Posts in Category: Redwood
Avenue of the Giants
Switching gears from the Gulf Coast of Texas to the coast of Northern Californica, I am in Arcata CA for Godwit Days. I always fly to San Francisco (it is expensive to fly to Arcata) and drive half way up Rt 101, stay the night in Ukiah, and then drive up through the Redwood forests of Humboldt Redwoods State Park the next morning. My yearly dose of Redwoods. There is a road that parallels 101 called the Avenue of the Giants…which winds through the major Groves of the Park in the valley of the Eel River. Miles of huge trees and dappled light.
Sony NEX 3NL with 16-50mm zoom. 24mm equivalent. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet for HDR effect. Assembled in Pixlar Express.
Fallen Glory
I still have a lot of images from my trip to Arcata California and the Godwit Days Spring Migration Festival that I could share. This is one of my deep HDR experiments at Founder’s Grove in Humboldt Redwoods State Park. I like the way the Richardson’s Geraniums and a variety of ferns are growing on this fallen Redwood trunk. My guess, given the legendary durability of Redwood, is that this trunk has been down for well over 1000 years, to reach the stage of decomposition where it now supports it’s own micro-habitat. And I suspect it will be another 1000 years (or more) before all trace of the tree is gone. That is a long time!
It takes at least a 3 exposure HDR, with the highlight (dark) shot at least at -3EV, and the exposures well separated, to capture the range of light on the floor of Founder’s Grove. Canon SX50HS. 24mm equivalent field of view. From a tripod. Exposures blended and the HDR file tone mapped in Dynamic Photo HDR. Final processing for my usual intensity, clarity, and sharpness in Lightroom. Auto Color Balance to correct a yellow bias introduce in the HDR process.
Redwood Lupine
I associate Lupine with Maine, mainly because of the children’s book, The Lupine Lady (one of my children’s favorites), and because of the magnificent spring displays of Lupine along I95 from Freeport north, and all over Mt. Desert Island and Acadia National Park. I have made several trips to Acadia during Lupine season, and photographed it there with some success. But, of course, it is native to the Pacific Northwest as well. I found this stand between the parking for the Trillium Falls Trail and the trail itself in Redwoods National Park north of Orick California. And yes, the color was this intense.
I have more conventional, and wider, shots, but I found this tel-macro composition compelling. The selective focus and the placement of the plants are intentional, and I think it works well (though I did have to fip it horizontally to accommodate my dominant eye :). Somehow this goes a bit beyond a photograph. It is almost the flower itself!
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/320th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Sir Elk
I have only ever visited the Roosevelt Elk herds of the Redwoods National and State parks during April, so I always catch the males at that awkward stage when the new antlers are just beginning to bud, and they are still shedding the double winter coat, and looking very scruffy. That did not stop this younger male from facing off, or attempting to face of, with a more senior adult, putting on a bit of aggression, protecting his harem. This was taken in the big fields just at the entrance to Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, on the Drury Scenic Parkway.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 320. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. .
Redwoods Realized
As I have mentioned, it is difficult to capture the Redwood forest in any kind of image. Part of the difficulty is simply the unbelievable scale, but most of it has to do with the range of light. It is relatively dark under the canopy, and yet the sun breaks through in brilliant shafts and patches. That is part of the magic. It is a world of light and shadow, populated by giants. On my up up through the Avenue of the Giants I tired the in-camera HDR on the SX50HS, hoping it would do a better job with the range of light. It did, but the lights, those sun shafts and patches, were still beyond the camera’s ability to render. On my last morning in Acadia, as I was waking up, I began to think about what is, to me, deep HDR. HDR works, if you are wondering, by taking three or more exposures at a range of values and combining them in software after the fact to produce an extended range image. Generally you have one normal exposure, one underexposed (dark) and one overexposed (too light). The software takes the highlights from the dark exposure and the shadows from the light exposure and combines them with the mid-ranges of the normal exposure. It can be over done, and too often is, producing scenes with skies that the eye has never beheld, or landscapes that look almost etched. The Redwood forest is, however, a classic case for HDR. I wondered if I could get better results than the in-Camera HDR provided by bracketing three exposures myself.
It turns out that such bracketing is really easy on the Canon SX50HS. I had planed to use the Exposure Compensation settings to dial down the exposure until I could see detail on the LCD in the highlights. That would give me my underexposure and then I could work from there. I determined that I needed at lest -3 EV (three stops) of underexposure for the highlights. However when doing that, I noticed that there was little symbol in LCD display that I had never paid any attention to. DISP. That generally means there are settings accessible by pressing the Display button. When I pressed it, up came an autobracketing setting that allowed me to set how far apart three autobracketed exposures are. You spin the control dial and two little pointers spread out across the Exposure Compensation scale. Alright! And, they spread from the point where you have Exposure Compensation set on the main scale. I was able to set Exposure Compensation to -1 and the autobracketing control to its widest spread and get three exposures at -3, -1 and +1. I did a few test shots and it seemed like it might give me the raw materials for some interesting HDRs of the Redwoods.
Of course for three exposures to be in perfect registration, so you can combine them in software, you have to use a tripod. My trusty Fat Gecko, shock corded, carbon fiber tripod was just the ticket. It weights under a pound but supports the Canon SX50HS like tripod weighing 10 times as much.
