Washington has such a variety of environments to photograph: waterfalls, mountains, wildlife, beaches, volcanoes. When I went there one July, I was primarily interested in one thing: wildflowers. This article is part of a series that I'm writing on my recent trip to Washington to show the processes I use to arrive at my final images. In this case, I'll focus on my image of "Hurricane Ridge Wildflowers at Sunrise."

July is peak wildflower season in Washington. When I got to Hurricane Ridge, which is in Olympic National Park on the Olympic Peninsula, the wildflowers were absolutely gorgeous and more fantastic than I’d hoped for. There were flowers of every color: white, blue, red, yellow, purple, orange, pink. I wanted to paint with them.

Several trails begin at Hurricane Ridge, which is the visitor center for Mt. Olympus viewing. On my first trip up the Hurricane Hill trail, which goes 1.2 miles into the wilderness to the summit of Hurricane Hill, I was hoping to catch some fantastic shots as well as scout sunset and sunrise spots for the next day. Near the summit I spotted some Olympic marmot and snapped a few shots. I also got several shots of wildflower patches draped over hillsides. Everywhere, there was a fantastic view.

I scouted some locations, and I actually recorded their exact coordinates with my Garmin eTrex GPS unit. However, it turned out I didn’t need the GPS because the locations were easy enough to recognize the next morning. I got up before the crack of dawn, when the light was a moody, misty blue. I got to my first location at about 8 a.m. Though the light had already come out by then, it hadn’t yet come over the hill onto the patch of wildflowers I wanted to feature.

I set up tripod right on the trail, put on my Nikkor 12-24 DX lens, and composed. The first few photos I snapped were OK, but not as fantastic as I wanted. I waited. And then the light lifted slowly over the ridge from the north, painting the patch of wildflowers with its graceful golds. The sun painted the scene for me. The mountain tops were now in the same light as the foreground, with some of the middle ground in shadow. I love it when the foreground and background are in the same light and the middle ground is different. This adds depth and complexity to the image.

I decided to use a one stop graduated neutral density filter to make sure I didn’t blow out the mountain peaks on the horizon and keep the colors saturated. And I snapped away. What I ended up doing was metering the foreground and background to compare readings and figure out what ND filter to use. I tried focusing on the foreground and on the background to see which composition I thought was best, and I ended up choosing the background mountains, but I shot at f/19 to try to keep the flowers as sharp as possible. It’s impossible to capture the same depth of field with a 35mm camera that can be captured with a medium format.

The following series of exposures is not every shot I took, but it represents the process I went through to get the final image.

Above, first composition: My first composition was OK, but I thought the tree on the right was too distracting, and I was still waiting and wanting the foreground to light up.

Next exposure: Removed the tree from the composition. Foreground too dark, but mountains exposed well.

Next exposure: Here, the light was what I wanted, and a 1-stop ND filter was used to balance out the light on the mountains with the more subdued foreground light. Note vignetting in upper left due to Cokin system. Though I saw this in frame, I knew it could be easily removed in Photoshop (or more zoom, which I didn't want).

Next exposure: Now the sun has come out to fully illuminate the foreground instead of gently painting it. I wanted a more subtle light. Shortly after this, I stopped photographing because I knew the light was going to get fuller and less dramatic for me.

Finished image: Note removal of vignetting, some change in saturation and levels, and a bit of dodging, but this is all basic editing. Of course, sharpening was also applied. It's simply a better version of the camera image.

The resulting image represents very much what I wanted to convey: the warm light softly painting the foreground, enriching the colors, while the background mountains with white snow were bathed in warm light. I wanted to capture the expansiveness and depth of the scene, which is why I used the wide lens. I wanted to open the view up and even stretch the perspective of some of the elements a bit to give them a little movement. I didn’t use a polarizer because it didn’t fit in with the Cokin filter system.

This is an example of how I work a scene and how I arrive at my images. It's shown so you can see what goes into making an image. I hope you enjoy my images as much as I enjoy making them. For more of my images or photography information, visit my Light Fantasies Photography Web site. If you like this guide, please vote.