Series: Sunset > Sunrise > Heather Park

This will be the first in a short series of posts displaying some of the photos I took on a recent camping and hiking overnight to Olympic National Park. I went with a loose group of Mountaineers to capture the abundant wildflowers in bloom and marvel at the sun’s dramatic visual displays on the mountains.

The first evening we headed up to Hurricane Ridge and Hurricane Hill to shoot the sunset. The sun was really bright and strong in the early evening as the first couple of photos easily demonstrate but gradually gave way to pink and orange.

While everyone else was shooting the deer I focused on the small stuff because I had the 105mm lens along. (I really enjoy shooting with this lens but my opinion hasn’t changed: it’s too expensive for me right now, bummer. Oh, and another thing, if you do own this lens, turn off VR on a tripod for sharper images – it took awhile to find this out.) This grasshopper on the lupine would have been a better photograph it the sun wasn’t so harsh.

I love the lines, less the light.

I’m a sucker for a thistle.

A classic photographic composition – shoot the odd man out – in this case a red indian paintbrush among the purple-blue lupine …

… and another with a tiger lily among the lupine.

We were fortunate to have the moon because there were few clouds to capture and highlight the sunlight.

Pretty.

Also pretty.

This shoot was a fantastic learning experience for me and looking back over these photographs I see lots of mistakes, some gems and tremendous room for improvement – my Trash is pretty is full ;)

I think the better set of photographs are from the early morning set so be sure to stay tuned.

There are more photos available here.