Traveling close to home.

[Vaughn]

I am fortunate to live in the redwoods, about 45 minutes south of some of my favorite areas. A couple of fellow LF'ers are in the area and we have been meeting up and photographing for the last few days. This morning I picked them up at their camp in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and we drove over the hill to the ocean for their first visit to Fern Canyon. The often-packed parking lot at the end of the road had only two or three vehicles. Into the canyon three 8x10 cameras were carried by their servants. Light down canyon breeze moving the ferns covering the walls, my first image was a detail of the pebbles and water splashing off the wall into the creek. As noon approached we got a rare spell of still air, allowing multi-minute exposures including maidenhair ferns, thimble berry, and other such foliage in the canyon. The breeze picked up again and a light rain started as we splashed out of the canyon.

I dropped them back at their camp around 2:30, But as I was leaving, the still air kept me in the Park. One of the most beautiful sights and sounds -- a good rain falling through an opening above the creek...on maples with a backing of redwoods. The rain detaching large golden leaves, 6 to 10 inches wide floating slowly down. The rain slackened, so I walked back to the van, grabbed the 11x14 and ended the day with a couple more negatives exposed (a full-frame, and for fun, two 5x14s). I hope I got the sound of that rain -- just like a creek stretching after a long summer slumber. The gold in the air will be more difficult to translate. At 5:30 a quick stop in Orick to buy a Mountain Dew and a Moon Pie...caffeine and sugar to get me home.

The next couple days I will be in the redwoods to the south. Eel River flood-plain redwoods, very different from the hill redwoods in the north. A mud line 15 feet or more up the trunks mark the height of the 1964 flood...less visible than I saw them 45 years ago. Poison oak, climbing 30+ feet up the redwoods, will be dropping their red leaves at the slightest breeze. Pretty! Maples should also be in full color. Got to load up some more Acros in the 8x10 holders tonight!

Here's to our (sometimes extended) backyards!

A previous image made in our redwoods. 4x10 carbon print. Mill Creek, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park

[Drew Wiley]

I've got no choice at the moment. It's difficult for me to drive far due to a nasty incident of shoulder bursitis. But several large ranches nearby have recently
opened to the public, added to our already numerous Regional Parks and the John Muir Land Trust. I hiked around one of them Monday. Nice, and nobody in sight until some trail cyclists showed up late in the afternoon. I really like our inland Calif. subtle beiges, greiges, sagetones, golds, etc, this time of year. Our extant redwoods are across the Bridge. But on this side of the Bay, we also get lovely yellows from the maples, sycamores, and willlows, as well as rich reds from wild grape and poison oak leaves.

[Alan Klein]

Nice shot, Vaughn. Just like our woods here in New Jersey. :)

[Jim Fitzgerald]

This is always a special pilgrimage for me. To visit these massive trees is always special for me as is spending time with my good friend and fellow carbon printer Vaughn in this special cathedral. After we were dropped back at camp we refreshed ourselves with some snacks and took the trail right out of camp no more than 100 yards to an incredible group of trees. The light was soft and bright enough for me to shoot my 8x20. The exposure was an hour! During this time the rain came and it was all around us. The music of the rain and the creek was something I’ll never forget. The canopy kept us dry the whole time. Thanks for the great day and onward to the south we go. So nice to be only 6 hours from heaven . The day up the canyon is etched in my memory as one of the best.

[Jim Graves]

Any time in the redwoods is special ... October is magical.

Missed it this year ... hopefully next year.

[John Kasaian]

I'm fortunate being so close to Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia. The revamped Mariposa Grove is about 50 miles from my front door with a pretty good craft brewery about halfway in between :o. Big Sur, Pinnacles NM, and the Gold Rush country are also day-trippable.
My son and his pals are planing to climb Royal Arches this weekend.

[Drew Wiley]

It's been a bad season for selfies in Yosemite, John. A couple stepped back a bit too far at Taft Point recently, and right over the edge; and not long before, a fellow made the same mistake with a selfie stick at the edge of Nevada Falls. But as usual, I'm sure you won't select a long lens and excess bellows extension for your own Dorff self-portrait at the rim of a cliff.

[John Kasaian]

It's been a bad season for selfies in Yosemite, John. A couple stepped back a bit too far at Taft Point recently, and right over the edge; and not long before, a fellow made the same mistake with a selfie stick at the edge of Nevada Falls. But as usual, I'm sure you won't select a long lens and excess bellows extension for your own Dorff self-portrait at the rim of a cliff.

