February 2018 Adventure, Part 2 - Beaches, Ferns and Trees

Ann and I got up at a reasonable, but still early time the next morning, got dressed, coffee’d, fed and packed, and headed out for the morning’s destination - Fern Canyon.  This was one of the locations the Ranger we chatted with during our Christmas trip said we shouldn’t miss - so long as we didn’t mind a bumpy ride.  In Beast?  Are you kidding us?   

We headed out of the campground while it was still dark, our headlights showing us the path up and over the hills that then led down to the coast, and then a long flat stretch that tracked the shoreline.  At one point our headlights caught a young grey fox trotting on the road ahead of us.  It stopped, turned around with a white something or other in it’s mouth, and then trotted down the road some more until it found a path into the brush.  A good sign for the day?

As we pulled into the trail head parking area we were the only ones there.  Not surprising.  Knowing that canyons often are too dark to easily work in at first light (and don’t get nicer filtered light until the sun comes up at least a bit in the sky), I wandered out towards the beach area to see if it seemed interesting.  It didn’t take me long to decide it was.

I had headed a bit to the left of a picnic area and saw that towards the right (north) was some pampas grass, and low sandy dunes with grasses on them towards the shore, so it was my turn to start trotting back.  I told Ann we had some nice subject matter there and that we should try to photograph a bit before we started hiking.  Ann, as always, was game.  And as if to seal the matter, you could start to see faint traces of pink in the clouds, which meant that there were gaps in the clouds to the east for the sun to light up the area.

I then made a bad call.  Instead of heading down the trail I’d taken before, I veered right from the picnic area because I wanted to use the pampas grass as a foreground for my photograph.  All went well until we realized that we were well into a swamp.  As the skies turned brilliantly pink, Ann and I spent our time hopping from dry-ish area to dry-ish area, trying not to fill our boots with mud and water in-between.  Thank god for Gortex!  By the time we navigated the maze out of there - winding up where I’d been before (Doh!), the pinks were fading and we’d lost the spectacular light.  My fault for pressing it in an unfamiliar area.

I stopped to make an image back into the direction I’d originally looked.  You can barely see the tufts of pampas grass that had caught my attention - to my demise - on the left.  Beware - over there be swamps!

Ann, in the meantime, kept making her way towards the beach, finding a way to cross the stream that flowed from the swamp we had just passed through.  As I headed to follow her, I stopped for another image.

When I finally made it to where Ann was, I was really kicking myself for leading us astray and losing the light.  Still, the views and photo opportunities were spectacular.

For awhile I worked with the minimalist landscape of sand and sky that was the view towards the north and west.

It was amazing to see the animal tracks in the wind-swept sands.  They were signs that the fox we saw that morning was not an aberration.

I eventually headed south a bit to work near Ann, who had set up shop near grassier dunes.  My first image kept the minimalist approach, trying to incorporate the transition zone between an area that obviously was either part of the tidal area or a flood overflow area and the forest by the coast.

But eventually, I too turned towards the grassy dunes.

There was plenty of material to work with in framing an image, from the tufts of grass, the grass worn down by the tide, deadwood, the clouds and patterns in the sand. 

So I made several different compositions.  And then, all of a sudden, the light changed again casting a pinkish glow on everything.  I may have missed the light earlier, but I wasn’t going to this time.  I recomposed for what I thought was one of the better compositions and made several photographs before I lost the light.

And just like that, it was gone.  

I put the lens cap on my camera and walked over to Ann, satisfied.  She was working on a composition with a large piece of driftwood, the sand and the ocean and asked for some help.  So we discussed the image, what was working, what wasn’t and tried a few more compositions on the same subject.  

We stepped back from her tripod and just as we were deciding it was time to head back . . . “Oh my god!  Look at the light!”  The sun broke out over the hills behind us and was making its way inward from the beach.  We weren’t done yet!

