Redwood Forest Floor Foliage. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Broadleaf starflower and redwood sorrel in the deep shade of a Northern California redwood forest.
There is a route in Redwood National Park that surprises me — because there is hardly ever anyone there, even though it dead-ends in a beautiful forest of old growth trees near an intersection of several trails, in a place with many interesting things to see. I visit the spot every time I go there. Perhaps the small number of visitors is due to a lack of named icons, the out of the way location, and not a whole lot of publicity. My first visit was an accident — a moment of “I wonder what is up that way?”
The last time I was there it was midday, not necessarily the ideal time to photograph in the forest. The redwood forest is often quite a dark place, and little sun manages to find an angling path through the trees to reach the ground. But in the middle of the day the sun does make it to the forest floor, and the great contrasts between shadow and light are a challenge. On this visit there were scattered clouds passing above the forest, so I found my compositions and then waited patiently, eyeing the sky for the next cloud that might soften the light.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
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Very pretty! Your essay reminds me of a Japanese word I stumbled across a few years ago. Komoebi, which ‘roughly translates as “the scattered light that filters through when sunlight shines through trees”. It is made up of three “Kanji” or Chinese characters: “tree” or “trees”, “leaking-through” or “escape”, and “light” or “sun”.’
Hope you had a nice Independence Day! Lots of rain here in Texas but I’ll take that on these dog days of summer!
That light is really special light, magical in many ways — and often hard to photograph!
We’d happily take some of your rain here in the Far West right now. On the plus side, living not too far from the coast, we’ve had a couple of weeks of cool morning coastal fog and moderated afternoon temperatures — pretty much the perfect Bay Area weather.