The Gradient of Green to Gold
Green leaves remaining from the summer past and golden autumn hues seem to blend together on a rainy afternoon at the beautiful Cedar Grist Mill, near Woodland, Washington.
Sometimes I forget that green and gold are next door neighbors on the spectrum, as I often tend to visualize quite a contrast in nature between verdant summer and the bright golds and other warm colors that autumn brings to go along with its cooler temperatures. In this idyllic place, on an afternoon when the weather mostly alternated between downpours, drizzles and mist (I think shot was taken during more of a light drizzle period), I found this sort of blended color palette quite beautiful.
Another interesting thing, that we didn't realize at first, is that some sort of good-sized salmon or trout were busily working their way upstream to spawn all the while we were at Cedar Creek. Someone later told us they were steelhead, which I learned is basically a type of rainbow trout that lives part of its time in freshwater and part at sea (I also learned the general term for freshwater fish that go to sea is "anadromous", so there's the random word of the day).
Anyway, before we understood what was going on, we'd periodically hear a smack, like a single hand clap, or a thud coming from the area of the waterfall that's just barely visible in the center of this image behind a veil of leaves. Once we realized that a spawning run was underway in the stream we ventured over to an overlook by waterfall and saw up close the cause of those sounds--fish that missed their jumps up the falls often were powered back against the rocks with quite a bit of force by the rushing flow. Getting upstream to spawn looked like very tough work for those beautiful fish. Its almost hard to believe they ever make it since they were having quite a time with this waterfall, and it wasn't much of a waterfall by Pacific Northwest standards. It was amazing to watch.
On a different note, for those of you who know this view well, I confess to using the creative license afforded by the cloning brush to remove from the scene the modern outdoor light fixture mounted just under the roof peak. Useful as it may be in the real world, it wasn't working for me in this image and thus had to go!
Thanks for viewing!
The Gradient of Green to Gold
Green leaves remaining from the summer past and golden autumn hues seem to blend together on a rainy afternoon at the beautiful Cedar Grist Mill, near Woodland, Washington.
Sometimes I forget that green and gold are next door neighbors on the spectrum, as I often tend to visualize quite a contrast in nature between verdant summer and the bright golds and other warm colors that autumn brings to go along with its cooler temperatures. In this idyllic place, on an afternoon when the weather mostly alternated between downpours, drizzles and mist (I think shot was taken during more of a light drizzle period), I found this sort of blended color palette quite beautiful.
Another interesting thing, that we didn't realize at first, is that some sort of good-sized salmon or trout were busily working their way upstream to spawn all the while we were at Cedar Creek. Someone later told us they were steelhead, which I learned is basically a type of rainbow trout that lives part of its time in freshwater and part at sea (I also learned the general term for freshwater fish that go to sea is "anadromous", so there's the random word of the day).
Anyway, before we understood what was going on, we'd periodically hear a smack, like a single hand clap, or a thud coming from the area of the waterfall that's just barely visible in the center of this image behind a veil of leaves. Once we realized that a spawning run was underway in the stream we ventured over to an overlook by waterfall and saw up close the cause of those sounds--fish that missed their jumps up the falls often were powered back against the rocks with quite a bit of force by the rushing flow. Getting upstream to spawn looked like very tough work for those beautiful fish. Its almost hard to believe they ever make it since they were having quite a time with this waterfall, and it wasn't much of a waterfall by Pacific Northwest standards. It was amazing to watch.
On a different note, for those of you who know this view well, I confess to using the creative license afforded by the cloning brush to remove from the scene the modern outdoor light fixture mounted just under the roof peak. Useful as it may be in the real world, it wasn't working for me in this image and thus had to go!
Thanks for viewing!