We've been having so much rain in northern California lately! I wish I could send it to places in the country that need it desperately, like Oklahoma and Nebraska and Texas, to name a few. With all this rain, it's kept me focused on getting office chores done - like editing my digital files, prepping them for stock submissions, scanning older slides and archiving things. In short, getting my act together!
As I sit watching the downpour hit my office window, though, I have cabin fever. There's so much to do here, but there's so much beauty outside. Yikes! So, when the breaks in the storms come, I take a break from the office and head for the outdoors to capture what all this water has created: lush green forests of oaks, bay laurels and madrone trees, dripping with lichens, covered in mosses. Water cascading down mossy rocks Overcast skies are great for that type of photography, and with everything wet, there is a rich saturation to the colors.
It's the season of mustard between the grapevine rows in wine country, too, and when the sun shines on a freshly washed landscape, there is a clean crispness to the light that I love. We get incredible cumulus clouds and wispy "mare's tails" in the skies, above the saturated yellow mustard rows, and it screams to be photographed! I used a polarizer to make the clouds pop a little more in the sky, and in the process, it actually helped to saturate the yellow - not that yellow needs it very often - but there was just enough wetness on the mustard plants that it cut some of the glare from that. All in all, it improved a picture that celebrates the great skies of spring in the wine country.
My challenge is not unlike what many of you face, working full-time jobs and having little time to get out there and photograph. But if you carry your camera system with you, and plan a little extra time getting to and from the office, you can make the time to create pictures - and be ready for the days when the weather makes photography that much more exciting.
In the long run, I'll hopefully get both the work done in the office and some great photographs, too, during this wild month of March!
Have a great day, everyone.















