Olympic Peninsula Forest. Olympic National Park, Washington. August 16, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

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.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.