Rich Rings Photography

My job requires that I travel a fair amount to my company’s facilities throughout North America. Luckily this means occasionally I get an opportunity to have the company pay for airfare to locations near some of the more fabulous national parks we have in the US. Right now I am sitting in a hotel in Vancouver, BC for just that reason.

When I found out Vancouver was on my schedule for this year I had to decide if I was going to shoot in the Canadian Rockies, on Vancouver Island or in Olympic National Park. I feel like I chose well when I decided to go to Olympic. I arrived in Seattle on Friday night and drove to Port Angeles. Saturday morning I began one of the better photography trips I have ever been on.

Sol Duc Falls near(ish) Port Angeles, WA. Get here very soon after sunrise on a clear day to avoid harsh light on the river.

It is hard for someone born and raised in Ohio to fully digest the landscape in the Olympic Peninsula. Towering western hemlocks, Douglas firs and big leaf maples exist on an incomprehensible scale, forming the canopy above a lush understory of ferns, spring ephemeral wildflowers, and fallen giants who fell to windstorms or old age. These downed logs slowly rot away nourishing the new growth springing up to take advantage of the new hole in the canopy.

Trillium Grandiflora - something I did not expect to see in these temperate rainforests.

Photographing woodland is extremely difficult. Chaos reigns in the understory and finding a coherent composition is, for me at least, a challenge. I walked through these forests holding my viewing card and raising it to look through and try to isolate vignettes in the wider scene that will make for a good photo. As usual, a good photo is all about the light. Several times during this trip i had my tripod set up and a passerby looked at where my camera was pointed and asked “what are you shooting?” to which I answered “the light”.

Hoh Rainforest - Not the greatest composition in the world, but the light coming in from the left and hitting the moss at least makes it interesting.

Two tools I used on this trip that were extremely helpful were my viewing card and my circular polarizer. If you don’t already know, a viewing card is a card with a cut out with the same aspect ratio as your sensor. You can use an old slide to do this, or you can cut one out for yourself. I’m lucky enough to have a brother who owns a metal shop and he was able to make a metal one for me. I may not always use it but I carry it all the time in my camera backpack. In these types of woodland scenes the viewing card is very useful in screening out some of the chaos and letting me see the potential compositions. A polarizing filter is critical for cutting the reflections from waxy and wet leaves and to an extent cutting through atmospheric haze. Every “keeper” shot I took in Olympic had a polarizer in front of the lens.

I am very thankful I got to enjoy a few days in this breathtaking park and look forward to going back for a longer visit since I barely scratched the surface on this trip.