alder and sword fern forest
On Christmas Day each year, (when at home) I try to make a photograph in an area very near here that I call the fern forest.
--This forest has been logged three times that I know of, the first time during the 1850s when the village of Seabeck, a few miles away on the Hood Canal, had a lumber mill for cutting up the giant trees and many sailing ships in the bay loading lumber to be used for the construction of San Francisco, California and Santiago, Chile. For a few years, Seabeck was the largest community in Puget Sound. All the marketable timber from this side of the Kitsap Peninsula was taken and the mill burned so the population moved on to leave behind a ghost town. The forest grew back and was logged again. Then, during WW II was burned by fires started from incendiary devices carried by balloons launched from Japanese submarines. Charred remains of six foot diameter stumps remind what was here long ago. Now, Seabeck has a general store, art gallery, small marina, pizza takeout, conference center, and of course an espresso stand. When I moved to the area in the late '70s, The forest was again rebounding having been cut a third time about ten years prior. There was no tree replanting and the natural succession was from bare ground. The first trees in a burned or logged lowland area are red alder - the nitrogen fixers, they establish the naked soil robbed of the nutrients provided by a growing living and dying mature forest. Later, cedars and hemlock and in open areas where storms have toppled other trees, and the area is open to sunlight, douglas fir will grow. The forest that I walk in most, is at the stage where alder is thick and western red cedar are starting to get established. My home is near the edge of the ridge that slopes down to Big Beef Creek and the Hood Canal a mile away. Across the Hood Canal about ten miles rises the foothills of the Olympic Mountains with the snow covered peaks another ten miles distant. The dominant ones seen from here being The Brothers, Mt. Jupiter, and Mt. Constance rising about six to seven thousand feet. We used to have a panoramic view of the range from our home but the alder along the ridgeline has grown to block all but peeks of the peaks. The trees will be gone some day in the probably near future replaced by homes as this area is growing rapidly.
Back to the fern forest. Each Christmas Day, I make a photograph at a location very thick with sword ferns growing under the canopy of red alder. There is usually open light because the canopy is bare at this time and if its raining, an umbrella keeps my equipment dry but wading through three to four feet high ferns I can get very wet. This year, the sky was clear so I waited till late afternoon (three pm at this latitude) so the light direction would be low and hue warm. My photograph was not there this year. Several storms in the past couple months brought down many branches which made the understory of the forest a clutter... Of course, I did record the scene but it didn't get what I had previsualized. I made some images of the forest showing the interplay of the ferns and pale alder tree trunks and macro images of the alder bark with its varied colors from clinging lichens coloring the pale gray bark with oranges, yellows, and greens... I turned the camera up to record the overhead pattern of the alder branches against the sky and used various exposures to accent the patterns on the trees themselves and some with shorter exposures to show them as dark shilouettes against a dark sky. I like the blue sky image posted below because of the lighter blue near the base of the frame where the trees are spread and darker where the trees lean close because it leads the eye through the composition. These images were made with a Nikon 990 digital camera. (the second image was manipulated with Photoshop to exaggerate the edges - it needs more work yet.)
Peace
--This forest has been logged three times that I know of, the first time during the 1850s when the village of Seabeck, a few miles away on the Hood Canal, had a lumber mill for cutting up the giant trees and many sailing ships in the bay loading lumber to be used for the construction of San Francisco, California and Santiago, Chile. For a few years, Seabeck was the largest community in Puget Sound. All the marketable timber from this side of the Kitsap Peninsula was taken and the mill burned so the population moved on to leave behind a ghost town. The forest grew back and was logged again. Then, during WW II was burned by fires started from incendiary devices carried by balloons launched from Japanese submarines. Charred remains of six foot diameter stumps remind what was here long ago. Now, Seabeck has a general store, art gallery, small marina, pizza takeout, conference center, and of course an espresso stand. When I moved to the area in the late '70s, The forest was again rebounding having been cut a third time about ten years prior. There was no tree replanting and the natural succession was from bare ground. The first trees in a burned or logged lowland area are red alder - the nitrogen fixers, they establish the naked soil robbed of the nutrients provided by a growing living and dying mature forest. Later, cedars and hemlock and in open areas where storms have toppled other trees, and the area is open to sunlight, douglas fir will grow. The forest that I walk in most, is at the stage where alder is thick and western red cedar are starting to get established. My home is near the edge of the ridge that slopes down to Big Beef Creek and the Hood Canal a mile away. Across the Hood Canal about ten miles rises the foothills of the Olympic Mountains with the snow covered peaks another ten miles distant. The dominant ones seen from here being The Brothers, Mt. Jupiter, and Mt. Constance rising about six to seven thousand feet. We used to have a panoramic view of the range from our home but the alder along the ridgeline has grown to block all but peeks of the peaks. The trees will be gone some day in the probably near future replaced by homes as this area is growing rapidly.
Back to the fern forest. Each Christmas Day, I make a photograph at a location very thick with sword ferns growing under the canopy of red alder. There is usually open light because the canopy is bare at this time and if its raining, an umbrella keeps my equipment dry but wading through three to four feet high ferns I can get very wet. This year, the sky was clear so I waited till late afternoon (three pm at this latitude) so the light direction would be low and hue warm. My photograph was not there this year. Several storms in the past couple months brought down many branches which made the understory of the forest a clutter... Of course, I did record the scene but it didn't get what I had previsualized. I made some images of the forest showing the interplay of the ferns and pale alder tree trunks and macro images of the alder bark with its varied colors from clinging lichens coloring the pale gray bark with oranges, yellows, and greens... I turned the camera up to record the overhead pattern of the alder branches against the sky and used various exposures to accent the patterns on the trees themselves and some with shorter exposures to show them as dark shilouettes against a dark sky. I like the blue sky image posted below because of the lighter blue near the base of the frame where the trees are spread and darker where the trees lean close because it leads the eye through the composition. These images were made with a Nikon 990 digital camera. (the second image was manipulated with Photoshop to exaggerate the edges - it needs more work yet.)
Peace