Leon Turnbull Photography

On Saturday I had plans to get up for a very early morning sunrise hike in the mountains. But I just couldn’t get up and out of bed. I just wasn’t into it, and just felt more like sleeping in. That put me in a bit of a sour mood for the rest of the day because I knew I should have forced myself to get up. I’m sure I would have had a fabulous morning had I done so.

Well, if I couldn’t get out for sunrise, there was always a possibility for sunset, if the weather co-operated. And at first, it looked pretty interesting. There was a lot of cloud cover, and we even had rain, thunder, and lightning throughout the morning. And it was still very warm out, hot even. Strange stuff. We went up to the El Dorado Hills library, where there was some sort of pirate festival going on. It was kinda strange too, but the kids enjoyed it. Jadon and Nekoda dressed up as pirates themselves, and they looked very cool. We met up there with our friends from church so the four kids could enjoy the festivities together, then we went out to lunch together.

In the evening, my wife had a planned “girls night out”, so I had the kids by myself. I had hopes to take them somewhere easy enough to enjoy the sunset, and I could take photographs. But in the afternoon, the clouds dissipated, at least in the direction where the sun was setting. It did not look like it would be a very good sunset after all, so I told the kids we weren’t going on any hike after all, and I said I would just take them out for ice cream. They liked that, but while we were enjoying that together, I had a change of heart. I thought maybe the sunset wouldn’t be too bad after all. There was still time, so we whipped on back home, I grabbed my camera, and we drove out to Folsom Lake. It is a bit of a walk from the parking area down to the lake, and by now it was almost sunset time, so I told the kids they had to walk as fast as they could to the lake. They did, and we made it in good time with only one fall along the way (Nekoda). I set up along the lake with my camera, while the kids gathered some rocks to throw into the lake (away from where I was shooting, I told them). It turned out to be a very beautiful sunset after all, and this is no doubt the best photo I have taken of Folsom Lake to date. I was very pleased that we were able to get out this evening.

Folsom Lake is pretty low again, now at 44 percent capacity. This is not really surprising or alarming, as it is now the end of summer. It is still higher than it was at this time last year. Nonetheless, it is a huge difference from earlier this spring when it was almost full. The Old Salmon Falls bridge is visible again, you can see it in this photo. This location, Salmon Falls, used to be an old townsite of course, that was flooded when the Folsom Dam was built. You can still see remnants of the old townsite in addition to the notable bridge. I mention this all because of my daughter Nekoda. She is so funny sometimes. While I was taking photographs, the kids were (in addition to throwing rocks) discussing the fate of the people who used to live here. Nekoda had it all figured out. Apparently, wolves and tigers came down from the hills, and threw all the people into the lake where they then drowned. Their footprints are still all over the place. Actually, they are really just dog prints but don’t tell her that.

This is from our recent trip to Santa Cruz. After lunch, we all headed down to the beach to play. The kids got extremely sandy and dirty of course, getting sand in every conceivable part of their body. Oh well, they had fun, and that’s the important part.

When we first arrived, I headed down to one end of the beach where I saw some pelicans diving for food very close to the shore. There were a lot of pelicans here, and we saw them diving during the whole time we were there. However, as soon as I arrived close, they seemed to just go away and didn’t return. There were, however, some long billed curlews here, and they let me get pretty close to take photos of them.

The beach was very crowded as one would expect on a sunny Sunday afternoon. But as I was walking down the beach, I saw a dead sea lion in the middle of the beach. The weird part about it, though, is that there were kids playing right around it. Geepers, I think I’d want to keep my kids well away from something like that. Gross.

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Friday night was a full moon, so I came up with an idea to take a drive up to Lake Tahoe to see the moon rise over Emerald Bay. Good idea, I thought.

I drove up right after work on Friday. It was a long weekend, and there would be lots of people going up to Tahoe for the weekend. The traffic was heavy as suspected, but I made it up there in decent time, had dinner, then drove over to Emerald Bay. I was hoping to maybe get some sunset shots overlooking the Bay first, but there wasn’t much in the way of clouds. There were a few at first, but they disappeared by sunset time.