So I headed back over tony tripod and waited for the sun to creep down the sand dune.  It was difficult because parts of the beach had a beautiful raking light, but the rest was in deep shadow, but if I waited until the foreground was lit, I might lose the best of the light on the higher areas - so I kept making images, re-framing and making more images, repeating the same framing under different lighting conditions.

Finally, it got to where I was hoping and I made the image I had in my mind.

As usual, I swapped lenses for slightly different images.  As the sun made its way down to the textured sands below me, the grasses were already starting to blow out.  Still, I made the photograph and kept at it.

I put on a longer lens and focused on a more evenly lit area and things didn’t seem quite so harsh. 

By then, the sun was up so I moved over by Ann to make a photograph of the tufts she’s been working with much of the morning.

As the sunlight lost it’s special quality Ann and I agreed it was time to return to Beast.  

What a morning!  And it wasn’t even what we made the trip out for.  

We tromped back along my original route to avoid the muck, and recomposed ourselves at Beast.  We cleaned things off, swapped out batteries and grabbed our water boots.  By then, there were four other vehicles in the parking area with more coming in and it was time to head to our primary destination, hoping we were still early enough to avoid the crowds.

Fern Canyon is a fairly easy hike to get to, but if you really want to go up into it, you’re going to get your feet wet.  Thus the water boots, which came in handy because very quickly on, I set my tripod up in the middle of the creek.  It wasn’t very deep, but it would have topped my hiking boots for sure.

As you can see, Fern Canyon is a very narrow, steep-sided canyon that is coated with ferns.  All sorts of ferns.  It’s rather impressive and a bit unworldly. 

It’s not too terribly long, perhaps a few hundred yards, at least until you get to a major log jam that’s a real obstacle for folks who are anything but totally nimble.  Given we were toting our camera gear and wearing water boots, we weren’t about to go climbing over a wet log jam.  But that didn’t stop us from photographing it.

We were fortunate to have had the clouds roll in between our time at the beach and when we made it into fern canyon - the light was perfect.  I can’t imagine trying to photograph with the sun streaking in, unless of course you had fog!

By the time we made it to the log jam, the crowds had arrived and folks were passing by left and right.  So as we turned around and headed back out of the canyon, our attention turned to more detailed photographs.  Of which there were plenty. 

As Ann was photographing the area where I made the above image, I looked behind her and saw yet another image.  The wall looked like it was alive.

By the time we made it back to Beast, the parking lot was packed and a steady flow of people were coming in and out.  Exhausted from the morning, it was time to brew another pot of coffee and head back to camp for lunch.  What a morning it had been!

It was early afternoon by the time we’d finished lunch so we decided to go explore one of the areas the ranger had recommended the day before.  It was the area where I did the “selfie” shot and it was definitely worth exploring - even if we didn’t make it as far as we’d wanted.  We were out there hiking, but were we pooped!

We hiked up the Brown Creek trail and it was lovely.  Wanting to get photographing early, it wasn’t long before I stopped for a composition.

As I was working on getting the framing of that shot just right, I heard Ann’s voice behind me, “Oh man!  Dan, you’ve got to see this trunk here.”

Ann was so right!

As we hiked along the trail, it was easy to see why the Ranger said it was one of her favorite areas to hike.    It offered plenty of views to see just how luscious the Redwood forests are. 

At one point, the trail wandered between a cluster of trees and I saw an image to be made of this little tree growing out of the tree to the left of the trail.  I backed up a bit and set my tripod as high as I could, and as I framed the image, I noticed a fern leaf in a nook of the tree to the right of the trail, so I had to frame it.   Looking closely at the image (at 100%), you can see that someone must have placed it there, because there is no root system below it.  Still, that’s how I found it and it works for me!

We eventually hit a good turning around point, and on the way back, we had slightly different views of the same subjects, and slightly different lighting, so we had plenty of images to make going downhill as well.

I think that’s one of the best lessons I’ve learned from our travels - talk to the rangers and find out their favorite locations.  It’s usually well worth the chat; it was this day.