Just a few more images here from my recent trip to the Seattle area in Washington - what a relaxing and scenery-filled trip! I made the image at left when driving from the Olympic National Forest area towards Seattle, on the coastal road that winds through some wonderful seascapes and woodland. I practically squealed the tires when braking so abruptly as I almost passed this sight around sunset, my mind's eye envisioning the photo with just the quick glimpse through a thicket of pines afforded by a break in the branches.

This shot was made compositing four exposures from my Nikon D300, which was firmly mounted on a tripod with a 12mm-24mm lens for a wide field of view. I had to blend the four exposures to be sure to shot the entirety of the tonal range in the scene, it's an option available when you don't have a camera bag filled with neutral-density filters.

My favorite part about this shot is the way it will always remind me of the smell of wet forest, wildflowers, and seawater. Also, the perfect quiet - it was utterly silent and peaceful.

This is a shot of the peak of Mount Rainier, made at about 7:00 in the morning from the eastern side of the mountain in an area appropriately named "Sunrise." I rose from my tent at camp at 4:00 a.m. to make the drive to get into a spot where I could hike to have this view, and it was well worth it. I stood on the edge of a valley of wildflowers at dawn, and marveled at the enormous mountain - a mountain so enormous that it quite literally has its own weather system, as illustrated by the Lenticular cloud - a cloud that forms when tall mountains get in the way of strong winds.

This image is of "old growth," a term used to refer to forests that have never been disturbed by human development (mainly timber harvesting). The complexity of an old-growth forest is the most striking difference between it and the second- and third-generation forests that cover most of the United States.

Old-growth forests are thick with life in a way that newer forests can't be - they just haven't had the time to develop. Little old-growth forest remains in the United States today, and much of what's left is concentrated in the Pacific Northwest and on the Olympic Peninsula in particular. I loved it.

It's hard to transmit scale in this photo - but imagine it taking two or three people to stretch their arms around a tree trunk....that's what it would take with the trees in this photo.