Macedonia Brook was my favorite state park in Connecticut. The autumn color was perfect. It took a whole day to drive this five-mile stretch. For some images of this brook, I used a neutral density filter, dark enough to require 3-4 stops more exposure, extending my exposure times to ten seconds or more for a very soft effect of flowing water. You may want to bracket your exposures for HDR processing to control your lighting range. Try shooting a comparison test using single exposures with overcast lighting and multiple bracketed exposures in direct sunlight. Sometimes I prefer the richer, smoother colors shooting under the diffused light of a cloudy day and sometimes I like the snappy, sharp lighting with sunny conditions.
The best formations I’ve found in the southern part of Coyote Buttes are located halfway up the eastern side near a spot called Cottonwood Cove. From the access point parking area, look northwest. A ridge, about a half-mile away, is lined with tall conical towers of red Navajo sandstone. Climb up unto the base of these red stone formations and you’ll find the best formations in the area. You will need a permit and a 4x4 with off-road tires.
Most photographers don’t know that Nevada has some great autumn color. On the high desert, close to the Utah border, is Mount Wheeler in Great Basin National Park–Nevada’s only National Park (with great autumn color). The tiny town of Baker, Nevada, where you will find one motel, sits at 5,318 feet elevation. To the west is Wheeler Peak at 13,000 feet. From Baker, a well-marked road climbs 8,000 feet. It’s 10 miles to the top with several wide turn outs above spectacular view-points. The best aspen groves are near the end of the road. In the woods I found many very tall groves needing a vertical format. Along the park road are long rows of aspen that fill a horizontal frame. Aspens have relatively short lives of about 100 years. Fires and diseases can damage the trunks. Carving your initials into an aspen opens it to future problems.
From mid-September until snow closes the road at Mammoth Lakes, usually in mid-October, you can drive your car to the Minaret View Point where you’ll pay the entry fee or show your National Park entry card and drive to the end of the road at your destination. During summer months you must ride their shuttle busses. The road to the parking area narrows and heads downhill for 12 steep and winding paved miles to the parking lot near the Devils Postpile. The trail follows the middle fork of the San Joaquin (waa-keen) River. From the parking lot, it’s less than a half-mile/twenty-minute stroll through the woods to the viewpoint at the bottom of the post pile. The pillars face southwest and are in morning shadows. Direct afternoon light is too flat. I arrived at noon and found a mix of sunlight and dark shadows on the pillars. With a wide-angle lens you can stand at the base of the formation and fill your frame with close-up details of a huge log-jam of stones with 3 to 7 sides, fallen from the rim of the sixty-foot sheer wall of volcanic pillars - a spectacular pattern for photographers.
All the hardwoods in the forest were at the peak of their autumn color during the second week of October 2009 in Upstate New York. An all-day drizzly rain created my favorite lighting conditions and filled small streams and gullies in Letchworth State Park. A very wide-angle lens gave me the effect I wanted on a very wet forest.
Five miles north of Hilo, Hawaii, watch for the “scenic route” sign pointing the way to old Highway 19, the Mamalahoa Highway. This section of the old road is four miles long. A half-mile down the narrow and jungle-lined road is the office of the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden. This is a must-stop for any nature photographer. The fee is well worth it. The gardens are another mile beyond the office where you purchase your ticket. Park at the office, and a shuttle bus will take you down to the gardens near the edge of the sea. The incredible variety of palms will be enough to keep you busy all day. There are trails leading through twenty-five acres of yellow bamboo, bromeliads, blooming gingers, ponds covered with water lilies, and thousands of rare tropical plants collected from all over the world.
Bodie was one of the biggest and “baddest” of California’s gold mining boom towns in the 19th Century. William S. Body discovered gold in these mountains in 1859. Thirty-five million dollars worth of gold and silver was discovered in Bodie’s mines between 1877 and 1888. The town’s population quickly swelled. Each new arrival hoped to strike it rich. Hundreds of active mining claims were filed. Most of the new residents worked the mines and lived in tents and wooden shacks. Wood was scarce. Winters were harsh, and lumber was needed to build a more substantial town. A forest of Jeffrey pines, miles to the south, was cut and milled. The lumber was delivered to Bodie on a newly-built railroad. The town grew to ten-thousand residents.
The longest white sand beach in the entire chain of Hawaiian Islands is located a few miles west of Kekaha, an old sugar mill town in the southwest corner of Kauai. To find Polihale Beach, drive west, past the Barking Sands Airfield and the Pacific Missile Range Facility, to the end of the pavement on Highway 50. Steer to the right at the fork and drive about a half-mile to a left turn onto an unpaved and pothole-covered road through the cane fields. Reset your trip odometer and drive three-and-a-half miles from the pavement to a junction beneath a huge monkeypod tree. After a stop to photograph it, turn left at the tree and drive about a half-mile west to the beach. Park and climb over the dunes to the longest and most deserted beach in all the Islands. You’ll find very few people out there on the southwestern edge of the island. It’s a wonderful place for panoramic photographs around sunset time.
On my map it’s called Sonora Junction, the point where Hwy. 108 ends at Hwy. 395 in the middle of a treeless landscape. This plateau stretches south for ten miles to Mount Emma, at 10,525 feet. You can see different colors of aspen groves climbing the slopes. Aspens reproduce by cloning. Every tree in a grove can be the same color and markings on trunks can be identical. Sonora Pass autumn color is found between Hwy. 395 and the summit at the top of the pass at 9624 feet. The U.S. Marine Winter Warfare Training School is located on the Sonora Pass road, a couple miles west of Hwy. 395. Most of the aspen color along the Sonora Pass is found between the U.S. Marine training center and the summit located 17 miles farther west.
At the north end of the Salton Sea, huge groves of date palms line Highway 111, south of Indio. Pick a side road that cuts through a grove and find a spot to park with a view of tall palms stretching far into the distance. Compress your view of the groves with a telephoto lens or expand it with an ultra-wide lens. The date industry in the Coachella Valley dates back to the late 1800s when thousands of shoots were imported from Algeria. Today, the town of Indio produces 85% of the dates grown in the United States. Groves that once covered the northern stretches of Coachella Valley have been replaced by development.
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BlogNotes and images from Bob Hitchman. Archives
March 2024
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