If you are lucky enough to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you can see one of my images in the July-August issue of Bay Nature, a regional magazine. This photo is of Berry Creek Falls in the heart of Big Basin State Park, one of California’s beautiful displays of coastal redwoods. As is typical in a dark forest, this was shot on a tripod at slow shutter speed. I’ve blown this up to 20 x 30 inches and it looks fantastic, even with your nose pressed against the photo.
The day brought perfect conditions for waterfall photography – bright overcast skies and the high water flow of spring. It serves as a great reminder of our state when it is not in the midst of a drought crisis (in other words, I didn’t shoot it this year)!
On my recent trip up the California coast to the redwoods, I had an opportunity to pop up into Oregon to visit Harris State Beach, home of a very interesting sea arch. The arch is carved into a rock wall just offshore, with plenty of interesting boulders along the beach, giving enterprising photographers many options for compositions. As the sun was setting, I settled for a more centered approach to my composition, centering the arch directly above a centered rock. Usually I avoid such centering, choosing instead to lead the viewer’s eye out of one of the lower corners, but in this case I think it works. Simple, yet strong.
The sun sets behind offshore sea stacks, Harris Beach State Park
After settling on a composition I was happy with, I had a few minutes to run north in order to catch the sun as it set behind a large sea stack. In order to get into a position where the sun would set behind the rock, I scrambled up onto another rock and perched precariously at the top, while trying to give my tripod enough room. Let’s just say that I was relieved when I got the shot and could climb back down, by body and camera gear still in tact.
Large flat rocks lead through the rising tide to a dark sea arch in a rock wall, Harris State Beach
After the sun dropped below the horizon, I went back to the sea arch and really explored the foreground rocks. I fell in love with these ones, but from their vantage point, you could not see all the way through the arch. In this case, I chose to crop the top of the photo, as the rock wall really wasn’t that interesting and instead focus the photo on the foreground rocks themselves. The low light allowed for a slow shutter speed, turning the rushing waves into a calm mist.
The sun sets behind a bank of offshore clouds, silhouetting the sea stacks at Harris State Beach, Oregon
The parking area at Harris Beach offers commanding views down onto the beach below, and just before I left, I spent some time with the very last of the sunset light. Here there was a nice stream forming an s-curve into the photo. Overall I found this a pretty photogenic beach, and I know I’ll be back in the future, especially to shoot that arch in different types of light.
A couple of weeks ago I made a trip north to shoot old growth redwoods during the spring rhododendron bloom. It was my first time to the area and was quite an experience. First of all, I found the landscape quite challenging. Once I entered a redwood forest, it was a sensory overload, with subjects to shoot everywhere. The forest was so busy with life that it became difficult to distill each shot down to an individual subject. I could shoot everything from a super wide angle with trees converging into the fog, to macro detail shots of leaves, moss and flowers.
Ferns grow at the base of a large redwood tree, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park
I visited several old growth forests in the vicinity of Redwoods National Park. However, I never visited the park itself, as the oldest forest is preserved in several state parks in the area. These California state parks contain the first trees to be saved from the lumber mills, with the national park encompassing whatever land was left unprotected decades later.
Rhododendron grows throughout a redwood forest shrouded in fog, Del Norte Redwoods State Park
This time of year is very popular for photographers because of the massive rhododendron bloom throughout these forests. The best way to capture the flowering bushes against the giant redwood trunks is to wait for thick fog to permeate the forest, which luckily happens quite often this time of year.
Fog does two things – first, it evens out the lighting in the forest by diffusing sunlight. This prevents the harsh contrast sometimes seen in thick forests when thousands of small light beams spotlight the vegetation. Cameras can’t capture this kind of contrast, and the fog cuts it out completely. Secondly, fog fills in behind the closest trees and greatly simplifies the scene. Instead of seeing a dense forest and all its detail behind the closest redwoods and rhododendrons, you instead see a misty fog. The viewer’s eye can stay focused on the main subject matter.
Intertwining leaves of false lily-of-the-valley form an abstract pattern, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park
In addition to capturing my main target, the forest provided opportunities for macro shots as well. Walking along the trails, I always kept an eye out for interesting patterns formed naturally. I found the large green leaves of false lily-of-the-valley intertwined and zoomed in to pick out a pattern among the leaves.
Naturally, there were also other interesting subjects, such as this fungus growing on a decaying tree branch.
A fungus grows from the branch of a decaying redwood, Del Norte Redwoods State Park
The last morning I was in town, I was greeted by a light steady rain. Normally this kind of weather would see me rising, checking the window, and then jumping back into bed. However the rain also came with more fog, which actually created ideal conditions for more forest photography. Not necessarily the best conditions for me, but with my camera well protected with its own rain gear, the resulting photos came out just fine.
Rhododendrons grow amongst the redwoods along the California coast. Fog regularly permeates the forest, giving these giants the perfect conditions in which to grow.
The forest offered more than just lush green vegetation and enormous trees. Some of the older trees had large gashes and burns which lent to more graphical than subjective photographs. Here the negative space formed by the dark burn marks frames and offsets the light window to a distant tree.
Dark burns cut a graphic pattern through the base of giant redwood trees, Del Norte Redwoods State Park
Once the fog cleared, there were moments of magical, ethereal sunlight filtering through the canopy. I loved finding backlit ferns juxtaposed against a much darker wall of redwood. The photo below contains a bonus element of a double swoop of sorrel framing the bottom of the photo.
Sorrel, fern and redwood trees all contribute to the many shades of green of a redwood forest, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park
It was a brief, challenging weekend. I’m not sure if I quite hit my stride in the redwood forest, which is usually an indicator that another visit is in order in the near future. There were difficult shooting conditions with the rain, and the sheer complexity of the forest had me scratching my head more than once. It is times like those that I have to take my hands away from the camera and just sit with the surroundings, listening. More often than not, it will tell me where to point my lens next.
Rhododendrons grow amongst the redwoods along the California coast. Fog regularly permeates the forest, giving these giants the perfect conditions in which to grow.
