[/caption] This has been one of our wettest seasons on record and there is plenty of water to go around for the next decade. As I patiently wait for the wildflowers and trees to take bloom so I can descend on the many waterfalls around Oregon I am ready to photograph Portland while the air is still clean and void of any particulates. This photo was taken early last summer along the marina near the Willamette river. I wanted to include the foliage in the foreground as much as possible, without losing any depth of field, since I was mostly wanting to photograph the city skyline. I wasn’t using a tripod so I had to make sure that there was plenty of light and made sure to keep a steady hand. I squatted down low enough so I could frame the picture with the many types of flora surrounding the marina. I was still able to keep the focal length at 28mm without losing any of the field of view even though I was only about 3 feet from the tall grass. Since I was pointing the camera lens upward, towards the skyline and the sun was bright, I was able to take advantage of the huge field of view. The sun was directly behind me with almost no shadows in the photo but this worked well for me since I was wanting to show all of the colors and different shades of the flora and the skyline. I didn’t want any dark shadows to hide any of the subjects. This is one of the few exceptions when forward lighting can be used to your advantage. I was using my Canon T1i along with my Canon 18-55mm kit lens to get this shot. I attached my warming filter and my CIR-PL in order to bring out the warm tones of the grass and tone down the overexposed and cloudless sky. I had the camera mode in Program/Normal so the aperture was at F-7.1 and the shutter speed at 1/125 second. I utilized the histogram to ensure the best exposure and I ended up keeping the ISO at 100 and the white balance at -0.3.