Category Archives: nature

June 26, 2020 · 9:16 am

It’s Fun Fact Friday, 6-26-2020

It’s Fun Fact Friday, folks! The image above is of a plant called devil’s club. It’s quite striking among the other greenery growing in the forest interior at Mount Rainier National Park. And, as you can see, it’s got little stickers on it. But, there’s more to this plant than what you think.

In addition to using devil’s club for an arthritis remedy, fishhooks and deodorant, Alaska Natives have also used this plant for coughs, colds and fever, skin disorders, and digestive ailments.

This plant was one of the quiz questions for National Parks Quiz and Trivia #8.

So, the next time you wander the forests of the Pacific Northwest and see this plant, you’ll know more about the forest and this plant than you did before.

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Filed under Fun Fact Friday, Mount Rainier National Park, Mt. Rainier National Park, National Parks, nature, Nikon, Photography, plant

Tagged as Fun Fact Friday, Mount Rainier, Mt. Rainier, National Park, Nikon, photogaphy, plant, telephoto, where the trails take you

March 6, 2020 · 9:08 am

It’s Fun Fact Friday 3-6-2020!

The scissor-tail flycatcher, aka Texas bird-of-paradise, can hover with its tail spread and make abrupt turns in midair. It’s numbers have declined by about 31% between 1966 and 2014.

I found this flycatcher in October, sitting pretty on the barb-wire fence at the Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge back in 2013.

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Filed under 1DX, birds, Brazoria NWR, Canon, Fun Fact Friday, nature, Photography, Texas, Wildlife Refuge

Tagged as 1DX, bird, birding, Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge, Canon, flycatcher, Fun Fact Friday, national wildlife refuge, NWR, October, photography, scissor-tail, Texas, where the trails take you

February 1, 2020 · 9:25 am

Solitude And Tranquility

It’s the weekend, folks. Where will the trail take you? Perhaps to a quiet little pond for some solitude and thouthfulness? That’s what this image from Lake Clark National Park and Preserve brings to mind for me. It was a morning with no bears around to photograph, so we concentrated on other things during our hike out of a forest and into this misty meadow.

That’s a good lesson for you photographers out there. Often, we have high expectations of what we will see during a trip to a national park (or anywhere, for that matter). When it doesn’t pan out according to your expectations, then change those expectations and start observing what you see around you. On that morning, sans bears, I photographed a field filled with spiderwebs bejeweled with dewdrops. a downed nurselog housing a clump of tiny mushrooms, an orb weaver spider spinning a web, and this pond with it’s feathered swimmers within a golden meadow surrounded by mountains and a forest obscured by mist. It was lovely.

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Filed under Alaska, Canon, Lake Clark National Park, National Parks, nature, Photography, Travel

Tagged as Alaska, Canon, ducks, expectations, forest, Lake Clark, Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, life, meadow, mist, mountains, National Park, photography, pond, travel, where the trails take you

November 28, 2019 · 7:52 am

Gobble, Gobble! Happy Thanksgiving!

Here’s to the one that got away and won’t be found on anybody’s dinner table 😉

For those of you who follow the tradition of Thanksgiving, it’s supposed to be a time of thinking about what you are thankful for in your life. It also is a time to enjoy the bounty of what the earth provides (aka lots of eating and snacking … and watching football).

I’m thankful for a gazillion things, such as my sister, having a roof over my head and food to eat and electricity and clean running water. I’m thankful for having moved back to a part of the U.S. that I love the most, and being back so close to the mountains that I’ve missed for the majority of my life. I’m also thankful for the invention of digital cameras and being able to own a few in order to capture beautiful / interesting images that tell a story and elicit emotion and share them with you all. I’m thankful for our national parks and hope nobody ever commercializes them (any more than they may already be). I could go on and on, but at least you know, I don’t take much for granted and try to find something good in every day.

As for the photo, this is a wild turkey that was roaming around with its flock (or whatever you call a group of wild turkeys) near a Park Service storage building along a trail near the Court of The Patriarchs. Those guys were not afraid of me at all. I should have been afraid of them because thtey were pretty darned big. I followed them around to get still images and video, and it was then that I learned they could fly. Well, from the ground up to a branch in a tree, which is where I photographed this guy (or gal). I also learned that they are very colorful and, despite their faces only a mother could love, are actually kinda pretty.

Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody!

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Filed under birds, Holidays, National Parks, nature, Photography, Thanksgiving, Travel, Zion National Park

Tagged as being thankful, bird, Canon, holiday, National Park, photography, Thanksgiving, travel, turkey, Utah, where the trails take you, wild turkey, Zion National Park

November 21, 2019 · 4:53 pm

Corporate Behavior

Even the smallest and/or prettiest of creatures can be territorial and exhibit more than just a little bit of visciousness in the daily fight for survival. Heaven knows I’ve experienced it within the human workplace, hence the sarcastic title.

I’ve been rescuing photos from a dying portable hard drive. The hummingbird images I captured between 2012 – 2014 are favorites of mine and they needed to be saved to another drive.

As a photographer, you can learn quite a bit about birds or other wildlife by simply watching and photographing them on a regular basis. During that span of years my mother and I hung out those hummingbird feeders in Texas, I would be over there every morning and/or evening to photograph these soft, tiny little birdies. The more I watched, the more I learned they aren’t quite as sweet as everybody might think. Luckily, this extended observation led to some very interesting photos.

Canon 1DX and 100-400mm lens

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Filed under 1DX, birds, Canon, Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM, Canon Lens, hummingbirds, Life, nature, Photography, Texas

Tagged as 100-400mm, 1DX, behavior, bird, birds, Canon, close up, hummingbird, hummingbirds, life, September, telephoto, where the trails take you

November 17, 2019 · 6:28 am

A Stormy Day At Cross Trails Pond

I’m up early because the inside of my cheek is killing me. I had a back molar implant put in this past Wednesday and my cheek got the brunt of some burring work on the cap and the upper back molar. Bleah. So, I can’t sleep. I’ll take an aspirin after I have something for breakfast later. Whenever I can’t sleep, I get up, turn on the laptop, and work on photos. I’m still (and will be for months, I’m sure) cleaning up my photo website and I happened upon this image in my Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge gallery. It was an awesome morning on that June day. Sometimes, going to the refuge was a hit or miss prospect. I either saw lots of birdlife, like here, or no birdlife. On this stormy morning, not only were there large numbers of egrets and spoon bills, but the clouds were awesomely dramatic. Out of all the images I took at the refuge, this photo numbers as one of my favorites.

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Filed under birds, Brazoria NWR, nature, Photography, Seasons, summer, Texas, Wildlife Refuge

Tagged as bird, birds, Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge, Brazoria NWR, clouds, dramatic, dramatic landscape, egret, June, national wildlife refuge, pond, spoonbill, storm, storm clouds, stormy, summer, Texas, water, where the trails take you

November 16, 2019 · 9:00 am

Dawn Along The Seashore

How about a nice, peaceful, beach scene colored by the blush of “rosy-fingered dawn” to start your weekend? I have a feeling dawn won’t be as pretty where I live – it’s been overcast with a low cloud ceiling for the past few days.

Padre Island National Seashore in Texas is a great place to watch the sun rise. I got there at dark-thirty a.m. and just watched the play of colors over the sky and Gulf of Mexico, as the shore birds pattered along the water’s edge looking for breakfast.

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Filed under 1DX, birds, Canon, Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM, Canon Lens, National Parks, nature, Padre Island National Seashore, Photography, Seasons, Spring, sunrise, Texas, Travel

Tagged as 100-400mm, 1DX, April, beach, Canon, Canon 1DX, dawn, morning, national seashore, Padre Island, Padre Island National Seashore, photography, pink, rosy, shore bird, spring, springtime, sunrise, telephoto, telephoto landscape, Texas, where the trails take you

September 28, 2019 · 9:16 am

Trees Along The Sol Duc Trail

Yeah, I’ve been posting quite a few tree and forest interior images. It’s what you do when you visit Olympic National Park. This shot was captured during a hike along the Sol Duc Falls trail in the Sol Duc Valley. There are all sorts of lovely, deep, quiet, photo ops and the trees always look very interesting. This tall tree in front appears to be growing right out of or at least, very close to, the tree behind it, if you look closely at the root structure at the bottom of the trees.

