A funny thing happend in the forest

A funny thing happened during our photo walk through Limekiln State Park in Big Sur.

After working a stream off of one trail, we doubled back and headed up a second trail and ran into this lush grove of flowering trillium and clover. We were all a bit tired and hungry. This was day 3 of our photography workshop and  we’d been chasing the light up the coast most of the morning running on the standard photographer’s breakfast of granola bars and snacks. In addition, working landscape photography is a difficult task for me. It is something I am working on, but I’m more at home on the sidewalk as a nimble street photographer then a tripod-laden, rock climbing, landscaper.

However, I have been working flower macros for the better part of the last three years with a great deal of emphasis on lining up the planes of objects and using narrow depth of field (as influenced by the spectacular photography of Martin Bailey). So when we found this patch of trillium and clover, while the others decided it was time for lunch, I, on the other hand, saw an opportunity to do a little ego boosting by falling back on something that was more familiar.

I pulled out the 100mm macro, droped by tripod to the ground (I have a Gitzo Explorer tripod that can get you right to ground level) and starting lining up interesting layers of leaves and flowers. When I got to processing them I wanted to do something special and so chose this deep B&W style to bring out their textures and focus the light right onto the blooms.

As we head into wildflower season, I’m thinking about how I can add to this collection.