The Artful Engineer

Part of what makes Tillamook County nice from a photographic standpoint is the diversity of subject matter. You can’t know from looking at it, but the image above was within 20 yards of a seaside cliff. As is typical for the Pacific Northwest, the persistent wetness results in lots of moss covering everything that stands still, including these old branches reaching outwards across the forest floor.

I don’t recall whether this next tree was dead or alive, but it is wonderfully shaggy with moss and most of what is left is covered with lichen. The only reason there are any patches of light showing through the background trees is because there is a cliff just beyond them, but I think this is fortunate because it keeps the background from being entirely featureless.

The moss is doing well here, too: not only does is cover the tree, but it has even colonized the forest floor.

Man-made objects, like this fence, are not immune from the moss and lichen, either. The first clue that someone has repeatedly worked to keep this fence serviceable is the newer board, but, although it might be hard to tell at this size, there are three different types of screw-heads used on this fence, too, plus the original ones that are corroded almost beyond recognition. I like the assortment of textures in this image, plus the way the new board breaks the pattern set by the others. The tufts of moss also give a little depth to what otherwise is a completely flat subject.

Here is a very different fence from the previous one, but the wooden railing has also attracted its share of moss. I wish I had played more with this chain-link fence, though, because I think there is something better waiting to be discovered.

The images above were all taken in close proximity to one another, although on two separate days. This last image was 20-30 minutes inland, and the forest looks completely different here. It seems odd that the leaves have not started to change in late October; regardless, I like the conflicting impressions of density and airiness. Finding a subject—beyond just patterns and textures—in this type of scene is challenging, so I took advantage of a tree that broke the overall pattern. Something I really appreciate about a tilt-shift lens is being able to shift it upwards to eliminate most of the foreground while still keeping the trees vertical, a trick that was useful here. (It’s also handy for the reverse reason, too: shifting it downwards to add foreground and reduce background.)

I hope you enjoyed these woodland images from the northern Oregon coast. I’ve been saving some of my favorite images of the Tillamook area for next week, so I hope you’ll come back for those. At this point, I’m mostly worried about whether I can narrow them down into a single post. We’ll see!