Picture of the week

Mysterious Forest

Within the forest of Del Norte Redwoods State Park as engulfed in smoke from some of the nearby forest fires.  As the fires continue to burn across the western US, I ended up taking a motorcycle camping trip along the north coast of California this last week.  Given reservations were made earlier with the presumption the smoke would not be as bad on the coast or dissipated by now, turned out to be wrong.  But making the best of the situation, photographing the Del Norte redwood forest adjacent to the Mill Creek campground ended up being quite productive.  The main challenge was not enough light given how bad the smoke was within this dense and tall forest.  It would be a real shame if we also lose the undergrowth from this forest due to fires, but perhaps with the new normal with California's climate, it is probably inevitable.

The images were captured with a Canon EOS 90D with an EF 17-40L f/4 lens handheld with ISO ranges between 1600 and 6400. The image above had settings of: f/4, 1/20 sec, ISO 3200 at 17mm.  Given the limited light and lack of a tripod (limited room on the motorcycle) I would try to steady myself against a tree or by kneeling, with some of these shots with a shutter speed as low as 1/10 of second at f/4 ~ f/5.6. In situations like this where there is a higher probability that the shot will be blurry, I will take multiple shots of the desired composition.  Often I will get a good one with less motion blur, and then just delete the others.