Tree(s)
This is a bad paraphrasing of a story, but someone once asked Alberto Giacometti why he always sketched people. Giacometti’s response was because it was impossible to sketch a tree. If he could sketch a tree, then he’d be really good. But until he could do that, he would have to settle for people. Charlie Waite recently had a blog post about photographers’ (including his) fascination with trees. He’s right, at least for me. And while we were frequently immersed in forests during our trip to the Redwoods and surrounding area, it was all too often the individual tree that grabbed my attention.
The first image I’d like to show was taken by one of the several lagoon areas that make up the Redwoods NP/State Park system. No, the system isn’t just about redwood trees (and with this blog post you might think that there are no redwoods in Redwoods NP). If you recall our last trip down here, you’ll remember the variety of landscapes we visited. And given the fact that the area that I’d hoped to explore further this trip was closed due to downfall, we wound up making due with what else was available.
Thus, that first morning we headed out and we made the first right turn we could to drive down to check out a lagoon area we hadn’t explored before. The beach was nothing much, nor was the shore line on our side of the lagoon. I spent a bit photographing the far side of the lagoon, and then as the sun broke through some clouds, I made some images of the sun streaking across the hills that formed the southern part of the lagoon.
Deciding I’d made the images I could, I headed back to Beast. As I climbed up a dune to get to the parking area, I looked over at Ann, who was standing by Beast, and realized there was a lovely tree on the hillside behind her. So I stopped on top of the dune, set up my camera and pulled out the telephoto zoom to isolate the tree.
I’m pleased that the reds, greens and white stand out in the image as they did when I was standing there admiring the tree.
After making a stop at another lagoon, the one we’d visited last time, we decided to try and see what Bald Hill Road was like. And once again, we encountered snow. I’d been pretty stupid in planning for this trip and had brought neither the maxtrax nor the shovel. I’d even forgotten to grab the chains . . . just in case. Because of course we were not driving down I-5 or through the mountains.
Fortunately, Beast is a wonder and with our BFG KO2 All-Terrain tires, we didn’t have any problems driving through the snow/slush on Bald Hill Road. As for snow, this time there was real snow for our images. So much snow that it was hard to find places to pull off (being particularly conscious of where the edge of the road was because . . . I’d forgotten the recovery gear!). Still, we managed a couple of good stops and we were bundled up well enough to hike out with snow up to our knees to get the photographs we wanted.
The skies were good, giving us ever changing conditions so if we wanted all shadows, we just had to wait a bit, sunlight, wait a bit. From the road a particular black oak caught my eye and when I realized there was a draw that led down to it, I knew I had to pull over. It didn’t disappoint me.
It was beautiful watching the play of light and shadow on snow, and how different a landscape and a solitary tree can become as clouds and their shadows pass by. It was truly a spectacle!