I don't do much photography in Yosemite, Drew. I keep tripping over Ansel's tripod holes.
My son is working in Vail this Winter and taking my car, so until I can get the Model T up and running I'm limited to what's on the No.26 Crosstown bus line for subjects.
Fresno Area Rapid Transit---the municipal bus line that dare not be referred to by it's initials!

[Vaughn]

It is a bit of a drop from Taft Point -- time enough to take several selfies on the way down.

Taft Point, 8x10 platinum/palladium print:

[Drew Wiley]

Just this afternoon I finally printed a 4x5 neg of the Enchanted Gorge I took about thirty years ago on my third attempt at good lighting from atop Goddard Divide. I hauled about 85 lbs of gear up the ice, including my Sinar and a big 120 Super-Angulon replete with a center filter and bag bellows. My nephew was good with ropes, so we strapped ourselves to a narrow ledge for the night, and there was an adjacent flat rock projecting over the void not much bigger than a bar stool, which was a bit dicey to set a tripod on and make lens adjustments without going over myself. But I finally got the good evening and dawn
shots I wanted, in both color and b&w. But I didn't have much experience in b&w yet and overdeveloped this particular negative, and that is why it was on the backburner so long, until really good VC papers arrived.

[Leszek Vogt]

Drew, you do realize that talk is cheap. We like to see the image....well, most of us would.

Les

[Joe O'Hara]

Being under the big trees when I was in CA felt like being a guest in someone else's house.
Someone great, and very old. We tread lightly there.

Looking forward to what you might be able to show us from that trip.

As another NJ resident, if Alan cares to let me know where those places are that he speaks of,
I can make it worth his while... ;-)

[Alan Klein]

Joe. I'm still looking.

[Jim Fitzgerald]

Our last day was yesterday and we spent it in the Humboldt Redwoods. In my favorite grove with two wonderful photographers we worked all day in the big trees and in the Bull Creek watershed. Light was amazing as it always seems to be for me when I visit here. The bonus was that mother nature took a deep breath and held it all day long. I worked with the 810, 820 and the 1417 in the area and it was an amazing day with great company. Thanks Vaughn and Matt. Vaughn thanks for showing us the Albino Redwood as well. I consider 6-8 hours close to home for me. When I lived in Ventura I did day trips to Yosemite. It was 6 hours from my front door to Tunnel View. Now it is 6 hours to Jedidiah Smith. Like I said a day trip. This time it was a week.

[Vaughn]

Being under the big trees when I was in CA felt like being a guest in someone else's house.
Someone great, and very old. We tread lightly there...

Up Redwood Creek there are pocket-groves of redwoods on terraces above the creek that can be difficult to see due due the explosive growth creekside. But once inside these pocket-groves it is cathedral-like. The floors are centuries of redwood leaves, the trees well over 300 feet tall, eight to 15 feet in diameter, emerging from the ground with a stillness even cathedrals find hard to master. And when the wind blows, the sounds rival the organs, but perhaps not quite so dynamic.

I backpack in with a 4x5 or a 5x7...it would be nice to squeeze a late season solo trip in...3 or 4 nights before the rains start in earnest. The maples are looking so good!

It was fun having Jim and Matt here. And they brought great weather with them, and there was often still air for our long exposures. The afternoon rain welcomed in the Fall and was a rare treat. We'll get a touch more rain over the coming extended weekend, and I am looking forward to November as the buckthorn, alders and berry leaves turn and drop. It opens up the forest nicely and all the side creeks come alive.

I move at glacial speed, so here is a photo of the parking lot (freshly re-paved) at Rockafella Grove as we were leaving.

[Andrew O'Neill]

We have forests like that up here... if I drive 30 minutes, I'm in massive cedar rain forests, all draped in moss. But the areas where I really love to photograph, are 4 hours or longer away...

[Tin Can]

I have never been to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey (http://www.pineypower.com/geninfopbpg10.html) but I read read several books by Tom Brown Jr. (https://www.amazon.com/Browns-Field-Nature-Observation-Tracking/dp/0425099660/ref=pd_sim_14_6?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0425099660&pd_rd_r=3102ad8e-dacd-11e8-af33-013c6f83c3a6&pd_rd_w=5fIRy&pd_rd_wg=9J2KG&pf_rd_i=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=18bb0b78-4200-49b9-ac91-f141d61a1780&pf_rd_r=FHT9B46ECCY60N6KC3H4&pf_rd_s=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=FHT9B46ECCY60N6KC3H4)about it. Seems as wild a place as any.

