Category Archives: Landscape Photography

Another Light Snow

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Heatherwood Japanese Garden

Weather changes pretty rapidly here in Eastern Washington. Saturday was bright and shiny in the 40’s. This morning I woke up to a light snowfall. I couldn’t resist grabbing my camera and taking a little walk around Heatherwood.

This is one of my favorite garden viewing vantage points. It is peaceful now with a little ice covering the pond. The white snow separates the trees and shrubs from the ground. A light fog blurs the background hills which also helps pop out the deciduous trees at the edge of our garden. Green, yellow, and golden brown color still highlights the winter scene.

In two months, the spring activity level will start. The water will be turned feeding the two waterfalls emptying into the pond. Hopefully early spring bulbs planted last fall will start to emerge. If the weather holds, we will start our spring planting.

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Golden Afternoon Light

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South of Sentinel Gap
Central Washington State

After passing through Sentinel Gap on our Saturday drive, I arbitrarily picked a side road and headed west toward the Columbia to see if I could get a different perspective of the Gap. The road ended up at a small boat ramp on a backwater pond near the river. The sun was just about ready to drop behind Umptanum Ridge. The late afternoon created a beautiful glow on the grasses and winter tree trunks. As a little bonus, I was able to get a piece fo the western ridge of Sentinal Gap in my image. For reference, the height of the water in the Columbia River approached the top of this ridge during the Missoula Floods. The area where I was standing when taking this image was at the bottom of Ice Age Lake Lewis. The water would have been several hundred feet above my head during the floods.

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Beautiful Day to Explore!

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Othello Channels
Central Washington State

Yesterday was a beautiful winter day here in Central Washington. I woke up with a desire to get out and do a little exploring. Mary and I hopped into our car and decided to wander through part of the path of the Ice Age floods. The landscape in Eastern Washington is amazing. Understanding how the different formations were created takes a lot of imagination.

The basalt bluffs across the valley are about 150-200 feet high. Imagine a wall of water 100 to 200 feet higher than the bluffs rushing and swirling through this channel at 50 plus miles per hour. The water swirls as eddies carve out “pot holes” like maybe what the small lake covers. The turbulent waters gouge through the basalt, picking up and carrying the rock out of the channel.

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Summer Warmth

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Beebaum Multi-exposure
Fountainville, PA Garden

While searching through old images to help me come up with new ideas for enhancing our meadow for Heatherwood, I came upon several images of an arrangement of red and purple beebaum perennials. Aha! … the images blurred in my mind and I came up with the above abstract.

More practically, the image did give me an idea. We currently have red beebaums in the garden. They are relatively sparse and the tall blooms droop after a wind. The purple beebaum is a lower growing species and will prop the taller growing red blooms up as well as provide a nice complement shade to the arrangement.

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Surprise!

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Garden Path
Heatherwood Japanese Garden

One day I wake up to a beautiful sunrise like in my previous post. The next day I wake up to a short blast of snow. By early afternoon, the snow had melted and it was warm enough to be outside with a light jacket. I feel blessed with changing weather. It keeps me on my toes to see what’s new or different that I can photograph. I very seldom get bored!

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There Is Brightness Ahead!

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“Heatherwood Sunrise”

Today started with a bright sunrise as a harbinger of the start of a new chapter. Biden’s Inaugural speech on “Unity” was a bright way to start the path for the new Administration. Patience, persistence, honesty, compassion, compromise, and a lot of hard work will be required by all of us.

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Hana Matoi #3

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Hana Matoi Late Fall Growth
Heatherwood Japanese Garden

A few red and green leaves of late autumn growth contrast against the dried brown leaves of the spent leaves. Ice plants in their red and yellow winter color on the hillside frame the new leaves.

Below, the fragile disectum leaves of the Hana Matoi shade the spreading blue purplish green thyme below.

This concludes my Hana Matoi mini-project. Or does it? These six images in the last 3 posts were all taken on an overcast day. Early morning light and late afternoon light provide many additional perspectives. Different seasons display different colors. Snow, ice, rain, and dew create magical views. And there are always an abundance of opportunities for abstracts. An infinite number of images are yet to be discovered.

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Hana Matoi #2

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Hana Matoi Looking Down
Heatherwood Japanese Garden

This post continues my Hana Matoi mini project. Looking for a different perspective, I walked up and leaned into the tree. I stood on my tip toes, held my camera above my head and took this image looking down through the top leaves to highlight the structure of the trunk and branches. It looks like a good spot for a bird to nest.

The image below is from a perspective of walking on a semi-hidden path adjacent to the main Japanese garden path. The Hokkeji pulls a visitor’s eyes to the Hana Matoi and the garden hillside.

Hokkeji and Hana Matoi
Heatherwood Japanese Garden

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Hana Matoi #1

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Hana Matoi Japanese Maple
Heatherwood Japanese Garden

I love my morning walks through the garden with my camera. Many times I stop and take a photograph of something I have taken several times before. A couple of days ago I decided to give myself a little challenge to take purposeful photographs of some of our Japanese maples from a different perspective than I have before.

I walked around the little Hana Matoi from different directions and distances. I took close-up and distance images. I climbed above and got down on my hands and knees to just check things out. I used the tree as my primary subject and as a background. I used my feet as my zoom lens. After about an hour, I had around fifty images of different perspectives. I decided to make a small mini project of six images to attempt to characterize our little Hana Matoi Japanese maple.

The above image portrays the Hana Matoi near the entrance of Heatherwood’s Japanese Garden looking east. The maple welcomes visitors to the garden and introduces them to what is to come.

In the image below, the Hana Matoi bids the visitors goodbye as they round a bend and start to exit the garden.

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