A couple of weeks ago, I made a trip to Petit Jean State Park. I hadn’t been there in nearly a year, so I was curious to see what I might find. Arriving before sunrise, I stopped at the Lake Bailey Dam where I waited for it to get bright enough that I could start to see where I was walking. Walking into the lake in the dark, or even the light for that matter, just didn’t seem like a good idea.
The sky quickly brightened enough for me to see, and I made my way through the trees to the lake. I had an idea to photograph a small fishing dock against the pinks and oranges of the early morning sky. But, as I framed up the composition, I realized there was no separation between the dock and the dark trees in the background, and everything just blended together in a line of darkness.
I began to look around for other subjects when I noticed an area of lily pads in the lake. I spent several minutes looking for a nice patch of pads to fill the frame, but I didn’t find any that I was happy with. Eventually, I found these two pads that were standing off to themselves. What caught my eye was the small underwater stems that supported the pads. They made me think I had found some kind of alien plant life! I attached a polarizer to the lens to reduce the glare on the water’s surface and photographed the pads and then further emphasized the pads and stems in Lightroom.
After a little while, I returned to my truck and decided to take a slow drive along Red Bluff Drive. I stopped at a small overlook and checked out the view. It was certainly picturesque, but with the lighting conditions (the sun had been up for a while), any photograph would have looked flat and would not have adequately captured the beauty.
As I got in my truck to keep heading down the road, I happened to glimpse this little forest scene with the sun peeking through the trees creating areas of light and shadow. I grabbed my camera and walked around looking through the viewfinder until I found a composition. I soon found this one with a single tree in the center of the frame with the sun just to the side of the tree, a plant at the bottom edge of the frame that was catching part of the sunlight, and some lilac or light purple flowers in the foreground shadows that provided a bit of color.
I photographed the scene at f/22 to maximize depth of field and accentuate the sun star. I also shot a series of images to focus stack them, if necessary. As it turned out, it wasn’t necessary – the original image worked just fine.