I had some time so I went up to Upper Eagle Falls first. The creek flow was incredibly low. That should not be surprising but I was hoping for a little more flow in the creek. It wasn’t really worth photographing, but I climbed over to the brink of the falls and took some shots anyway. Then I went over to Lower Eagle Falls and waited around for sunset. I did not bother to get my camera out there, though I was hoping the few clouds on the horizon might show a bit of color. They did not. Still, it was pleasant and peaceful to sit there with no one else around. After awhile, some Japanese tourists came by, disturbing my peace, so I got up and left. I didn’t want to take any photos anyway.

I thought I had a full hour before the moon would rise, so I decided to take a short drive up the road to see what I could see. But after a few minutes of driving, I noticed the moon rising over the lake! What?? It was not supposed to rise for another hour, and it was also rising from the wrong direction! After I got home, I realized I had been looking at the moon rise for the wrong date (dumb!), so that’s why I thought it would be rising later than it did. Anyway, I drove back to Emerald Bay, and climbed down on the rocks to setup and take photos of the moon rising over the bay. There was a big boat driving around the Bay (the Tahoe Queen?), and I could hear them partying on the boat from way up where I was. You can see the lights from the boat in this photo.

This shot was a 120 second exposure at f/8. I was not very pleased with any of my shots this night. I seemed to under expose most of them. They seem a lot brighter on the LCD screen of my camera, so I thought they were okay, but back on my computer screen at home, they are darker. Oh well, live and learn. I’m going to have to go back some day and try this again. Maybe next time, I’ll have some clouds too.

I had not planned to go out for sunset shooting on Saturday night in Santa Cruz. I knew I would be tied up doing family stuff. Of course, that meant there would be a 100 percent chance of a nice sunset on Saturday night. And sure enough, as sunset rolled around, nice scattered clouds were forming over Santa Cruz and pretty colors were appearing throughout the sky. I gazed longingly at the sky, wondering how I could get away, and knowing that I could not. We were finishing up eating dinner on the pier, and there was just not enough time to go anywhere to catch the sunset colors. The kids were over-tired from a long day of fun on the boardwalk, and I wasn’t sure where I could go close by anyway. So I slowly walked the family back to the car, and started the drive back to the motel. C’est la vie.

On Sunday morning though, I wanted to be sure to get out for sunrise somewhere. Of course, the fog would roll in over night, and it would be a blah sunrise in the morning. Nonetheless, I got up early and headed out. There were a couple places in the Santa Cruz area that I really wanted to go to. Actually, there were more than that. Santa Cruz has plenty of very scenic locations along the ocean. It would be awesome to live in this area (if there weren’t so many people living there already!).

One of these scenic locations is Natural Bridges State Park. There is a very interesting arch rock formation in the ocean here. There used to be two arches at one time (hence the plural in the park name), but now there is just one. It is actually a much better location for sunset, than for sunrise. However, it is also a very popular location, and being that it was a summer weekend, I figured it would be better (and not so crowded) to come here in the morning instead. I would definitely like to spend more time in the Santa Cruz area in the winter months (no fog, no crowds, better weather conditions for photography). One thing I didn’t like about this particular park though, is that it is smack dab in the middle of the city, and there are lots of buildings surrounding the park, and overlooking the beach. It is kinda ugly.

I arrived at the park in the dark. The gate was locked, but it was not a far walk to the beach, so I parked on the street and walked in. There were a couple cars in the parking lot (did they get locked in overnight?), but there was no one on the beach as I walked down to the arch and set up my camera.

It was still too dark for photography with no light or moonlight. Now, I am not really too keen on the “light painting” concept. That is, using a flashlight to illuminate your subject in the dark. I prefer natural light, such as from the moon. There is nothing wrong with light painting, it is just a personal preference. But since I was here, in the dark, and it would be a while before it got light enough to take any photos, I decided to try it just for the heck of it, using my flashlight to light up the arch a bit while taking a photo. I was actually very pleased with the result, and it looked quite subtle and natural. I even prefer these shots I took to others I took later, when it got a bit lighter and I didn’t need to use the flashlight. This one here was taken at f/8 for 60 seconds.

Here’s another one taken a bit later. I shot this at 160 seconds using my Singh Ray Vari-n-duo filter: