Soft Light and fall colors in the Sequoia Redwood forest Sequoia National Park, California Despite living in Northern California for over 12 years now, I had never taken the 4 hour drive over to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. When Willie proposed hopping over there to see if we could capture some fall colors, I immediately said "YES!" Our plans changed multiple times as we watched the weather and waited for the trees to turn color. We were a month too early, so we delayed. We were a week too early, so we went to Lassen National Park instead. And then finally it looked like the colors were changing and we skipped work, booked a hotel and drove down on a Thursday. We knew a few particular areas of the park were prone to having fall colors. Particularly the dogwood trees and we drove straight to them. The fall colors were not to be found! We spent the day hunting for signs of color. Just before the evening "golden hour" we pulled over at a pull-out and noticed this area ... to our amusement it was the exact area we had first scouted but the harsh light had now faded and we were coming in from a different angle. We grabbed our cameras and snapped away, before running off to see if we could find more colors elsewhere. I loved the way that a few tones of colors nestled up right against the giant Sequoia trees, and then on the other side the green pine trees framed the scene. Nikon D850 w/Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8: 125mm, f/11, 1.3 sec, ISO 64
Painted WoodRedwood Trees Muir Woods, Marin Headlands, California Being in the mood to hang out with the trees and see some beautiful things, Willie, Alan, Sammi and I woke up early one Saturday morning and drove up to Muir Woods. The intent was to shoot the Redwood trees shrouded in fog and then stop in at the Muir Woods Trading Co Cafe for one of their famous Grilled Cheese sandwiches. Everything started off great and then fell completely apart. As we drove to Muir Woods the fog level looked perfect. There was a ton of fog on the coast and it looked low enough to seep into Muir Woods. After navigating the windy roads and making sure Willie's breakfast stayed in his stomach we arrived at Muir Woods early enough to have no problem finding parking. In fact, it was still so early that the rangers hadn't arrived to change the "Entrance Fee: FREE!" sign to "Entrance Fee: $7"! Lucky us. We decided to hike up so we could get back to the higher elevation fog. We hiked up. No fog. We kept hiking. Still no fog. On we went. FOG! Oh wait, no Redwood trees. Walk some more. Hey look, Redwood grove! Oh right, no fog. We took some photos of trees and moved on. Sammi's not a photographer and she brought a book with her and read while we shot. At one point as we started to leave a patch of trees she said "did you guys look behind you?" Of course we hadn't. That's when we saw all the trees had lined up beautifully. With no fog we decided to go a bit abstract and try some "camera painting." Using a long shutter and keeping our tripod bullheads loose, we panned the camera up as the shutter stayed open for 1-2 seconds. Thus the effect you see here! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8 AF-D: 185mm, f/10, 1.6 seconds, ISO 400
Sunrise over Tunnel Mtn Road Banff National Park, Canada Going into every photo trip I have high hopes that I'll come home with a number of portfolio worthy photos. Sometimes I come home disappointed, sometimes my expectations are met, and other times I'm completely blown away by the number of gorgeous photos. Our trip to Banff in November 2015 was certainly the latter. Not only did we get the big mountain scenes I was hoping for, but there were a number of beautiful intimate scenes. Willie and I didn't expect our last morning to have much photography potential but we dragged ourselves out of bed anyways and decided to head towards Lake Minnewanka. Along the drive we looked up at the sky, saw it glowing with a pre-burn, got super excited, and diverted to the closer Tunnel Mountain Road and view of Mt. Rundle. We witnessed an absolutely beautiful sunrise. As the sun came up, a layer of fog developed and caught the warm sunrise light. I loved how it transformed this entire area of snow covered trees into those golden orange scene. I had to throw on the telephoto lens and capture all the light that just warmed my heart. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 80-200 f/2.8: 185mm, f/11, 1/5 sec, ISO 100
