Living in the Arizona desert, I don’t often get the chance to photograph woodland scenes. Desert landscapes with plenty of cacti? Sure. Woodlands with plenty of green and trees? Not so much. Luckily, we are vacationing minutes away from the only redwood forest.  It stretches from Brookings, Oregon down a narrow 20-30-mile-wide strip 150 miles to Big Sur, CA. I’m going to get my chance to photograph redwoods.

Redwoods are great trees. I do like to photograph trees (see my tree project), though usually a lone tree portrait.  As I walked around the Redwoods, I realized there would be no lone tree portraits. It is amazing how close together they grow.  Where do the roots go if its neighbor(s) are just a few feet away? Why don’t they fall over? I looked up the answer for you: Redwoods stay standing because their shallow roots intertwine with the roots of the other redwood trees. They are holding each other up!

Reaching for the heavens – Redwoods can grow upwards of 300 feet.

The trail is just a mile loop, but it was on and off raining with a touch of misty fog. I had rain pants, rain jacket, and a rain sleeve for my camera. I felt like my body was in a prophylactic. With all this protection you would think I would be dry – not the case. It was one mile walk of wet. With all this doom and gloom, I was still optimistic about my photographs. Why, you ask?  The best time to photograph this type of scene is to have the elements be wet (raining) and provide a mystical feel (mist or fog). We had both.

Within a minute I took a shot I loved. Then it seemed like every shot I took, I loved even more. I’d take a photo, look at the screen on the back of the camera (which is really no indication of how good the photo really is), and say to myself, “I love it!” This carried on for an hour, 101 shots taken. I ended up with 15 “keepers” which is way more than I would expect.

Maybe it’s the time of year or maybe it’s all the rain, but I do love the floor of ferns.

Perhaps my favorite photo of the day.

I took some photos with Kathryn as the main subject, they came out great.

It doesn’t matter which rock she stands on, the redwood is so much taller.

That’s it. What do you think of my woodland photos?