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Dave Senesac 
Group: Members
Posts: 3027
Joined: Jun. 2002
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Posted on: Nov. 20 2012, 3:20 am |
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Nine days ago Saturday I woke up at 4:30am, turned on my desktop computer, and checked weather conditions as there was a very unusual situation. I really really just wanted to go back to sleep as I was not enthused so went back and turned my light off. But kept awake thinking about the condition of very low snow levels in early November only occurs maybe twice each decade. Early November is when Pacific dogwood leaves change color and I had a giant sequoia landscape 155 miles away I'd been trying to get a good image of for years. So 15 minutes later on went the light and totally unprepared gathered all my gear together and was on the road by 6am. The NWS site had shown the overnight snows were likely to just be ending at the 5k to 6k elevations I was heading to about the time I reached there. The only way to shoot down in the understory of such forests is when there are clouds above providing diffuse light conditions. Even better is when bright fresh white snow is also covering the usually dark shadowy ground areas. So yeah I had to go but was not particularly optimistic it would work because many times weather has a way of not cooperating.
Along the way the snow line was at a low 2500 feet just beyond the town of Murphys and everything increasingly looked like a winter wonderland. At 9am I reached Calaveras Big Trees State Park that has the Sierra Nevada's most northern grove of giant sequoia. And that grove has the most Pacific dogwood as an understory of any grove I've seen.
Second vehicle in the parking lot, I had put on all my winter gear before leaving home. Quickly I was on a trail breaking trail with my Sorrels through shin deep fluffy powder snow with the temperature 30F degrees. Snow flurries would continue off an on for a couple hours. Exposed 10 sheets of Provia 100F 4x5 transparencies with this most important landscape exposing perfectly.
About 11am I left that park and on my way back west stopped at this spot where colorful dogwood and black oak fronted a section of yellow pine and incence cedar forest. Sun was intermittently coming out that had already melted off most of the snow on the dogwood and oaks. Would have been even better an hour earlier.
These two images at a larger size are also near the bottom rows on my Gallery B sub-page:
http://www.davidsenesac.com/Gallery_B/gallery_b.html
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...David
http://davidsenesac.com
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paula53
Group: Members
Posts: 666
Joined: Feb. 2007
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Posted on: Nov. 20 2012, 2:15 pm |
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Both pictures are so beautiful that it took my breath away. I would like to snowshoe in the far northern California redwood forests. That is one of my dream get aways. Thanks for posting.
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tarol
Well I never!
Group: Members
Posts: 10297
Joined: Mar. 2003
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Posted on: Nov. 20 2012, 6:45 pm |
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Nice - I was there a few years ago to see the dogwood turn 
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Got elevation? www.tarol.com
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| Post Number: 4
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Dave Senesac
Group: Members
Posts: 3027
Joined: Jun. 2002
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Posted on: Nov. 20 2012, 10:55 pm |
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A couple of 18% crops from the above images showing detail if the full image was 36 inches wide.
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...David
http://davidsenesac.com
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| Post Number: 5
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Echo
Group: Members
Posts: 6379
Joined: May 2008
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Posted on: Nov. 21 2012, 12:54 am |
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Beautiful job on these.
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If Light is in your heart, you will find your way Home. (Rumi)
The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth. Chinese proverb
http://echo-echosvoice.blogspot.com/
http://duffybarkley.blogspot.com/
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| Post Number: 6
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buzzards
Group: Members
Posts: 1749
Joined: Apr. 2005
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Posted on: Nov. 21 2012, 1:35 pm |
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On a related note, nice to see that film is not yet dead. It will be a while before digital can quite get to medium/large format quality, even if it had killed off smaller format film photography.
And yes, I agree with the consensus. Beautiful shots.
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Now shall I walk or shall I ride?
Ride, said pleasure,
Walk, Joy replied,
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reubenstump
Los Cuernos
Group: Members
Posts: 927
Joined: Sep. 2011
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Posted on: Nov. 21 2012, 2:15 pm |
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I pondered a P1 a few years ago, but didn't think I was up to it either photographically or financially. Tried their software though, which was severely Mac-oriented at the time (powerful, but bad on a Windows machine).
And now that Nikon is up to 36 megapixels with the D800... well, the quality of the pixels still matter. More isn't necessarily better.
Glass is becoming more and more important, not to mention technique and processing.
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