click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney
Whoopie ! It's Tuesday -- welcome to Show Your World !
Why do I call the Lagunitas Creek "my world" ?
Because I spend so darned much time out there -- that's why...
The coho salmon won't arrive at Lagunitas Creek to complete their life style until we get some heavy rain in January, but meanwhile the "hatch" from earlier this year have the stream pretty much all to their own...
The Lagunitas Creek Watershed is home to the largest-remaining wild run of coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) in Central California. These coho are part of the "Central California Coast Evolutionarily Significant Unit," or CCC ESU, and are listed as "endangered" at both the state and federal level.
From November to April -- even if it hasn't rained -- our local water district is mandated by law to release enough water from our reservoirs to keep the Lagunitas Creek at a certain level. But like I mentioned, the adult coho won't arrrive to spawn until January, so personally (and without having all the facts) I think a lot of water is being wasted -- I don't think the coho juveniles now in the creek need all that additional water.
Mornings are best for snagging water reflections out at the Lagunitas Creek -- the creek itself must be shaded, but there must be surrounding items, like vegetation, that are illuminated. Even though the light levels are low, I always try to keep my ISO settings low (this is ISO 100) to keep noise down, but that usually requires shooting wide-open (this is f-4). I used a fairly long exposure time (this was 1/12th second). In post-processing I had to set the high values in Photoshop because the image was slightly underexposed. I did not fool with color-saturation levels on this shot, but do (to some degree) on my other water shots.
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