Heidi's Hotspots: Olympic Peninsula: The Hoh Rainforest

Admittedly, the Hoh Rainforest is one of my favorite places on earth.

That's a BIG statement!

I have been to all manner of sights and locales and yet I can right now, right here tell you that my favorite place on earth is a big wet temperate rainforest just miles from the Pacific Ocean.

Yes. For me, the Arizona deserts, Utah Canyons, Canada's mountains all hold special places in my heart and dreams but my go-to happy place is the quiet yet frenzied world that is the Hoh.

Here you can be lost and found in the same breath. Exalt in the openness of nature and feel an overt claustrophobia. You can listen to the flute-like voices of elk with a percussion of dripping from moss and here is where you'll find the quietest inch. You can spend a lifetime visiting yet find something new tucked away among the most familiar. When you are lonely, the moss laden trees become fast friends.

Come here on an overcast day. Even with the thick overstory, sunlight streaming through the leaves can create harsh light and shadows on the scenery. An overcast day gives you soft light, no harsh shadows with blown out highlights. But finding a cloudy day shouldn't be too hard. With rainfall as much as 12 feet a year, there are plenty of grey days. So also bring something to protect yourself and your camera from the wet elements. Even when it's not raining, water drips off the curtains of moss.

If photographing in a forest is a little intimidating, try focusing on small forest vignettes. The Hoh is filled with so much life that the idea of simplifying your image at first mind boggling. There are huge trees everywhere you turn. How do  you create simplicity when there is so much in your viewfinder?

Well, start small with mushrooms and moss.

Look to your feet for tiny things growing and living there.

Find the patterns in the understory.

Point your camera straight up into the top story.

Use a wide angle to get as much in as possible but then use a telephoto to compress the elements together.

Set up your tripod for multiple exposures then blend them later.

Hand hold your camera with a slow shutter speed for a more impressionistic image.

I other words, play. I give you permission to just play with your camera while in the Hoh. Maybe you'll see why this place has become my favorite place.

To get there: From Forks, drive south on Highway 101 to the Hoh River Road. Follow the road to the end. There is a National Park Entrance Fee to access the Hoh Rain Forest.

For more information on visiting the Hoh and Olympic National Park, please visit their website.

A Little Fall Color

Hoh Rainforest, 10/23/09-10/25/09

When I was a young girl, my family would spend a week in the Hoh Rainforest every other summer. Some summers were wetter than others and I can remember hours spent inside our trailer reading as rain pattered on the roof and windows. There was something special in the rainforest. I knew it even then. So now when I want some time to feel the primal forces of life, I head to the rainforest. I love the rainforest in the summer, but began to appreciate what the forest had to offer in the autumn and will often take refuge in the cooler damper days of October.

This year I took a group of photographers with me to explore the old growth trees adorned with thick moss. We camped in the campground inside the park and woke to elk foraging through the undergrowth. A few of my fellow campers gathered at a safe distance to set up cameras as the elk settled in for a mid-morning nap. We took our leave of the dozing elk to meander through the Hall of Mosses nature trail.

We stopped to photograph a Pileated Woodpecker high on a snag. A stream then held our attention for a while before we started up the hill to the trail. Our group laughed and talked and photographed all morning and early afternoon. On our way out wee were stopped by the sighting of a Northern Pygmy Owl and we just couldn't seem to tear ourselves away. But we had to as the promise of a sunset at Ruby Beach was becoming more of a reality.

As we sat at Ruby Beach waiting for the sun to lower below the horizon we noticed our promise of color would be blocked by a fast approaching cloud bank. Not wanting to waste an opportunity, I began to photograph the waves as they came up the beach. Their foam trails heading back out to sea excited me and the rest of the group had to pull me away for dinner.

The next morning, the elk had moved on and so would we - onto Sol Duc Falls and more moss-covered forest. Each photographer that had joined me on my outing to my corner of living forest came away with great memories, photos and stories.