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photo by Donald Kinney
I shot these late Tuesday afternoon, a mile or so upstream from where I normally hang out on the Lagunitas Creek.
click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney
Many "locals" use the name of "Papermill Creek" interchangeably with "Lagunitas Creek", and yes, in the late 1800's Samuel P. Taylor built a water-powered paper mill in this area -- some of the stone foundations still exist. Today the area has been turned into a State Park and is a popular campground inside of a beautiful Redwood forest.
To quote Wikipedia: The park is named for Samuel Penfield Taylor, who found gold during the California Gold Rush and used some of his money to buy a parcel of land along Lagunitas Creek. In 1856, Taylor built the Pioneer Paper Mill, the first paper mill on the Pacific Coast. In the 1870s, the North Pacific Coast Railroad was built between Cazadero and a pier in Sausalito where folks could catch a ferry to San Francisco. The railroad passed near Taylor's mill, and, ever the entrepreneur, he built the "Camp Taylor Resort" alongside the tracks. A destination for city-weary San Franciscans, the resort offered both a hotel and tent camping, as well as swimming, boating, fishing, and a dance pavilion.
click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney
These days it's all about the Coho Salmon in Lagunitas Creek -- or the lack thereof. Thanks to ocean pollution, the population of the Coho Salmon has declined over the years to where it is estimated that only 500 Cohos return to the creek to spawn and die after their two years at sea.
click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney
But OH, the colors of the Lagunitas Creek...
And WOW, the tranquility of the area is almost overwhelming...
All of this, pretty much right in my backyard -- I KNOW I'm a lucky guy!
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8 comments:
Very nice; I think I might agree that you are a "water specialist"!
How are you capturing that feel to the photos, i.e. what settings are you using? I can't get water shots to look anything like yours.
I really miss San Francisco and the whole Bay Area. Your photos and captions bring back a flood of memories. Hopefully, with any luck and good will, I can return.
Again a homerun in the photo department Don. I especially like the middle one with the reeds poking through.
I have camped at Samuel P. Taylor Park before and its a wonderful tranquil place to recoup.
THANKS FOR THE COMMENTS, CHRIS, MOBIBOB, AND PHOTOWANNABE SUE --
And Chris, per your request for how I make these water reflection shots, I generally shoot wide open at f-4 and at maximum zoom with my 70-200 IS "L", which is on my full frame (no crop factor) Canon5D.
I try to shoot at ISO-100 but frequently have to bump it up to ISO-400 in low light conditions. Generally my images come out just a little bit under-exposed, and sometimes I fiddle around with Bracketing and Exposure- Compensation, but generally I just use the camera on Aperture-Priority. I'll take fixing the levels of an slightly underexposed shot over an overexposed shot any day of the week.
Anyway, in CameraRAW4 (my RAW converter) and PhotoshopCS3 I first check the Histogram to see if my highs need to come up a bit, and generally I'll apply a Curve (or the Exposure slider in CameraRAW4) to my low values to bring them up out of the mud a bit.
Generally I will apply just a little bit of Luminance (similar to Saturation) in CameraRAW4. Generally my blues tend to be really "hot" in shaded areas so sometimes I need to be careful about boosting the Luminance or applying Saturation. The colors bouncing off the water are generally quite bold, but sometimes I need to selectively bring up the yellows and golden tones.
Often I will sharpen these images two or more times more than I would normally sharpen other images. Too much sharpening looks terrible, of course, so I try not to over-do it.
But the main thing to remember with this type of shot is that the water itself needs to be in shade, with just a bit of surrounding vegetation illuminated. Generally, either early morning or late afternoon are the best times -- I suppose because of a lower sun angle.
So there you have it, Chris. I understand that from your Profile that you are an air traffic controller -- this should be a piece-of-cake compared to that line of work!
Thanks for the info, I'm going to try to apply it and see if I can make it work for me.
As for your last comment, I'll let you know if it's true, once I start getting photos that turn out like yours. :)
Cheers!
Wow, so beautiful and simple. I love water pics, just very soothing.
hello sir
i was just going through blogs as i am new blogger n i founf your blog outstanding,fantastic,amazing n what not?
my vocabulary is very poor otherwise i'd have used higher words.
in short i m in love wid your blog.
i love photography like anything though i lack camera but soon m going to have one good SLR(hopefully).
i'll keep visiting your blog n m very sure that i'll get to see such fantastic snaps from you.
thank you for creating your blog n publishing your photos n inspiring many people like me.
hello sir
i was just going through blogs as i am new blogger n i founf your blog outstanding,fantastic,amazing n what not?
my vocabulary is very poor otherwise i'd have used higher words.
in short i m in love wid your blog.
i love photography like anything though i lack camera but soon m going to have one good SLR(hopefully).
i'll keep visiting your blog n m very sure that i'll get to see such fantastic snaps from you.
thank you for creating your blog n publishing your photos n inspiring many people like me.
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