“Wetland Plants” — Slender plants growing in a quiet wetland pond.
This is another “adapt and try something else” photograph from my early December visit to California wetlands — a visit originally intended to focus on migratory birds and tule fog, neither of which turned up in abundance when I arrived. So I looked for alternatives that didn’t require birds and which still worked under a thick, gray overcast. The result was a series of photographs of wetlands plants.
As the wetlands ponds fill from autumn and winter rains, the plants that grow in this (hot in the summer) area are gradually inundated by the rising water. Some plants simply go dormant, but others seem adapted to life in the shallows, including thiesedelicate plants, reflected in the still water of the pond.
“Autumn Hillside” — A Utah hillside with autum color from aspens and brush.
The range of colors in this photograph reminds me a little bit — but only a little bit — of the widely diverse autumn colors of New England forests. It is a bit subtler, with lots of softer tones, ranging from the marginal coloration of some of the green plants to the ghostly quality of the leafless brush in the foreground.
The location would usually be considered unremarkable. In fact, we ended up here more or less by accident. While driving a better known route through part of Utah I saw a gravel side road and spontaneously decided to see where it led. We started in a beautiful aspen grove, then climbed up and around a large ridge to west-facing slopes, where we found this autumn color.
“Dormant Wetlands Plants” — Dormant and dried wetlands plants reflected in the still water of a quiet pond.
My first “real” visit of the season to my favorite migratory bird photography location did not go as planned. (Actually, I did stop briefly a month ago and a half earlier, but things were still slow back then.) I was hoping for luminous tule fog and lots of geese and sandhill cranes. Instead I got thick gray elevated overcast and fewer birds than expected. Ah, well, it happens… and when it does I look for something else to photograph.
This is one of the “something else” photographs. This area is full of shallow seasonal ponds, and when they fill the summer’s plants still emerge from the still water and make fascinating reflections. For this subject the very soft light from the overcast worked well and revealed a more of the plants’ details.
“Desert Branches” — Branches with sparse foliage, Red Rock Canyon State Park.
This was most definitely not the subject I was looking for at this place. We were on the long drive back to California after a few weeks of photography in Utah when we decided to make a quick stop at the Red Rock Canyon State Park in Southern California. The main visual target there was to be the fantastically eroded formations — that last we would see that felt like the Southwest as we headed home.
We arrived late in the day, just before sunset. Because the hills near the entrance face east, the area was already in the early evening shadows. We photographed the red rock formations in the soft, blue-tinted light, and at some point I happened to spot these sparse plants silhouetted against bright ground in the distance and illuminated by the evening’s bluish light.
