The Lake Twenty-Two Trail is a trail I have hiked dozens of times throughout my photography career. I have captured many amazing shots along this trail and at the lake itself. This trail is a wilderness study area, and from base at the trailhead to Lake Twenty-Two has never been logged. It is a true old-growth forest. As you hike up the switchbacks, along a series of waterfalls, you pass many different layers of forest, starting with giant cedars at the bottom, then hiking up through enormous Douglas fir and hemlock. Then the trail switchbacks up through an avalanche scree section of giant old-growth maples.
Hiking past these trees so many times, I knew there was an image to be captured. I have shot it from below, from above, from about every angle I could think of, but I had never captured “the shot,” even though my compositional mind told me there was one to be had.
On this day, after tying on my hiking boots, grabbing my pack and poles, and starting up the trail, I hiked into fog. The forest was surreal. As I continued switchbacking up, morning light started brightening the fog. I started to get excited. Maybe this was finally the day to get the shot.
As I rounded the final switchback that revealed the giant maples to me, I instantly dropped my pack, got the camera on the tripod, screwed on my circular polarizer, set the aperture to f/22, spun the polarizer, and clicked the first exposure off at 3 seconds. It was a little overexposed, and the white balance was too high. I re-adjusted, dropping the exposure compensation to get a 2-second exposure and lowering the white balance to 5200K, and took the second shot.
Pow! Nailed that! It was totally happening! I clicked off four more exposures, and suddenly the scene started brightening up, and the next thing I knew, the fog was gone!
After so many years of hiking this trail, and so many attempts to capture a gallery shot with this scene, I had finally done it. All this time, the missing element was fog. I realized after the fact that the area beyond the maples was too distracting, but the fog had knocked that out, keeping the viewer’s eye in the scene. The first red leaves of fall on the ground added that extra pop of color I did not even know I needed. And the morning sun burning through the fog, just at the time of my exposure, produced a quality of light I could never duplicate.
I am truly proud of this shot and all the effort it took to capture it. This image is on display in both of my galleries and on my wall at home. Since capturing this image, one of the giant maples has fallen, making this image extra special to me.
That explains how I think of photography: “capturing a moment in time,” and sometimes never to be repeated again.
