INSPIRATION ~ TAKES YOU WHERE YOU FIND IT...

Inspiration comes from many sources. In our local newspaper (The Modesto Bee) on Thursday, March 12, 2009, a local “Community” columnist by the name of Yvonne Holt wrote an article titled: “Poppies paint the hills with vibrant springtime color”. The Bee in a promo on the front page of the “Local News” section had a photo titled “Sea of Orange”. As I’ve often said: “Take inspiration where you can”, and I often follow my own advice.

The article came out on March 12th and bright and early March 13th (and it was a Friday), off I went on a drive to where the article spoke. I’ve driven this route many times and had seen the wildflowers of the Central-Western side of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range. It had been a long time since the last time I saw (as Yvonne Holt wrote: “a phenomenal sight along the Merced River Canyon”) where the poppies covered the hills in full bloom.
Never wanting to let an opportunity go by to take a photo or two (and in this case I ended up taking about 500 photographs in the four hours I was in the Merced River Canyon east of Mariposa, California on Highway 140 (stopping just before going up to the Yosemite National Park entrance). An interesting side note to the Merced River that I did not know prior to this recent outing is how the Merced River got its name. In 1806, a Lieutenant Gabriel Moraga (yes, the same person the city of Moraga near Oakland is named after) was at the end of a forty mile march when he and his exhausted thirsty men came upon the river and in gratitude he called the river “El Rio Nuestra Senora de la Merced” or “The River of Our Lady of Mercy”.

Well, rather than bore you with all the details of the trip, I’m just going to post some of the pictures I took. These were taken with a Pentax K20D with various focal lengths starting with 24mm all the way up to 600mm. F-stops from 1.4 to 8, and because I like to experiment with different filters, I used everything from Polarization filters, Neutral Density filters, warming filters, and a variety of other filters I carry in my bag. I also had my ISO settings all over the board: 100, 200, all the way up to 800 just to see the affect it had on the photos (experimenting really helps me learn because then I can adjust what I think would be good for a shot, to what actually is good in the shot). From time to time I even doubled up on filters using a Polarization filter with a Neutral Density 2+ the 4+ filter (just to see what adding exposure time to a photo – which does require the use of the old tripod - would look like)… I took some of these shots as slow as 1/30 of a second to as fast as 1/250 of a second. I encourage everyone to do this every once and awhile just to remind themselves what they have in their bag and what changes it makes in your photos.

The only thing missing from these photos were the clouds I love… Using the Neutral Density and Polarization filters allowed me to capture deep blue skies. I guess if you can’t have big puffy clouds in your pictures, the next best thing is to have deep blue skies. Well, I hope you enjoy the photos.

(I often carry poster boards with different colors and place them behind objects that I shoot for a contrasting view. This is a matte black board to highlight the poppies. Try it, it's fun, it's different, and every once and awhile, you'll see something when all the background is gone.)

If you know of any good areas (areas of interest) for a photoshoot, please let me know in the comments section of this blog. I'm always looking for new "Inspiration" and really appreciate ideas. I specifically am interested in Northern California from Fresno to the Oregon boarder. Hope my photos gave you some inspiration to go out and take photos.