Trinity River, Northern California, USA
Can you hear this photograph?
I admit that is an eccentric question. But I stood in this spot for hours and the roar of this rapid was amplified by the narrow river canyon. I think that I can still hear it.
I arrived before dawn and waited for a little light before I climbed over the rocks down to this ledge next to the Trinity River in northern California. The clouds hung in the canyon all morning and kept the focus of this scene on the river and the rocks. The longer exposure helped to protray the speed of the river and may help you imagine the sound.
It was my first photo excursion with a new camera. And because I wanted the river to fill the foreground of the photograph, the tripod legs were sitting on the edge of the rocks to keep the camera close to the water. I kept a hand on the tripod most of the time. I kept imagining the camera tipping it over, plop, into the river!
I kept the aperture very small so that the rocks next to me would be in sharp focus as well as the rocks in the rapids and the trees across the river. The lichen on the rocks in the foreground added color to this subdued scene.
The Trinity River comes from snowmelt and rainfall in the ‘Trinity Alps’. It was very busy during the California gold rush and still has active mining claims on it. California State Highway 299 travels next to the river for many miles and makes the drive from Redding to Arcata very scenic. The Trinity River is an important salmon and steelhead stream and is popular for kayaking and rafting. Photo: 3.2 seconds at f/22
I’ve spent a lot of time on the Trinity so I know its song pretty well. This is a beautiful photo describing that special morning you had! Did you methodically bracket a bunch of shots or did you just “feel” the light and expose accordingly?
I tried lots of combinations of exposure and speed. Since it was my first day in the field with a new camera, I had a lot to learn and experiment with. I used the same experimental approach on a day beside the Deschutes River in Bend, Oregon. I took hundreds of photos, starting at about 4:30am. It turned out that the very first photo was the one that I liked the best! But photo 478 could have been a keeper too, so you keep working.