Gift of Life

For the past three years I’ve made a point of going to King’s Canyon / Sequoia National Park near the end of May or early June to catch the blooming Dogwoods in their prime. It’s a magical experience to see the giant white flowers glowing in the sunlight, sparkling like giant snowflakes and twinkling stars. And the contrasting reds of the stately Sequoias elevate the experience to a whole new level. Some of these monoliths have been peacefully reaching for the sky for over 3,000 years, and their massive presence makes you feel it. During my countless trips to the groves of the Sequoias I’ve photographed them so much, that very little remains compositionally for me to explore, so I didn’t actually take any photos of the Sequoias this year, but I invite you to view my collection of Sequoia images if you have not already: Sequoias in all seasons (opens in new window).

“Life Among Giants” ~ Sequoia National Park, CA
The Tech: Canon 5D, Canon 24-105L f/4, tripod, polarizer
Exposure: iso 100, f/16, 2.5sec
Notes: I used a second exposure taken at a higher iso to prevent any motion in the deer
This may be a familiar image to many of you... I took it in 2008, and it was selected as a runner up in the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition last year, and has since been published in Germany's Geo Magazine.

Instead, as I ambled down my favorite canyon with my dad, I wondered up in amazement, as always, at the sparkling Dogwoods. This year they were actually relatively scarce, since the cold spring we’ve had delayed the blooms by up to two weeks. But as we descended in elevation a few trees were putting on quite a show. One stand in particular caught my eye, and I decided to try to capture that magic, again, but this time everything seemed to come together.

“Gift of Life” ~ Kings Canyon National Park, CA
The Tech: Canon 5D2, 16-35mm mkII, handheld
Exposure: iso 100, f/22, 1/50th sec
Notes: I tried using a tripod, but the composition here depended on millimeter precision of camera placement, and when you’re wedged in between trees, that’s not going to happen with a tripod!
Click for larger view

The hot weather that weekend really pushed the plants into action, and as we hiked out the following day it seemed as though twice as many flowers were out! The flowers weren’t the only things that were enjoying the sun – the ladybugs that spend their winters roosting in the canyon had awoken and were swarming everywhere… thousands of them! It’s a difficult experience to capture in a still image, but perhaps the pair of these images – them roosting, and having taken flight (the streaks are ladybugs zipping by), will convey the sheer magnitude of the phenomenon. I also took a little video, which you can see here: ladybug video.

Ladybugs ~ King’s Canyon National Park, CA
Notes: the right image is a stack of about 10 exposures layered to increase bug density, as I could not use a longer exposure as the light streaks then began to disappear. Exposures were on the order of 1/10th second.

The sun really is one of, if not the most important ingredient for life. The other, of course, being water. And there was plenty of that to go around this year. In fact, the spot I camped last year was hardly recognizable as where there had previously been a dry creek bed, was now a rushing river! There was so much water that the waterfalls and mossy rocks I’d been hoping to photograph again were too inundated with raging white water to be photogenic.

“Underwater Bubbles” ~ King’s Canyon National Park, CA
Notes: this image was mostly just for fun, and a learning experiment. I took this, and many other, compositions completely blind, handheld, in the fast moving current with my EWA marine housing. I hope to do a lot more shallow underwater work this summer!

It might sound strange for a river to suddenly appear (I’m not talking about a little stream, I’m talking about a 2 foot deep 10 foot wide river), and it is… but it’s actually a well-known phenomenon here. The riverbed follows a the 17 mile long limestone and marble cave network of Lilburn Cave, which is known for its bizarre ebb and flow cycles. Just a hundred feet downstream from our camp was one of the entrances to the cave system – Big Springs, where a river simply emerges from the mountainside. Let me tell you, that water is cold! If I’ve piqued your curiosity, I wrote a little more about this magical spot last year: camping in paradise (opens in new window).

Me in Big Springs – the emergence of frigid cave water! Courtesy Wil van Breugel.

The water levels this year were really quite something, thanks to the incredibly wet winter and spring we’ve had, and the start of the hot weather over the past few weeks. I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to catch the waterfalls in Yosemite at their peak flow. Naively, I assumed that most of the campers would be leaving the valley on the Sunday afternoon… wrong. I was again reminded why I never come here, despite the incredible beauty of the valley. My dad pointed out that we are in fact some of the very few people that have seen the valley when it was devoid of just about any other human beings. Oh, how I wish I had those memories from a decade ago. We had been backpacking, and happened to exit into Yosemite the day after the entire park was evacuated due to wildfires. Anyways, during my brief afternoon visit I was able to find some peace beside the raging waterfalls of Tamarack and Cascade creek confluence. Just imagine how hard those trees have to work to hold onto their precarious rocky homes for the few weeks that the water is raging like this!

“Spring Flood” ~ Yosemite National Park, CA
The Tech: Canon 5D2, 24-105mm, tripod
Exposure: iso 200, f/14, 1/8th sec
Click for larger view

With all this water and the summer sun, it will be a fantastic year in the high country of the Sierras. In a few weeks the snow will start to melt off of the high lakes, and soon after the flowers will burst into bloom, and the mosquitoes will descend on the brave souls that venture out into the wilderness. I can’t wait to get out there again; I’ll be sure to bring some pictures back to share!

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Tags: California, dogwood, sequoia, spring, yosemite