So I spent a couple of hours in Founder’s Grove taking HDR exposures. When I got back to San Francisco and my hotel for the night, I tried a couple of different HDR software solutions. PhotoMerge in PhotoShop Elements has an Exposure module that works okay, to produce the raw HDR image, but then you have to do the Tone Mapping using standard PSE tools. Tone Mapping? Just as the scene contained a wider range of tones than the sensor could capture, your HDR image contains a wider range of tones than a computer screen can display, or a printer print.Tone Mapping is the process of taking your extended range image, which generally looks pretty flat and uninteresting on the computer screen, and mapping the tones so that they look natural when displayed or printed. It is overcooked Tone Mapping that gives HDR a bad name, and produces those surreal effects. The goal, or at least my goal, when Tone Mapping is to produce as natural a look as possible. My preferred HDR software, Dynamic Photo HDR, gives you lots of very intuitive control over how the tones are mapped.
And even then, I take the images into Lightroom for final processing. Did it work. You can be the judge, based on the image above, and others that I will post over the next days, but I am pretty satisfied. The images I got from Founder’s Grove go further toward capturing the reality of the place than any I have managed before. They are not perfect by any means, but they are satisfying!
Awe among the Redwoods: Happy Sunday!
Every time I come to the Redwood forests of Northern California I am struck anew by how impossible it is to catch even a hint of the impact of these giant trees, this amazing forest, in any kind of image. And yet I am compelled, year after year, to try. Standing among the redwoods, hiking the groves, just breathing the air of the redwood forest, is an experience I want to share. And yet I am never satisfied with the images I bring back.
Some come close. I found this view of The Big Tree from which The Big Tree Wayside in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park gets its name, out away from the tree on one of the trails. It is rare to see a mature redwood so exposed. Most of the trees this size are in dense groves where any sun that penetrates just makes photography harder! Big Tree is over 300 feet tall and 22 feet through the base. Figuring a generous 20 feet per story, that makes this tree as tall as a 15 story building. And 22 feet in diameter means I could fit two of the hotel rooms I am writing in inside it (or close to it). That is huge!
And Big Tree would undoubtedly be taller if it had not, perhaps before any human every laid eyes on it, lost its top. The main trunk ends at maybe 250 feet, and the rest of the height is from a secondary trunk growing out from the side of the stump, well over 200 feet up the side.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. -2/3 EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/250th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And for the Sunday Thought: well surely you can already tell from the title and the text where I am going with this…where I am driven to go with this. Redwoods give you a sense of the kind of awe that a person of faith experiences in every encounter with God…the kind of awe that runs under all experience for the people of faith. I am not talking about religious people, or people who put their trust in any organization or creed…I am talking about people who have direct experience of God, and whose faith is the inevitable result of such an encounter. I believe in Redwoods because I have stood among them and experienced the simultaneous uplifting and humbling of my spirit that is called awe. I know what I am trying to capture in my images. Just so, I have stood in the presence of God, known the love of God in Jesus Christ…just as real and vital as a grove of redwoods and astoundingly, astonishingly more. But I can no more convey the experience of my faith than I can capture the awesomeness of the redwoods. That does not mean I will ever stop trying!
Trillium West Coast Style
I wait impatiently every spring for the Trillium to flower in Maine. We have the Painted Trillium variety. Growing up in Upstate New York we among the first signs of serious spring was the red Trillium. Here, where I am visiting, among the redwoods of California, they have the larger White Trillium. I was delighted to find this specimen right next to the trail at the Big Tree site in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park just north of Orick CA. Though the Painted is shower, and the Red brighter against the forest green, the big White has its own beauty. I love the water drop there too…though I will admit I did not see it until processing the image.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. Macro Mode. About 60mm equivalent field of view using 1.5x digital tel-converter. f3.5 @ 1/30th @ ISO 640. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
5/15/2012: Just a little tree. Humboldt Redwoods State Park
After nearly a month on the road, I am home from my travels for a while. If you have been following you know I have been in Northern California for the Godwit Days in Arcata, in Northern Florida for the Florida Birding and Photo Fest in St. Augustine, in Northern Ohio for The Biggest Week in American Birding in and around Oak Harbor (Magee Marsh, Ottawa NWR, Black Swamp Bird Observatory, etc.), and, this past weekend, in Southern New Jersey for the World Series of Birding in Cape May and the environs. While I have posted from each of these places, over the next few days (weeks?) I will be playing some catch up on images from my travels.
This, in honor of Tree Tuesday on Google+, is from Humboldt Redwoods State Park in California. I always, time allowing, take the scenic route on my drive from San Francisco to Arcata, along the Avenue of the Giants, through the redwood groves. This is a double trunk tree, and that is my Tilly Endurable hat sitting on a gall for scale.
I am awed and amazed on every visit to the redwoods. Inspired. Uplifted. Delighted. Stilled in some part of me that needs stilling.
And, for contrast, we can take a vertical view.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) 33mm equivalent field of view, f3.2 @ 1/30th @ ISO 400. 2) 140mm equivalent, f3.2 @ 1/30th @ ISO 800. 3) 24mm equivalent, f4 @ 1/50th @ ISO 200. 4) 24mm equivalent, f2.7 @ 1?100th @ ISO 200.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
4/20/2012: Redwoods!
My day driving through the Redwoods along the Avenue of the Giants was less than ideal. A misty rain fell most of the time, and the skies were white where they showed through the canopy…but still…REDWOODS.
There is nothing like the experience of standing in these groves of huge, ancient, trees. And the Avenue of the Giants takes you through grove after grove, for miles.
Of course it is next to impossible to capture anything like the experience with a camera. The lead shot, with the car for scale, just hints…and the next with road winding between massive trunks…adds a bit more…but really no image or set of images will convey the feeling of being there.
The last shot in this set is of the Founders Tree. 346 feet tall, 12.7 feet through at the base. Those branches you see are 190 feet off the ground. While this was once thought to be the tallest three in the forest, taller trees have since been measured a few miles away.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Some color temperature adjustment needed because of the dark day.