At one time I was considering taking a field class with him, aka The Tracker. (https://www.trackerschool.com/)

Too late now.


Joe. I'm still looking.

[Vaughn]

We have forests like that up here... if I drive 30 minutes, I'm in massive cedar rain forests, all draped in moss. But the areas where I really love to photograph, are 4 hours or longer away...

It has been a few decades, but I have backpacked through some of those cedar groves on the western slopes of the Cascades. A wonderous forest.

Just got a photo from one of my boys of a grove of native monkey puzzle trees in Chile. And there are gum trees in South Australia that rival the height of our coastal redwoods...hope to see them someday. I love the mountain beeches of New Zealand with fantails flying along side you as you hike (eating the insects you stir-up), and bird song that just stop you in your tracks...and once I slept in a towering grove of tree ferns while hitch-hiking on the west coast of the South Island, waking up in a 200 million old forest.

On a backpack trip into the Yolla Bollys with one of my boys this summer I got to revisit some old incense cedars I have admired for almost 40 years. Still looking good...Douglas Fir, Sugar Pine, Ponderosa/Jeffery Pine, Western juniper, even a yew or two.

16x20 print from 4x5 negative:

[Drew Wiley]

Oh Gosh, Vaughn, I've got an enormous Monkey Puzzle tree (Aracaria) in my front yard. But it could hypothetically grow another hundred feet. The squirrels love it because nothing else can climb it; and the hawks won't dare try to intercept a squirrel amidst all those thorns. Tree squirrels have very long claws which function as standoffs, elevating their feet above the prickles. Most people don't realize that unless they've had a pet squirrel.

[Joe O'Hara]

I have never been to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey (http://www.pineypower.com/geninfopbpg10.html) but I read read several books by Tom Brown Jr. (https://www.amazon.com/Browns-Field-Nature-Observation-Tracking/dp/0425099660/ref=pd_sim_14_6?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0425099660&pd_rd_r=3102ad8e-dacd-11e8-af33-013c6f83c3a6&pd_rd_w=5fIRy&pd_rd_wg=9J2KG&pf_rd_i=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=18bb0b78-4200-49b9-ac91-f141d61a1780&pf_rd_r=FHT9B46ECCY60N6KC3H4&pf_rd_s=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=FHT9B46ECCY60N6KC3H4)about it. Seems as wild a place as any.

At one time I was considering taking a field class with him, aka The Tracker. (https://www.trackerschool.com/)

Too late now.

Quite close to where I live, Randy. Certain places can seem very strange, depending on weather conditions,
and the mood one is in. Most areas have been clear-cut or burned many times since the 18th and 19th centuries, when
there was an iron industry here, so there is little old or "climax" growth as I believe the word is. The woods reclaims
abandoned buildings very quickly, with enthusiastic help from the local vandals.

I was photographing in the remains of one of those towns last week and may post some images from those visits next week.

Working in there can be challenging due to the lack of many clear sight lines, the woods often being full of vines and
understory shrubs. More walking and looking than setting up the camera, typically.

[Corran]

Randy, thanks for posting the link to the Pine Barrens. Never heard of it before. It looks like most of the middle and south Georgia wildlife management / park areas, except a bit more uniform and less "messy." I am sure there's some difference in pine variety (long-leaf vs. loblolly vs. slash, etc. I'll have to remember that next time I'm up in those parts...was in NJ early last year. I bet in cloudy light and with an N+1 dev one could make some interesting images.

[Alan Klein]

Nice studies of the Pine Barrens, Joe, and other areas on your website.

[Joe O'Hara]

Thanks, Alan. Close to you, or are you up north? I hope to get back to that part of the State some time, it is so much different from here.

[Alan Klein]

Central in Middlesex. Flat farmland around here. North is prettier with some higher elevations. Of course, getting into NYS is better with the Adirondacks, Catskills, etc.

[Leszek Vogt]

When I was younger I kept riding near pine forest on the way to Whiting, NJ (from Toms River). Wondering if much of that is still left intact, or it looks likes the parkway, where one thinks is in the woods, but when you fly out of Newark it appears that the cement is the predominant factor....all around.

