Painted Hills - Landscapes

Two weekends ago Ann and I headed out to the Painted Hills for a long weekend.  It had been raining pretty much non-stop for a week, both here and at the Painted Hills, but the forecast was for partly cloudy skies with a chance of showers for a couple of days, so we decided to take a chance on getting some interesting conditions.  As luck would have it, we stayed dry . . . at least for the most part.

My goal for the trip was to concentrate on making landscape images.  In my downloading of old images into Capture One, I’ve periodically looked at images as they’ve made their way into catalogs and on more than one occasion I’ve asked myself, “Why didn’t I include more of the surrounding environment in that shot?”  So I decided  that I was going to be very conscious in my image making and resist the urge to go in tight - which, as you know, is my natural instinct.  

I’ve decided to include an image from each day (plus one bonus) instead of trying to tell a narrative.  That’s in part because each day had a real mix of conditions, many of them not so favorable for appealing images, and in part because the trip was, for me, as much a needed break as an opportunity to photograph.  Consequently, we didn’t push the photography as much as we’ve done previously and simply spent a lot of time just enjoying the environs.

The first morning was heavily overcast, with lots of puddles and soft clay on the ground from the rains that had been pounding the area.  So we stuck to the graveled trails as we took our time photographing.  However, fairly late in our shooting session that morning, after we’d made it to the end of the main trail at the Painted Hills, the skies began to break.  That gave me an opportunity to have my first sun-lit landscape images, and I took full advantage of it.

The next morning it was more of the same, except much colder (see the last image).  And while it appeared to only be partly cloudy, it took quite a while for the sun to break through on the second day.  It seemed as if each of the very early mornings were going to start with fairly clear skies, only for the clouds to come with the sun, and then dissipate.  

That second morning, Ann and I finished up our early morning photography session, having gone out on the plateau by the large parking area, and did what we usually do, grab a cup of coffee to warm ourselves  and drive down to use the facilities.  

We then decided to stop at the lower hills near the entrance and work our way back up the hill.  The day before we’d scouted out some potential images, but when we got into place we realized that the hills had suffered weathering damage.  A lot of it.  Parts of the hills had deep erosion lines, others had large areas that had slid 6-8 inches, others had small slides with a pile of debris at the base.  Worst of all, some areas looked like someone had gone over them with a huge spatula to smooth out huge swaths across the otherwise uniform, albeit textured, surfaces of the hills.  They were so visually disturbing that I couldn’t bring myself to take the more detailed landscape images I’d thought I wanted to make.  If you look carefully, you’ll see signs of what I’m talking about in each of the images.

Instead I followed up on one of Ann’s suggestions and climbed on top of Beast to get a different perspective of the broader area.  As I was up there Ann started hiking her way up the road, stopping to make images along the way.  While it was overcast at the time I got on top of Beast, my experimenting with a variety of compositions and lenses meant that a bit of time passed and, luck with me once again, the clouds started breaking.  And with that came the sun.

I couldn’t believe how quickly the clouds dissipated.  I had to wait a bit before the sun hit this part of the landscape, but when it did, it was everything I could do to make two different compositions before the area was fully lit and there were no shadows cast by the clouds.  A few minutes after that, there were no clouds at all.

Still, I got at least one decent image out of the rapid transition.  And Ann had made it all the way up to the ridge on the right side of the image above!

The next morning Ann and I weren’t expecting much, just more of the same.  Boy were we wrong.  Unlike the other mornings the clouds stayed away and we were greeted with that lovely pre-dawn light that we love and that so frequently happens here.

And, despite the temperature being around 36 degrees when we woke up, at some point frost fell and that just added to the character of the photographs.  

I’ve decided to add an additional photo from early the second morning.  That morning a lack frost wasn’t a problem, it was freezing!!!!!  And the frost was plentiful, which meant that the ground was covered in white and you could, for once, easily make out the ground vegetation.

It was a great weekend!