The Elwha River has been getting a lot of press lately. It is the site of one of the largest dam removal projects to date. Salmon runs are returning in numbers (miles and miles of recovered salmon breeding habitat), the delta is being rebuilt and numerous species (including bears and birds) are benefiting from the decaying salmon carcasses.
The section shown here is between the two dams that were removed (the Elwha Dam below this point and the Glines Canyon Dam above).
These clouds attracted my attention … I could tell they would add a lot of interest to a photo of this farmland, while not providing any significant chance of rainfall. A good combination. This is at about the 6.5 mile point of the Larry Scott Trail south of Port Townsend, WA.
I enjoy taking my photographs and using them as a starting point for other art forms. I have done colored pencil images and line drawings, mostly. While experimenting with various tools in Photoshop, I found an Edge Detect tool that I like a lot. This image is a combination of Edge Detect and hand drawn edge enhancement (for instance, along the ridgelines). Below is the original image looking across the Hoh River valley to Mt Olympus from the High Divide trail … from a campsite on the eastern edge of the trail near Heart Lake. We had a spectacular sunset and a great sunrise to wake to.
The weather in Western Washington is notoriously cloudy and damp. Some people struggle with the lack of sun. But I am okay with that … I see the trade offs, including mountain ridges with clouds and/or mist. These were taken looking west from Hurricane RIdge in Olympic National Park across the Elwha Valley.
The image above shows the North Fork Skokomish river just above the Staircase area in the Olympic National Park. If you look closely, you can see the bridge that runs across the river … providing access tof the Staircase Loop Trail. This is a very wide angle lens … which causes the curvature distortion. The image below is taken from the bridge looking further downriver.
At the bottom, a section of the North Fork Skokomish trail running through Maple Flats, about 6 miles up from the Staircase area.
