most people would call a glorious day, full sun under a brilliant blue sky and pleasant temperatures. Fall color hadn’t started happening yet and very little was in bloom. In short, the conditions were less than prime for my kind of photography.
I wandered down to the end where they’re constructing the new Pacific Rim Connections garden, which still had a fence around it and wasn’t open yet. But across the road I was struck by the pattern of the shadows a large Madrona tree was casting on the lawn. That’s not the picture here, but it’s what got me started down a different path that day. I made several images of the shadows on the grass, then headed up Azalea Way back toward my truck.
Along the way I noticed the light coming through the leaves of a large tree. When I aimed my camera the lens was set for a much closer distance and I saw something similar to the photo here — just a soft pattern of branches and greens. I experimented with several variations of focus and aperture. This is the one I liked best out of the bunch.
It seemed odd to use one of my sharpest lenses to shoot a totally out-of-focus photo, but that’s what I did. Sometimes I have to remember to play and not to get hung up on what’s “right” and what’s “wrong” in photography. Thanks, David for reminding me of that a few days earlier.
September 12 2008 | Gardens and Photography | No Comments »
I’ve been out bicycling a lot of miles around Whatcom County this year While it’s mostly a speed thing challenging myself to see how fast I can go, I’m also observing what’s in bloom along the side of the road. It changes every few weeks, although there are few flowers, like Queen Ann’s Lace, that stay in bloom for a long time.
Right now the showiest plant in bloom is one of our nasty invasive weeds, Japanese Knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum). There’s some question about the taxonomy, so what we have may well be Bohemian Knotweed (Polygonum × bohemicum), a hybrid species. Regardless, it’s a tall showy plant with drooping panicles of white flowers that forms large masses at the side of the road. It prefers moist places like ditches and streambanks and spreads by underground rhizomes. It’s very difficult to eradicate as any tiny bit of root will start a new plant and spraying common herbicides seem to only slow it down. The preferred method of attack is to inject herbicide directly into the stems, which is very labor intensive.
I’ve noticed that along some of the county roads it has been mown down, which might help keep it in check. At least seeds won’t set and spread the plant that way. Last winter the plants that hadn’t been cut drooped over onto the shoulder and partially blocked the way along one of the busier parts of one of my regular routes.
Japanese Knotweed is an example of a plant that was originally introduced as a garden specimen and got away. For more information about it and the other big knotweeds see this page from the Whatcom County Noxious Weed Board.
Another pretty roadside weed, not nearly as widespread around here, is Common Toadflax (Linaria vulgaris). It’s only a foot or so tall and covered with attractive yellow flowers. I saw a patch of it along Slater Road near the railroad tracks yesterday. It’s not on the Washington noxious weed list, but its cousin Dalmatian Toadflax is.
Of course, not everything blooming along the road is a weed. I also saw quite a bit of the fall-blooming Pacific Asters on my rides this past weekend. My long ride was a loop out Mt. Baker Highway, down Mosquito Lake Road to Acme, down to Park Road and over to Lake Whatcom, then south past Cain Lake to Alger, and home by way of Lake Samish and Lake Padden. You can see the route on Map My Ride.
September 09 2008 | Bicycling and Weeds | No Comments »
Yesterday morning I took a break from captioning and stepped out in our side yard. Mt. Baker was visible and the clouds looked like they might stay away, or form nice photogenic framing for the mountains. So I bagged office work, packed a lunch, and headed up the road to Artist Point and the trail to Ptarmigan Ridge.
By the time I got there, the clouds were covering the summit of both Mt. Shuksan and Mt. Baker, but I still thought there were some good possibilities for later in the afternoon. It was about 1 pm when I hit the trail out around Table Mountain. I ran into a couple of friends along the trail, both of whom were on their way back from shorter hikes than I planned. Marie pointed out the wonderful fragrance of the masses of Nelson’s Brook Saxifrage along the numerous snowmelt streams crossing the Ptarmigan Ridge trail. This was one of four or five species of saxifrage along the trail.
The farther out the trail I went the cloudier it got, so mountain vistas were out of the question. I crossed a few short snow patches without taking my ice axe off my pack. Then rounding a corner in the rather barren rocky and gravelly alpine habitat I spied several clumps of bright golden flowers at my feet. I could tell at a glance that they were Senecio, but I didn’t recognize the species. I pulled out my plant list for the trail and the one book I carried, Mountain Plants of the Pacific Northwest by Ron Taylor and George Douglas, and turned to the ragworts. There was my plant, Senecio elmeri, which was new to me.
Elmer’s Ragwort isn’t rare, but it only occurs in a few counties of northwest Washington and in parts of British Columbia. Ragworts certainly aren’t my favorite flowers, but this one was rather nice. It was growing on very gravelly soil (is there really any soil under all that gravel) and as is typical for plants in that habitat the clumps were well spaced. According to University of Washington Herbarium records it’s been collected several places within a few miles of where I found it blooming.
I continued hiking out the trail until my self-imposed turnaround time of 4:30. I didn’t make it to the end, where the trail meets one of the glaciers coming off Mt. Baker. I didn’t have time to hike down to an unnamed lake that looked interesting, either. Such is the hazard of getting a late start. I made it back to my truck by about 7 pm, with a good 45 minutes to spare before darkness. Even though I didn’t get the shots I wanted it was a good day.
September 05 2008 | Native Plants | No Comments »
