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|  | Funstuff! A Day in the Woods  |
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Tuesday and Wednesday I just spent relaxing and visiting with my Aunt in Alameda. I also got caught up a bit with my website here as well :-)
I needed a rental car and picking one up from Oakland and dropping it off in San Jose was technically possible, but very, very expensive. Fortunately Paul to the rescue. Yea. He drove up after work and picked me up, I got my car from San Jose that evening and then I spent the night at his place. Nice to get Zamboni kisses again too.
Bright and early January 10 I got up and headed out. No real plan on where to go, this was to be a fun day! I decided that since I was so close, it would be fun to go see what Boulder Creek looked like. It was actually much the same as I remembered as a kid when we used to go every summer and stay in a cabin. Boulder creek meets the San Lorenzo river there and I was able to get some pictures from the public beach. It was early still, only 8:30am and nobody was about. It was fun having the place to myself.
I then just decided to drive and explore where roads might go. I quickly found myself at Big Basin State Park. I believe this is the first state park in the state (there are hundreds now) and it too was a place I used to explore as a kid. Tripod and camera in hand I decided on a short hike, well, a 5 or 6 mile hike, and wow, so many photos I had trouble narrowing them down!
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Now, if you have ever taken photos in the woods, it is dark. Very dark, even on a sunny day it is dark. Well, that is why I brought my tripod. I just brought along my two wide angle lenses, a 20mm and a 28-70mm zoom. Now, with such a lens I could have technically been OK, had I opened up to f2.8 and set the camera's ISO to 800, but in doing so I would have ended up with low resolution, grainy photos with a shallow depth of field. Not really good pictures in other words. With the tripod and using the self timer setting so that pressing the shutter button would not jiggle the camera. In fact, I even locked up the camera mirror to reduce vibration -- I was able to shoot at any speed. I kept the ISO of the digital camera at 125, it's lowest and least grainy setting. I also set the color balance to overcast even though it was sunny, this really helped warm up the photos and open shade was just too strong. I set the f stop anywhere from f5.6 to f11 for good depth of field. However, this resulted in shutter speeds ranging from 1/10 to 2 seconds! Since it was not windy, in fact it was quite still, such long shutter speeds did not end up blurry from leaves blowing in the wind and gave really cool effects to any running water. I had the contrast set to low, but even so, in most cases where there was a lot of sun, I was not really pleased with the results. However, where the forest was totally in shade from a neighboring mountain blocking the sun, it was perfect. I really like the results I got. It had also rained a lot recently so there were mushrooms and plenty of water in Opal creek.
The whole area was deserted. There was only one other car when I arrived and on my walk the only other person I saw was a woman just starting on a hike as I was just about back at the Ranger Station where I started. It was so quiet, peaceful, beautiful. The only sounds the rushing creek, some birds and even some distant deer. Even the temperature was perfect, not chilly at all, a bright yellow t-shirt and my purple Wintergreen windbreaker was all I needed. From dark woods, to Ocean View Summit, elevation 1685 feet, back down through dark woods again. In the light, I could easily hand hold, but back down in the woods, my photo of the tiny waterfall was 2 seconds at f7.1.
After my hike, I headed over the mountains, getting a nice shot overlooking the area and finally made it down to the ocean at Moss Beach to catch the setting sun over the water. In one photo, a reflection in the water looks more like a submerged UFO.
The Nakai Pack
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