A sign with multiple potential meanings, Pike Place Market
There are so many possible bad puns that could be made about the sign in this photograph, especially considering the city in which it was made and other things that were going on in town at that time. I’ll refrain.
On a free day during a recent trip to Seattle we decided to wander around downtown Seattle and do mostly street photography. We started out near Pike Place Market, where there are abundant opportunities to find not only the coffee and food we were seeking, but also lots of interesting “Seattlish” photographic opportunities. As we walked past an entrancing entrance to the Market, I looked up to see some wildly colorful flowers (not that you can tell here!) growing along the edge of the roof and partially hanging over the sign.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
Lush ferns grow along a trail through rain forest at Olympic National Park
On this day we initially planned to make a quick foray to North Cascades National Park, but I got a call saying that Olympic Peninsula web cams were showing relatively clear skies and that I should think about changing plans – so I did! Instead of heading north from the Seattle area, we headed west and took the ferry across Puget Sound, arriving to find clearing fog and some partial clouds, but quite a bit of sunlight. Taking the advice of someone who knows the Pacific Northwest better than I do, our plan was to first shoot down in the rain forest and then to head up to Hurricane Ridge near the end of the day.
We started at Sol Duc falls, a short one-mile hike from a parking area at the end of a side road. My mental image of these forests involves lush growth, cloudy conditions, and rain. The first was present, but both the clouds and the rain were missing. In some ways that could be a good thing, but shooting in the forest in the midday sun poses major problems. The main issue is so-called “pizza light,” with deep shadows and bright, sunlit highlights mixed together throughout the scene. When we got to the waterfall, that is precisely what we found. The fall is in a narrow gorge – and while the bottom of the gorge was in deep shade, beams of direct sunlight were striking the white water of the fall. While it might be possible to make a photograph of this subject in such conditions, it made a lot more sense to me to turn my attention to smaller scale subject that allowed me to better control the light – and this close up “intimate landscape” of a twisting group of ferns is one of the results.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
“Ridges, Evening Light” — Evening light shines on forested ridges and high peaks, Olympic National Park
I have not had a lot of luck trying to photograph the Hurricane Ridge area in the past. You’ve probably seen the beautiful and iconic photographs by other photographers – lavish displays of wildflowers, striking alpine ridges holding snow fields and glaciers, spectacular cloud-filled skies. However, on the few occasions when I have tried to shoot there I have contended with wind, fog that held visibility down to mere yards, and poor seasonal timing. Since we were in the Seattle area (for something non-photographic) with a free day, I figured I might try one more time. Initially I had thought of the run up to Artist Point in North Cascades, but the weather forecast there was not at all promising, with rain expected. Initially I thought that there might be similar weather out on the Peninsula, but as we started out I got a call from my brother, who is a Seattle area photographer much more familiar with the patterns of the area, saying “go to the Olympic Peninsula. I’m looking at a web cam and it seems clear!”
In fact, by the time our ferry crossed to the west side of Puget Sound, it was looking quite clear. After some midday, lowland shooting, we figured that we would try Hurricane Ridge at the end of the day. With this in mind, it was a bit after 5:00 when we arrived there. The first look around was not too encouraging – the wildflowers were mostly spent and it was cloudy, though sun was breaking through the clouds from time to time. I decided to give it a try since I know that conditions can change quickly and because it was likely too late to get to any other interesting points in the remaining daylight. Setting up and watching the scene, I noticed that while it was cloudy and even a bit rainy, breaks in the clouds to the west were sending occasional beams of light chasing across the landscape, especially the large forest-covered ridge in the foreground of this photograph.
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Sunlight filters through dense forest in Olympic National Park, Washington
During mid-August we traveled to the Seattle area – not primarily for photography but mainly to see the Seattle Opera production of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle. The Seattle Ring is sometimes referred to as the “Green Ring,” largely because the production design draws heavily on the natural world of the Pacific Northwest, and especially on the forests. Even when photography is not the primary focus, it is never too far away, so on a day when there were no performances we decided to take the ferry across Puget Sound to the Olympic Peninsula and see what we could find. We left the Seattle area in heavy fog – the subject of at least one photograph that I’ll post later on – but when we got across the water it was relatively clear. That was a bit surprising since I’ve had seem some pretty cloudy and rainy weather out there in the past, including one memorable trip to Hurricane Ridge when we arrived to find visibility that must have approached, oh, about fifty feet.
One of my brothers, also a photographer, lives in the area and after seeing the positive weather forecast he had suggested that we start at Sol Duc Falls. In actually turned out that the weather was perhaps a bit too nice, as this heavily forested area ended up exhibiting that deadly combination of bright light beams coming through the trees and deep shadows down below, an effect sometimes called “pizza light.” It is about the most difficult thing to photograph, as the dynamic range of the scenes is just far too large for cameras. We hiked to the falls, a short and pleasant hike, and arrived to find that the base of the fall, which is in a deep gorge, was in dark shade while brilliant direct sunlight hit the top of the water. I decided to not try to photograph this – “been there, done that!” – and instead see what I could find in the surrounding forest itself. The light issue remained here, too, but I noticed that a few puffy clouds were blowing around and I figured that I could set up the shot and wait for the nice soft light to arrive in the shadow of one of the clouds. This photograph was made in exactly those conditions – a passing cloud momentarily obscured and softened the light. I think that seeing the beautiful forest-inspired set of Seattle’s Ring had put me in a frame of mind to find and photograph this sort of thing, and I feel like this photograph reflects that connection.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
