White Crane Photography

During a Sierra Club trip in late June, I went with a small group of hikers on a trip to Cowiche Canyon, in Yakima. Cowiche Canyon is a Rails to Trails conversion, with a creek running the length of the canyon alongside the former railroad grade. The Cowiche Canyon Conservancy has done an excellent job of restoring the habitat and establishing hiking trails through the grounds.

From the Uplands Trail along the rim of the canyon, the views are expansive, including Mount Adams on a clear day. The vegetation along the Uplands trail is desert-like, with a lot of sagebrush interspersed with various desert grasses with small flowers. On the canyon floor, along the creek, is a riparian habitat with deciduous plants, and is a good place to view wildlife.

Don’t let the scultped canyon walls distract you from the wildflower show. In spring, Cowiche Canyon shows off quite a display of wildflowers, like this green-belted mariposa lily (Calochortus macrocarpus).

Photographing flowers can be challenging, especially when you do it with a 4×5 in a breezy locale like this one. I was fortunate enough to catch a break in the breeze to get this shot, particularly since there was a small insect that I have not been able to identify on one of the sepals. In order to have a chance at getting a sharp image, I opened up the aperture to f/22, and took advantage of the fact that the day was bright, with the sun out and a mostly blue sky. Even so, getting a shot with this magnification is not easy — this is slightly larger than life-sized, which means that I had to open up an extra stop in order to compensate for bellows draw.

All told, the shot took me nearly 40 minutes, including only around 15 minutes of waiting for the breeze to calm down long enough to get the shot.