I’ll admit that I was a little worried that, since we once again had a cold and rainy spring here in the Pacific Northwest, that we wouldn’t see much in the way of wildflowers in Olympic’s high country. But apparently this spring wasn’t as cold as last year because there wasn’t much snow left on Hurricane Ridge and the wildflowers were looking great. In fact, the lupine fields around the Visitors Center were the best I’ve seen.

And there were deer. Lots of deer. And cute,

bouncy spotted fawns (my co-leader, Kim Hoshal, got an awesome shot). On our last morning on the ridge, a doe and her fawn actually came right up to several people in our group.

We also had a great morning in the Hoh rainforest. We had a day where the forecast called for clouds and rain all day.  We took advantage of that and made the long drive to the Hoh. Forest photography is difficult. You can’t just walk in and start making great images. It takes some time to look around and find scenes that aren’t total chaos. It takes some time to come to terms with the sensory overload you’re subjected to. It takes some time to find scenes that can convey all you’re seeing and experiencing in simple and uncluttered way. In short, you need a load of patience for good forest photography.

There are a couple of good ways to make strong forest images. The key, as with any good photograph, is to simplify. One way is to use short telephoto lenses (80-200mm) to isolate whatever it is that’s grabbing your interest. Telephoto lenses, by their nature, limit what you can show. So pick out something you find interesting and use your telephoto to show only what you’re interested in, nothing more. Watch for distracting backgrounds and sneakers, those things that somehow manage to sneak their way into the edges and corners of images.

Wide angle lenses can be tough to use in the forest simply because they take so much in. The way to deal with this is to use a lot of foreground and is something Kim covered really well in the field with some of our participants. A strong foreground is another way of making strong forest images. Find something that can take up a lot of foreground space in an image, like a large fern, a fallen log, the trunk of a big tree, or a stream. Get close to your foreground. No. Closer. A little closer. There you go! Tilt the camera slightly down and you’ll end up with an image that’s practically all foreground with a rainforest in the background. Because a wide angle lens makes things look smaller in the background, any clutter back there is minimized. Just choose effective foregrounds that have leading lines or curves or have a striking subject as the foreground, such as that big fern.

One morning we went to Sol Duc Falls. If you get there early enough, it doesn’t really matter what the weather is like. If it’s cloudy or rainy, you don’t get the contrast problems that can plague you in the forest on a sunny day and you can just shoot away. But if it is a sunny morning, and there’s enough mist rising from Sol Duc Falls (like there always seems to be), you can photograph a really nice rainbow over the bridge and falls. Just get there early enough. In the summer, I suggest getting to the bridge by about 7 a.m or so, which means hitting the trailhead by about 6:30. During the workshop (July 17-22), the rainbow was at its best starting at about 8:00 a.m. and lasted for at least twenty minutes. After about 8:30 or so, the sun was too high and the contrast problems became too great.

We had another great morning at Jardin du Soleil lavender farm in Sequim. And we couldn’t have asked for better conditions. The sky was overcast, the lighting even, and the farm looked great. I’ve only had good overcast conditions there a couple of other times. Usually the day is clear and the light gets too harsh by about 9 a.m. On the day of our visit we could have stayed for hours if breakfast wasn’t calling…

This year we spent one sunset at Lake Cresent. Getting there in the late afternoon, I was, at first, a little uninspired. There were a few clouds hanging about but for the most part, as you look out on the lake, the sun is in your face and everything was back lit. But after hanging around a bit, lots and lots of possibilities revealed themselves. Colorful rental canoes stacked on the shore were an obvious starting point. Then there was the haphazard stack of canoe paddles. And as we started getting settled, we started seeing more. A couple of the participants arranged two Adirondack chairs at the shore and started shooting from behind, looking out on the lake. This became our focal point (so to speak) as sunset approached. Then the sky lit up and the colors were reflected in the lake and the silhouette of the Adirondack chairs against those colors made for very nice, very relaxing images.

One of my very favorite areas to photograph in Olympic is along the Hurricane Ridge Road. In the last half mile or so from the top there are several places with good views of the valley leading up from Port Angeles. Often, fog will be rising from below or, better yet, clouds will be flowing over the ridge above. And if you’re really lucky, the first touches of morning light will paint the fog or clouds with blues and pinks. More often you’ll get the later, more yellow light. But either way, it’s magical.

This year we tried couple of times to capture the fog. It’s always a tough call because you just don’t know what things look like at the top. They could be better. Or the top could be totally fogged in. You just don’t know. But if you go up there you might miss out on the mystical fogscapes. What’s a landscape photographer to do?

(I will say that one of my clients ended up getting one of the best shots from the lower viewpoints that I’ve ever seen; a beautifully side-lit fir tree with some fog and blue sky in the background. What really made the image was warm light bathing the whole scene, which was actually caused by a large lens flare. Just beautiful.)

My personal inclination is to pull off before getting to the top if there’s any fog or clouds hanging around. But then again, I’ve witnessed many a sunrise from the Hurricane Ridge parking lot. Somebody coming from across the country hasn’t though and may only have two or three chances at it during a workshop, which makes the choice that much tougher. And that’s why we try to do at least two, and often three, sunrises from the Hurricane Ridge area. This year it paid off because we got both fog and some very nice mountain scenes (with all those lupine in the foregrounds). We also managed a few nice deer pictures.

And in the classroom we got to see some really nice results, not to mention a few black and white conversions that were stunning. One participant made some really nice images on her iPhone at Lake Crescent using Nik Software’s Snapseed and showed us as we were waiting for the restaurant to open for lunch. That kind of kick started others’ creativity as well.

All in all, a pretty good trip. We even got one decent sunset from Hurricane Ridge to go along with our Lake Crescent sunset. And our visit to Ruby Beach was also productive despite the gray day on which we visited. I saw some really nice images come from that visit including a great long exposure black and white shot of a sea stack.

You can see these images and more from the park in my Olympic National Park gallery.