The one person who occasionally reads this blog might notice it’s being written mostly on Saturdays or Sundays. I have a big plan to write two per week and keep the SEO robots excited, but it’s been tough with the scheduling. These take me awhile to get written. I’m sometimes busy doing work for my wedding photography and portrait photography businesses and the landscape photography takes third place behind money making photography. In the upper left hand corner of the administration page Zen Folio has a box with a circle and a dollar sign. I keep meaning to figure that out, but my loathing of all things computer these days keeps me away. Anyone else out there getting tired of computers in all places measuring and weighing our every move? Plus the passwords always changing or not being recognized. Every site, every time I go to open it the password needs to be reset, found, or is a new one I forgot about. It wears a person down to a nub.

I’m not always busy with doing photography, but I’m busy spending my hard earned money on it, that’s for sure. One thing I am always busy doing is training for a race called the aquabike. It’s a triathlon without the running bit. Because of this I’m at the Athletic Club of Bend almost every day. A person can work here 8 hours a week at the club to get a membership paid for. About a year ago my wife, Mary, had me start working here a few hours a week teaching kids how to swim. Then it led to me working in the locker rooms folding towels and cleaning. Then it led to me working at the outdoor pool check-in.

The indoor pool is closed for repairs right now, so the club is keeping the outdoor pool open. The pool needs a check-in person on weekends and that’s what I’m doing right now. Sitting in a little office, listening to dance music, and typing out this blog post.

I sit down, look for a picture on the iPad and then write about it for a couple hours. Sometimes it’s quicker and easier than others. Writing the blog always takes a long time because I’m constantly working on eliminating the verb “to be” in the sentences. This task requires rewriting almost everthing and takes forever. We use “is” in almost everything. Sometimes it can’t be helped and I get too lazy to rewrite a sentence to eliminate that gnat of a word.

Today I saw this picture of the raindrops on fern leaves from the Hoh Rainforest from a few years ago. When I say a few years ago, it makes me want to hit the road and do more pictures now.

The Hoh Rainforest and hike energizes my mind/body every time I visit. The smell, feel, and sight of this place gives me energy and sparks happiness. I don’t want to tell anyone about it because the last time I was there, I didn’t even go in because it was a madhouse of humanity.

Perhaps it’s better to go in early spring when questionable weather rules the day. By questionable I mean rainy. By rainy I mean downpours of incredible intensity. Imagine a firefighter in the trees with a hose on full blast and you can get an idea of the rain.

When the rain stops and clouds block the sun, pictures become possible. Ferns fill the forest floor and bounce an emerald green color around the living things filling every available space. You can experience the magic of the elves in a place like this if you look hard enough.

As a biologist I always love seeing “r vs. k selection” at work. R stands for plants and animals who have a lot of offspring and care little for them. Think salmon and lodgepole pines for r selection. R selection species often fill the open spaces left behind from fallen trees or a burned forests first. K selection species tend to grow slower and care more for their young. Think killer whales or humans, spruce or cedar trees growing slower and being at the top. The bigger species in these forests grow much, much slower and take up way more space. They dominate the forest once they grow big enough after a couple hundred years. Ecologists have developed some really cool math equations and models to explain the r vs. k battle.

Ferns fill every available space on the floor of this mighty rainforest. If you stay on the trail, which maybe 99% of the people who visit do, you miss an amazing peaceful quiet place filled only with the sounds of the birds, the wind, and the dripping water. If you walk off trail wearing your regular clothes, you will be soaking wet, cold, and miserable within about five minutes because of the water collected on the leaves filling your shoes and soaking your clothes. You might as well be walking in a creek for how much water these fern leaves hold and then shed on the passerby.

To battle this I’ve figured out a couple tricks and am continuing to learn how to do it better. First step: bring quality rain gear. I just yesterday saw in The Atlantic gift guide a killer, but expensive, rain jacket. The Stutterheim Stockholm rain jacket. Seeing that made me want to save up for one. Second, you need rain pants. I have an ancient pair of North Face pants. You don’t need to match in the Hoh Rainforest. Then you need a pair of rubber boots hiked in on your pack.They need to go up high inside the rain pants. I hate Goretex anyway, but it won’t help you when the water seeps in over the top of the shoes. I also have a nice Outdoor Research rain hat. Finally you’ll need some rainbag, raincoat, umbrella action for the camera. For tents I very highly recommend bringing in a cheap tarp and some string to hang it over the tent. Bring a big enough one to ba able to cook under. Tents leak, and you don’t want to sleep wet or with water dripping on you all night.

I rarely do macro style pictures because they take too long to set up and usually require special focusing rails to get the lens and camera to focus together. The depth of field is incredibly shallow. Wind we don’t notice moves the leaves or flowers or whatever in microscopic amounts you will see in the motion blurred pictures.

So to get this picture I needed absolutely no wind, freshly fallen rain, fern leaves all in the same plane and enough light hitting the leaves for me to work. These elements seem easy, but they don’t happen too often. Believe me, I’ve tried many times for this picture and have failed.

The final element, the background, makes the leaves pop out nicely. My trusty black Patagonia lightweight top from about 2008 laying on the ground did the trick. I still have and wear that jacket all the time. Patagonia costs more up front, but saves you money in the long run by lasting forever.

Odd numbers always look better than even numbers in a picture for some reason. Just as diagonal lines look better than horizontal and curvy lines look better than straight. Triangles look better too. Repeated patterns always look better. All of these geometric ‘looks better’ ideas come into play in this picture of the fern leaves covered in water droplets.

That’s a lot of water on just a couple of leaves. Imagine a forest floor covered with ferns with water covered leaves every place you step. It’s fun if you’re prepared.

Have a nice day!