The photos!

If I do say so myself, the coolest photo from the hike on Saturday is this one of Aaron climbing a giant tree stump that looked like a piece of broccoli (click photo for larger view):

I'm sure he's happy that he beat out trees, a waterfall and random mossy things for best photo. America's Next Top Model status! (So many hours of my life dedicated to that show, my God.)

We used his Canon 5D Mark II with a Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L lens (I have no clue what I just wrote) for these shots, and he also did some magic tricks with Lightroom, I believe.

I was obsessed with trees that sported ugly protrusions. Again, ANTM-style, I was all, "Give me pretty, but make it ugly. I said ugly-pretty!"

I also liked this tree that looked like a claw. It reminded me of the Fremont troll's claw-like hands. Check it.

And here's a leaf. A leaf on a log.

"This will be a good one for the blog," said Aaron:

Please note that I'm rocking a Jansport, thank you. And I'm glad the camera is hiding my face, since I found myself making all kinds of crazy faces while taking photos. I believe the crazier your face is while shooting, the better the photo. Truth.

This one might be straight out of the camera. Aaron might have taken this one, too. This is the flowy water look I was trying to learn about.

Aaron took this one. This little guy grew out of the top of a tree stump. So cute!

This one reminds me of the Henry David Thoreau quote I keep in the right margin of this blog, which I shortened a bit, but says: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

I hadn't actually been to the woods in a while until Saturday. Despite its name, Woodinville doesn't exactly count. It was peaceful and fun, and as much as I enjoyed seeing the sights through an awesome lense, I liked seeing it all in real life even more.

Some things just can't be captured in a photo. I remember I was trying to take a good picture of something interesting and finally just stepped back and said, "Maybe I'll just enjoy it in real life for a sec." Of course, I can't remember now what I was looking at, but I enjoyed it at the time, and that counts just as much as a cool photo, I think.

I had Aaron take this last photo because I knew I'd never remember where we were. This was a nice, easy and very pretty hike, and a great place for me to start learning about photography from a very patient teacher.

I highly recommend that you go to the woods sometime.