November 9, 2013
Rainforest in Olympic National Park, Washington

We've moved up to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state and yesterday we went into the Hoh Rain Forest area of Olympic National Park. (Yes, the area is called "Rain Forest," two words, even though "rainforest," one word, is used to describe the actual biome.) My toe has recuperated enough so that I could wander around one of the short nature loops through the rainforest, and it was great to be out shooting again after so much imposed rest.

One of the challenges when photographing in a rainforest is the potential for high dynamic range, or in other words, dark shadows and really bright highlights. The somewhat bright overcast helped reduce contrast yesterday, but I still searched for compositions that didn't include even bits of the sky which were quite bright. In this image, the two large trees in the foreground had taken root on a nurse log, and I was drawn to their overlapping root structure. The moss-covered branches in the background helped to enhance the sense of place.