Tag Archives: Washington park arboretum

Focus Stacking the Lily Pond

A walk in Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle took us by one of the ponds that is covered in lilies.  Unlike when I was in Juanita Bay, this pond allowed me to get down to water level.  This provided a far more interesting perspective across the pond to the trees behind.  It did put me very close to the foreground elements so I focused stacked some shots to provide a deeper focused range across the shot.  I far prefer the lower angle as it really emphasizes the foreground elements in a way that isn’t possible when higher up.

Red Bark

The arboretum in Seattle is unsurprisingly home to many interesting varieties of trees and plants.  One tree that caught my eye was (perhaps) a type of willow that had bark that peeled to reveal an intense red coloration beneath.  Sometimes these colors don’t seem to show up as well in an image but I fortunately had a polarizer with me and that took out some of the reflection and glare and allowed the color to show up well.  Cropping in tighter seemed to make more sense, too.

Washington Park Arboretum

Wherever we live, we tend to end up at the arboretum and Seattle is no exception.  The Washington Park Arboretum is near the university (and I think the university has something to do with managing it) and close to Lake Washington.  We paid it a visit at the beginning of Fall with some hope of seeing a bit of color in the trees.  The layout of the arboretum is rather long and thin so, while you have a choice of paths, you tend to make an out and back trip as you walk around.

We chose a good day to be there with the sun out and the colors shown at their best but we were either a little early for the full fall colors or the types of trees there were not the sort to turn too dramatically.  This wasn’t a hindrance for us, though.  Walking through the trees was really great and surprisingly peaceful given how many people were there.  When we turned back, we took a larger path and that had a lot more people on it so maybe our choice of outbound trail was a good one for avoiding the crowds.

One end of the arboretum comes up to the lake.  It is rather close to the SR520 bridge across the lake so not normally the most peaceful of spots.  On this weekend, they were carrying out part of the rebuilding program on the bridge so it was closed one way and things were a bit quieter.  Any other day, though, and I suspect that the noise would be rather obvious.