The moral of this story is that you should observe the scenes around you and not keep your head down as you head toward your sole purpose of hiking the trail in the first place (in this case, to get to Sol Duc Falls). The more you observe, the better your compositions become.

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Filed under 24-105mm, 5DS, Canon, forest, National Parks, Olympic National Park, Photography, Seasons, summer, Travel, Washington State

Tagged as 24-105mm, 5DS, August, Canon, forest, forest interior, green, landscape, National Park, Olympic National Park, Rebecca Latson Photography, rebeccalatsonphotography, scenery, Sol Duc, summer, travel, trees, Washington, Washington State

September 21, 2019 · 1:51 pm

To Orton Or Not To Orton … That Is The Question

Scenery along the Hall of Mosses trail, with and without the Orton Effect, Hoh Rain Forest, Olympic National Park

Just as I have memorized the ingredients to only one drink (a prosecco margarita) so that I no longer need to look up the recipe, I have now memorized how to create the Orton Effect in a photo and won’t need to look up the instructions. What is the Orton Effect? It’s a method of creating a dreamy, Lord Of The Rings-type atmosphere within an image. Oh, I still prefer my images to look natural, but I must admit, the Orton Effect, when used judiciously, looks kinda cool, is easy to create (if you know how to create a Layer in Photoshop), and adds to the other photo editing stuff in my repertoire. The more I learn, the better I become.

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Filed under forest, HD PENTAX-DA645 28-45mm f/4.5 ED AW SR Lens, National Parks, nature, Olympic National Park, Pentax 645z, Pentax Lens, Photography, Seasons, summer, Travel, Washington State

Tagged as 28-45mm, 645z, Hall of Mosses, Hoh rain forest, medium format, National Park, Olympic National Park, orton, Pentax, photography, rain forest, Rebecca Latson Photography, rebeccalatsonphotography, special effect, Washington, Washington State

September 20, 2019 · 10:12 am

Rain Forest Shapes, Colors, And Light

I’m glad I visited Olympic National Park when I did, because it’s got some rainy weather going on now and probably will for the foreseeable future, I am guessing. Fall is coming. Winter is coming. Lots of rain and wet are coming to the Olympic Peninsula.

I captured this image because, as I was wandering the Hall of Mosses trail in the Hoh Rain Forest, I noticed the sun peeking through the trees. It created what is called a “single point light source” and is great for producing photographic sunbursts. I’d already set the tripod and camera up to photograph the interesting roots, and that little bit of sunburst light was a cherry on top.

I used my Pentax 645z medium format camera for this. I don’t use this camera as often as I should, because it produces wonderful images. As a matter of fact, I’m taking it with me on my forthcoming Yellowstone trip. I’m not even going to tell you how heavy the camera pack is, or the fact that I am carrying one of the long lenses in my laptop bag so I don’t have to put anything in checked luggage. 😁

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Filed under forest, HD PENTAX-DA645 28-45mm f/4.5 ED AW SR Lens, National Parks, Olympic National Park, Pentax 645z, Pentax Lens, Photography, Seasons, starbursts, summer, Travel, Washington State

Tagged as 645z, August, forest, green, HDR, Hoh rain forest, medium format, Olympic National Park, Olympic Peninsula, Pentax, rain forest, rainforest, Rebecca Latson Photography, rebeccalatsonphotography, summer, travel, tree roots, trees, Washington, Washington State

Category Archives: nature

It’s Fun Fact Friday, 6-26-2020

It’s Fun Fact Friday 3-6-2020!

Solitude And Tranquility

Gobble, Gobble! Happy Thanksgiving!

Corporate Behavior

A Stormy Day At Cross Trails Pond

Dawn Along The Seashore

Trees Along The Sol Duc Trail

To Orton Or Not To Orton … That Is The Question

Rain Forest Shapes, Colors, And Light

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