Dana in Geeksville

Shooting Northern California

To say that Northern California is beautiful is putting it mildly. It's a long drive up there from San Jose, but such an enjoyable drive. The terrain is diverse from vineyards, to mountains, to acreage of corn, to towering redwoods.

It's hard not to set expectations when going to places like that for photography. Yet, even with all the beauty, shooting Northern California has a lot of challenges.

One of my main challenges this weekend was all the people. I expected this, as it was the last holiday weekend of the summer, and the crowds were out. But I'm not used to seeing so many bodies in the forests. The main problem with this in the Avenue of the Giants, was that the trails are right off the main road. If these people had to hike five miles, as we do in Big Basin, we'd see fewer people milling about. As it was, people were coming and going all the time, asking me endless questions about my gear, cracking jokes about their wallet-size cameras, and offering to take my pix so I'm not always behind the camera. Well, I have a timer and do take my own photo on occasion.

The other challenge was one I struggle with continuously -- laziness. I hate switching lenses, but it's an absolutely necessity to get the right shot. And closely related to this is being fooled by the LCD into thinking I had a great shot, when in reality it wasn't so great. I would have benefited by changing lenses and taking the same shots. Don't trust that LCD even for composition. Keep changing positions, changing lenses, and keep shooting!

Forest and beaches have opposing problems, but they are both related to light. Beaches have too much light, an forest don't have enough. In addition, in the forest it is darn hard to get that depth of field with the millions of shades of greenery. I tried, oh, I tried, but to reproduce that wonderful feeling of huge trees and delightful ground greenery is hard to capture.

The driftwood beach there was truly amazing. I wanted to capture the feel of the beach grasses waving in the wind, and framing the driftwood. It was absolutely beautiful. But my shots fall flat. In the one on the right, I lost focus at the end of the driftwood. I am determined to go back and shoot with a different lens, a different f-stop, try different angles, and most of all shoot at a different time of day. Unfortunately, I was at this beach just after noontime, the worst time to be taking pictures. But where this beach is located makes getting to it long and difficult, so I wanted to be out there before sunset. While the bright light blows out the colors in driftwood and sand, it also adds difficult contrasts within the forest. Lighting, lighting is everything.

In spite of the challenges of it being the end of summer and dry, shooting at some of the brightest times of day, and trying to capture the essence of what I was seeing, it was a fun, worthwhile weekend. Out of some 400 shots, I got a few I liked, a few I may print, and I learned a lot from the experience. I'm going to return to those places after the rains, when everything is green, when weather is more inclement, producing exciting skies, and just as the flowers are starting to bloom.

In the meantime, my friend Don is going to teach me HDR to see if I can pull out some details from the images I have while I wait out the rest of summer, and I'm starting a class called Successful Publication Photography. Naturally, I hope all of this will help me improve my photography skills and prepare me for selling my photos to go from amateur to professional. It's a long learning curve, but an exciting and fun one.

Posted at 01:20PM Sep 02, 2008 by dananourie in Photography  |  Comments[0]