Les

[Tin Can]

In the Tom Brown Jr books he wrote the biggest danger in the Pine Barrens are wild dog packs.

He claimed he was trapped up a tree for 3 days until they gave up. He also claimed he touched a western usa bear and the bear chased him around his jeep for many hours.

Be careful out there.

[Joe O'Hara]

When I was younger I kept riding near pine forest on the way to Whiting, NJ (from Toms River). Wondering if much of that is still left intact, or it looks likes the parkway, where one thinks is in the woods, but when you fly out of Newark it appears that the cement is the predominant factor....all around.

Les

Happy to report that it is still intact and in good condition. Much of the Cedar Creek watershed is protected land now.

[Joe O'Hara]

In the Tom Brown Jr books he wrote the biggest danger in the Pine Barrens are wild dog packs.

He claimed he was trapped up a tree for 3 days until they gave up. He also claimed he touched a western usa bear and the bear chased him around his jeep for many hours.

Be careful out there.

I've heard of Tom Brown Jr. but never read any of his books. He has the reputation among some as being sort of the Carlos Castaneda of the Pinelands. Make of that what you wiill ;-)

I haven't heard any reports of wild dog packs in the last 20 years or so, but there are coyotes, although they tend to be solitary and rather shy (except for the ones
on the Acme Manufacturing mailing list). The bugs are a much bigger threat in the warmer weather: bloodsucking flies, deer ticks carrying Lyme, and chiggers. I've gotten
some righteous doses of the latter in the past, not fun at all. In DEET we trust.

[Alan Klein]

I've heard of Tom Brown Jr. but never read any of his books. He has the reputation among some as being sort of the Carlos Castaneda of the Pinelands. Make of that what you wiill ;-)

I haven't heard any reports of wild dog packs in the last 20 years or so, but there are coyotes, although they tend to be solitary and rather shy (except for the ones
on the Acme Manufacturing mailing list). The bugs are a much bigger threat in the warmer weather: bloodsucking flies, deer ticks carrying Lyme, and chiggers. I've gotten
some righteous doses of the latter in the past, not fun at all. In DEET we trust.

I use to wear permethrin impregnated clothes in the woods. I never had a tick on me when I did. The clothes can be washed 50-70 times while maintaining their protection. This is different than the canned permethrin that you spray that's only good for 2 weeks and two washings. I would wear socks, pants, shirts, even a hat all impregnated. I'd pull the socks over the pants leg. Kind of geeky, but who needs Lyme.You can track down all the clothes here.
https://www.insectshield.com/Brand-Partners.aspx

[Tin Can]

I have known of this type clothing.

I will get some for next season.

Good tip!

Now how about some snake boots...



I use to wear permethrin impregnated clothes in the woods. I never had a tick on me when I did. The clothes can be washed 50-70 times while maintaining their protection. This is different than the canned permethrin that you spray that's only good for 2 weeks and two washings. I would wear socks, pants, shirts, even a hat all impregnated. I'd pull the socks over the pants leg. Kind of geeky, but who needs Lyme.You can track down all the clothes here.
https://www.insectshield.com/Brand-Partners.aspx

[Joe O'Hara]

News we can use, Alan. Thanks.

[Tin Can]

Not kidding about snake boots, we have plenty.

Even a road that closes twice a year for amphibian migration.

Snake Road. (https://thesouthern.com/news/local/snake-road-to-remain-closed-a-little-longer-this-year/article_1f63cbf6-68f3-5b3c-a60b-393132476645.html#utm_source=thesouthern.com&utm_campaign=%2Femail-updates%2Fbreaking%2F&utm_medium=email&utm_content=2C5E37D327ACAD278E001CB3BD0417D50461227C)Ii was supposed to open today, but it's been warm and the snakes are dawdling, so one more week.

[Drew Wiley]

I thought all the snakes were busy doing election ads at the moment. Had only one rattler on my last hike, and that was about the upper limit of their range. Those relatively high altitude ones are fairly timid, but the big diamondbacks at lower elevations can be downright aggressive. The only fatal bite cases I can recall occurred around reservoirs. Boaters would step on shore in bathing suits, where the rattlers hang around awaiting rodents. They'd get bitten, panic, and run, which is the worst thing you can do.