Best of 2023...

Back in the “old days” of DU2 and DU3, I used to post an end-of-year retrospective that was based on two rules: one photo per month, and no photos I had already posted to this group. This time, however, I’m simply “rebooting” the tradition with a selection of my favorite images of the year.



Sunset at Seahurst Park
Taken late last winter. I had never visited this site before, and was lucky to find this composition where the running water in the foreground mirrored the cloud above the setting sun, while the still pool on the left reflected the bare trees above.




Into The Woods...
Another case of visiting a location (a pocket forest near my home) for the first time and striking gold.




Green Cathedral
I took many photographs during this trip to the Hoh Rain Forest with which I was really happy. The amazing overlap of textures and shades made this one my favorite.




Ruby Beach Sunset
As hard as it may be to believe, this was taken less than two hours after the previous image. After leaving the Hoh Rain Forest in the late afternoon/early evening, I decided to make a quick dash down to Ruby Beach, even though the predictions for sunset light had been poor. When I got there (thank heavens for long June days in the Pacific Northwest!) I found that, while there was enough mist at beach level to make sunset shots down there unworkable, the scene from the upper viewpoint was nothing short of amazing.






Deception Pass Triptych
This is a scene I'd been hoping to capture for several years. I have to give credit to PhotoPills for this one, as their app enabled me to plan out the exact position I needed to set my camera to capture the sun setting behind Deception Pass Bridge well in advance of the actual day of shooting.




Autumn's Essence
Probably the simplest photo in this collection, this was something I spotted by the parking lot of the local park when I stopped to try to capture some fall images. Sometimes, the subject is just given to you, and all you have to do is look down.




Autumn on the Cle Elum River
This was the result of two consecutive day trips to the same location (the rather distinctively-named Salmon La Sac in central Washington). The first day, the sky didn't cooperate and I came away with no photographs, but I noted several interesting locations. The next day, when the skies were bright blue with just enough cloud to keep them from being monotonous, I raced back and got nice images at all of them, with this composition being the standout.




Americana
Winthrop, near the Canadian border, is renowned as a locale for fall foliage. I don't know who ordered up the sky for that day (maybe someone was shooting a western in the area?), but I was happy to take advantage of it.




Hanging On
The next three images were taken in the same forest as Into The Woods... over a couple of days in late October. I found this leaf, which had fallen onto a tree trunk and stuck there, to be an interesting study in determination.




Autumn Textures
I love how the different elements of fallen leaves, bright moss, and the central tree fungus combine in this image.




Night Light
I owe this and the previous image to two of my favorite YouTube photographers, Kim Grant and Courtney Victoria, both of whom had posted videos about how, once they started looking for mushrooms and fungi in the forest, they started seeing them everywhere. I decided to test this out in my local woods, and found they were right! In what was a very dark location, I love the light on and through the mushroom's cap.




Tree of Fire
Let's face it...there are probably millions of images of this famous laceleaf maple (nowadays simply known as "The Tree" in the photographic community) in the Portland Japanese Garden, most taken with the same composition. I've taken more than a few myself in previous years. What made this year different was the "two-tone" foliage of the tree, with bright golden-yellow toward the pond and deep red-orange toward the pathway. It's what makes this my favorite of all the images I've taken at this location.




Playing It Koi
Also from the Portland Japanese Garden, a carp makes a fortuitious appearance in this composition of stone lantern and maple, with Heavenly Falls in the background.




Silver
Taken at Snoqualmie Pass during the only really good snow we've seen so far this winter. Although this may appear to be a black-and-white image, it isn't; nature was just feeling monochrome that day.




The Dancers
This image, and the one following, almost didn't get taken. I noticed the rare heavy fog in this area, but I was on my way to Snoqualmie Pass for more winter shooting. When the conditions at Snoqualmie proved to be poor for photography, I raced back here, half-expecting the fog to have burned off by the time I returned. Fortunately, it stuck around all day. Even more fortunately, I was able to find this composition, with a pair of curving trees appearing to engage in some sort of ritual dance in front of the forest of stiffly-standing neighbors.




Bending Woods
I make a point, every time I'm at a location, to try to find both a vertical and a horizontal composition of my subject. Usually, one is markedly superior to the other; this time, I got two worthy images. Incidentally, this was taken in mid-afternoon - one of the features of Pacific Northwest winter is that it turns dark quite early, and that's especially so in foggy conditions.




Impact
A wave smashes into the headwall at Cape Disappointment during "king tides" this December. Lack of good light resulting in muted colors made black-and-white the way to go.