tree – Page 10

November 2, 2010January 14, 2013

Bristlecone At Sunset (Photo of the week)

An ancient bristlecone pine reflects the last rays of daylight, White Mountains, CA

On my recent trip to the eastern Sierra to photograph the fall colors, I visited the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains, part of the Inyo National Forest. I had done some reading about the area from books such as David Muench’s classic Timberline Ancients (out of print), and several of Galen Rowell’s insightful essays from Vision and Inner Game of Outdoor Photography. But actually being there and walking among these trees was a spiritual experience, and one I will not soon forget.

We were blessed with a recent snow storm that blanketed the crest of the White Mountains – not enough to close the road, and just enough to provide a clean contrast to the rough, twisted texture of the bristlecone. We were working an exposed western-facing slope, and after taking a few establishing shots, I climbed to the top of the hill. I quickly remembered that I was at 11,500 feet in elevation, as I was out of breath after only a few steps! My goal in the photo above was to capture the vibrant colors of sunset reflected in the wood of the bristlecone, while also getting the colors in the opposite horizon, as well as the earth shadow as it crept across the eastern foothills and Nevada desert beyond. The warm pastels in the wood are continued in the sunset colors of the sky above.

All lengths of lens work here, depending on your personal style and vision – whether it is to shoot a distant mountain top grove with a telephoto, or to crawl up inside the gnarled spiral of a branch with a fish-eye. The challenge in shooting these trees is to try to decide what to include and what to leave out of the frame. One question I kept coming back to that helped me to focus was, “What is the main point of this photo?” If my answer was “the texture of this branch,” then why include the roots of the tree? If my answer was “to show the desolate environment in which these trees live,” then I knew to shoot wide and and treat an entire group of trees as the main subject.

Below are a few more photos I took while exploring the bristlecone forest.

A bristlecone log frames an upright tree, both of which have lived for thousands of years, White Mountains, CA

A bristlecone pine grows from a desolate, snowy mountainside, White Mountains, CA

Fresh snows blankets the slopes of the White Mountains, framing the ancient bristlecone pines that live there

October 18, 2010January 14, 2013

Great Horned Owl (Photo of the week)

A great horned owl sits on a tree branch at dusk, surveying the area for potential prey.

This week’s shot was taken near Bishop, CA in an open field with a nearby stream. Although I was out shooting landscapes, I had my 100-400L mounted on a second body and slung over my shoulder. I was glad I thought to bring this “just in case” setup. You never know when you’ll run into wildlife!

Some friends alerted me to the owl’s presence, and as I got closer, I was presented with two problems, both relating to the lighting conditions. First of all, the sun was setting behind the tree in which the owl was perched. This created a strong silhouette of the tree branch with the owl. Sometimes silhouettes can work well with birds, especially if there is a strong graphical element to the shape of the bird. That wasn’t going to work here, because the shape of the owl was a simple oval – nothing interesting there. Moving closer to the tree and beneath it shielded me from the setting sun and allowing my camera meter to expose properly for the scene.

Now I was presented with the second lighting problem – it was getting dark. I had my landscape tripod with me, but I had ditched it as I started stalking closer to the tree. I knew I wouldn’t have had time to set up my lens on the tripod anyway, so I was stuck hand-holding. I checked my camera-recommended shutter speed (I often shoot in aperture priority), and knew that I couldn’t hand-hold at that speed and keep the image sharp. So I did what any modern digital shooter would do – I cranked up the ISO. I knew I could at least have a chance of recovering the photo from excessive noise. There is no salvaging a blurry photo.

After I had fired off a few shots, the owl decided he would rather have a little more solitude and flew off to another perch. It was very serendipitous to have run into this bird – if I had gone out specifically looking for a great horned owl, I’m sure I never would have found one.

September 8, 2010January 14, 2013

Mt. Lassen Reflection (Photo of the week)

Mt. Lassen is reflected in Manzanita Lake at sunset, Lassen National Park, California

A couple of weeks ago, I drove up to Lassen National Park for a quick solo overnight backpacking trip. I could tell that wilderness camping in the park was not very common by the raised eyebrows from the ranger when I asked for a permit. “Oh. Did you hear about the weather?” she asked.

Uh oh, I thought. That is never a good sign. She went on to tell me that the temperature was expected to drop by 30 degrees and a thunderstorm was moving in, with rain expected by 11 AM of my first day. I decided to give it a go anyway, and see how bad the weather would get. Before setting up camp at the trail head, I drove north to Manzanita Lake for sunset, where I took this week’s photo.

Luckily, I was blessed with great weather that evening, and had a pleasant hike around the lake capturing different views of the mountain reflected in the deep blue water. Mt. Lassen is probably most photogenic from the north, so this lake is a (very) popular spot for campers. I was happy to see some snow still clinging to the north-facing slopes.

After sunset, I drove south to the trail head, set up camp, and was soon asleep. The rain started at 5 AM and picked up from there. I packed up in the rain, tried to wait out the storm in the car, and finally gave up around 8:30. It turned out to be a good decision, because it rained continuously for the next couple of days. With low, fog-like clouds over much of the landscape, photography was rendered pointless. The handful of photos I took at Manzanita Lake turned out to be the bright spot (literally) of my trip. Overall, the trip was not what I was planning, but it is hard to be disappointed with such a beautiful scene.

August 20, 2010January 14, 2013

Lightplay On Granite (Photo of the week)

As the sun sets, it casts one final beam across wild lupine and granite boulders, Sierra National Forest, CA

This week’s photo is all about light. If you take away the dramatic lighting effects from this photo, you are left with something pretty mundane – a forest and some rocks. But with the sun filtering through the trees as a star burst, lighting the granite boulders and contrasting them with the darker forest, an interesting image is born.

Before this composition found me, I was pointing my camera in the opposite direction and quickly becoming uninspired. Sure, I was shooting from the edge of a cliff and had a large, open, forested valley below me, but no specific feature stood out and grabbed my attention. I turned around and saw that the sun was setting behind the trees, and knew then that I would use sunlight as my subject.

It didn’t take much hunting around to find this line of granite boulders illuminated by the setting sun. Now I had a decision to make – include the sun in the image or not? Since I was shooting at f/16 (as I often do with landscapes), I knew I’d get a nice, tight star burst effect from the sun. I ultimately decided to include it in the image because I wanted to balance the lower right of the image which included a lot of light, with the light of the sun in the upper left.

Another thing to worry about when shooting into the sun is that the camera’s meter ~~can~~ will be thrown off. If I shot this at the camera’s recommended shutter speed (I was in aperture priority), the forest would have been rendered brighter and the granite would have been completely blown out. I dropped the exposure compensation by two stops, which gave me a photo much closer to what I was seeing with my eyes.

I am pretty happy with the result. It is not the typical grandiose landscape typical of Sierra photography, but a more intimate scene. Hopefully it conveys more than just the visual aspect, but a real sense of place – the distant echos of forest birds, the sharp smell of pine needles, the thumping of the heart at high elevations. Ultimately for me, it was my latest reminder that when in doubt, I should always follow the light.