Mother Nature meets Man-made....
One of the most desirable and difficult captures for a landscape photographer lies within the deeply shrouded forests of the Northern Pacific redwoods. These uniquely historic and beautiful groves of trees present original hues and textures, as well as stories of human settlers, commerce, roaring fires, rebirths, withstanding adversities while challenging photographers in several areas: light, light, light. Finding rays of light that rarely breach through the towering branches of greenery, onto the forest floor, highlighting the forest floor with ferns, moss, against the redwood grains and fibers of the bark is a challenge unto itself. Finding the true money shot is finding periods of silver fog which seep through the low areas highlighting the sun's rays that escape the forest ceiling.
This challenge stood before me one recent morning as I visited Roaring Camp Railroads, in Felton, CA. This is a historic steam train that traverses the same tracks used back when logging redwoods was the second most treasured find in early California settling after the Gold Rush era. It is a very popular attraction for school kid field trips, young and old folk as well.
The morning proved to be absent of the treasured blankets of fog, as the first departure was a bit late when the sun has warmed the Earth. After an inward sigh, I soon realized I was riding man-made's ultimate, artificial fog machine: a steam train.
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After debating the merit and essence of utilizing "fake fog" to achieve the originally desired capture, I let myself loose creatively finding the moving experience a challenge within itself - measuring and pacing the sounds of the locomotive to time the steam exhaust as the boiling chambers were released, positioning myself to and from among the open car seating positions, while looking ahead down the rails for curves, the sunlight direction, the groves of potential trees.
Letting go of that self-induced moral integrity attached to capturing a Mother Nature's essence I was free to creatively explore. The results are unique as anything, now with a story based in logging history, the power of a steam locomotive, a moving target, all leading to this conclusion:
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| Use what you got, and make it what you will! |
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