Bird Creek Meadow

Flower Field in Litzlberg  (1905)
  Gustav Klimt

A snapshot showing the variety and abundance of wildflowers blooming last weekend along the Bird Creek Meadow Trail near Mt. Adams. Flowers, bees, and butterflies were everywhere, and although I didn't hike far enough to come upon a large meadow vista, I did want to capture all the colors.  Last week I  was thinking back to the artistic photography class I took over the winter, and how much I got out of the assignments where I had to photograph in the style of a famous artist. I figured I could continue to work on that myself, and randomly checked out a Klimt Landscapes book. Even though the lighting on the hike was a little bright for my liking, this particular photo does a passably good job of replicating Klimt's mosaic-like, detailed foliage style of painting...but not his composition, so I'm going to keep working on the photo.

Mt. Adams

Well...after a pretty long break, I'm back posting, at least for a little while.  I have to say I've enjoyed the time off, and as much as I want to be out with my camera again this is a hard time of year for my photography.  The sun rises so early and sets so late, and when it's up, the light is so harsh.  But over the weekend, Bill and I got up super early to head to Mt. Adams country.  He was participating in a bike tour there, so I dropped him off and headed up to Bird Creek Meadow, which I read was a beautiful wildflower hike near Mt. Adams.  It was beautiful, but as it turns out I didn't have quite enough time for it.  I had to drive only 11 miles up a gravel then dirt road to get to the trail head, but the road was in such poor condition that it took me an hour to drive that stretch.  Then I hiked for another hour and a half, which got me to the point where I took this photo.  Lovely, lovely, overwhelming number of wildflowers the whole way, but I don't think I quite made it to the large meadow before I had to turn back.  And even though we got up at 4am for this trip, by the time I got to this almost meadow section of the hike it was 11am and way too bright for photography!  I'd like to try this hike again, but logistically I need to figure out how to make it work.  In the meantime, I've got a few more photos to share in the coming days.