p.1 #1 · Spring is in Full Force in Northern California.
I ventured out to a local spot in my backyard (About 30 minutes from my house in Paradise, CA) several times over the past few weeks. I took advantage of some lulls in work and headed out when the weather was at its prime.
After recent rainstorms and cows breaking the seeds while grazing, things are starting to bloom like crazy.
I originally was going out to hike 5 miles to try out a different vantage point on a falls, but got distracted by the early blooms. I am surprised it's already started out here, even with the warmer weather. Normally, these blooms happen around mid-April (At least the peak). I would probably have missed it if I headed out around then this year.
The first photograph is at around 380mm, as I didn't take a wide angle lens that day. While it felt like a stupid mistake due to the wildflower blooms, it forced me into a different mindset/perspective. The first and second photographs are both shot with a telephoto lens. This first image shows a snow-capped ridge that was devastated by the Camp Fire that burned the town of Paradise and the ridges surrounding it. You can see the brown trees on the ridge surrounded by the snow. I love how something can be and look so devastating, yet becomes beautiful even still.
The second photograph is at 105mm and that stream below it feeds a water fall (After a rain). Most of the year this creek and falls are completely dry. This shot wasn't planned and I didn't use a tripod either, as I just happened to be going by when the sun was setting. Even though it was just a "snapshot", it's my favorite of the three.
I got super lucky with the last photograph. I get out there and find this crazy cool field of flowers and a stream running below it. I take out my camera and take a few photos...only to find out that I didn't have a memory card in my camera! No worries, though, as I have an extra in my bag, right? Nope. I was out there in this beautiful scenery and absolutely no way to capture it. In addition to this, I later found out that I left my tripod mount attached to my other lens which was left at home!
The last one is the probably the most technical photograph I've done to date, even though this photograph looks relatively straightforward and is pretty much straight out of camera. I don't usually like to make things overly complicated in post processing, as I hate spending so much time behind the computer. This one, however, I really had to in order to get the flowers sharp enough, as my camera was only a few inches from the ones in the immediate foreground. Since I didn't have my tripod mount, I had to shoot 5 images handheld, then blend them in Photoshop by hand. It was a REALLY painful process to get these lined up and blend by hand, especially since I (apparently) cannot hold my hands very steady while taking photographs... There are still some small issues I have with it (Few spots of flowers were blurry in all my photographs I took), but, overall, I'm happy with the end result.
is this a stroller friendly trail ?