I love it when a plan comes together

This was the sunset two Thursdays ago. I think it turned out pretty well. Of course I knew it was going to turn out nice because I had a 'Plan D.'

That night I had a light schedule at work with enough time to sneak out for what was shaping up to be a good sunset. I prioritized what I thought would work best. A, the tree that was in the sunflower field looking west, the right direction for sunset. B, the tall old oak about a quarter mile from that one that could be shot in any direction. C, the industrial area in north Woodland looking west had some nice grain towers and machinery that could make a good silhouette. D, hope one of the first three worked. C was on the way to A and B and as soon as I passed it I could tell it wouldn't work with the way the clouds were moving. A and B would've been good picks but it was tomato harvesting night so all the roadside parking near both those trees was clogged with the dusty cars of the migrant workers.

Fortunately I'd had other Plan A's fail in this part of the county before and on the drive out saw a previous 'A' that could work as my 'D' tonight. I'd stopped at group of old oaks along the levee before but never got the right combination of tree, field, and sky like the treat I found this time. After seeing the result, I'm glad my other plans fell thru.

I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a little frustrating having my Plan A's fail so frequently. But my confidence in my backup plans keeps me going back out. Take last Friday's sunrise for example. I couldn't fall back asleep after a pre-dawn changing and feeding for Abby. Looking out the window I could see clouds on the eastern horizon that piqued my interest enough to head outside at 6am. Plan A was a drainage ditch just north of town and Plan B was a line of electricity poles right next to it. Both ran east-west and since we were near the equinox I figured the sun should be rising almost in line with them.
A:
It was okay. The sun wasn't directly lined up and I had to do some photoshopping to remove some large power lines running across the top of the photo. I can see why I thought it would be good but I'm not sure conditions could get much better than this so I don't know if I'll try it again.
B:
My original thought with these power lines was for a full moon rise but I think the combination of summer haze, road dust, and light clouds made this a nice sunrise photo. The Sacramento skyline on the right side adds a gritty feel but I wish I'd balanced out the poles better and moved ahead of that bush. Maybe some other time I'll try again.
I didn't have any more plans so I decided to throw a few pebbles at a group of pigeons sitting on the power lines and see what they'd do with the clouds.
C:
Meh. I was beginning to think I should have just slept in. I was only 2 miles from home, there wasn't a whole lot of room for a Plan D if it was going to show up on my drive back. But every other time down this road my thoughts were in sunset mode, with eyes to the west. Looking east for sunrise gave everything a new look. The boring-at-sunset west pond at Wildhorse Golf Course caught my eye. I pulled over quickly and snuck thru the fence.
D:
Plan D I knew I could count on you.

A few weeks ago I had an assignment south of town around sunset. This was a direction I don't usually go so I kept my eye out for good landscapes. I spotted a collection of distant oaks with the gap in the Vaca hills in the distance. I researched google maps and the US Navy sun/moon data table to find out when the sun should set in that gap and marked my calendar for a return trip. And of course I put together a set of backup plans. When I got to the levee road that looks over the oaks it was obvious I had miscalculated the position of the sun so it wasn't as close to the oaks and the bottom of the gap in the hills as I'd hoped. But this time the tomato harvest worked in my favor. The silhouetted machinery contrasted nicely with the oaks and the extra dust from the harvest gave me a scene I was happy with.

I went to try my B option
and returned the next night for my plan C
but this was a time when my 'A' game was on.

Having found the Wildhorse pond to be quite photogenic I put it at the top of my Plan A list. With a new moon and a near windless night I headed out to the pond to try star trails again. A small rowboat on the shore lined up well enough with the north star to make a nice Plan A composition. And except for a few fish and frogs jumping the water was still enough to reflect some of the star trails.


If I had remembered bug repellant I probably could've stayed out there all night. But after 100 minutes a few clouds started to move in and I decided to get some sleep. Before I headed home I had to try a Plan B composition just to see what I might need to try next time.
The clouds that were going to ruin the star trails made for a great starry still photo. Plan A and Plan B both gave me something good.

Now I just have to wait for a Wildhorse pond Plan A to fail to find my next great photo.

East Davis: A Photographer's Home

We in California are blessed with some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. There's Yosemite, The Big Sur, San Francisco, and East Davis just to name a few. Okay, maybe most people won't put East Davis, or any of Davis, on that list. But for the past 14 years it's what I've called home.

When I first moved to this part of town I had just started taking photos for the Aggie. This side of the tracks seemed to be popular with other Aggie folk, especially those of us who were more artistic minded and in that bottom income bracket. Often times, in search of free entertainment, we ended up in the cemetery in the middle of the night. Not so much the tombstone area but the undeveloped part in the back. At the far end of the property was the old Chiles mansion site. Though the mansion had burnt down decades ago the old barn still stood at the edge of the cemetery. A few times some of us slipped thru the fence to sneak around the barn but it was already creepy enough being behind the cemetery on dark nights so I never had an inkling to go inside, until last week.

Even though the barn is smack dab in the middle of town It's pretty easy to forget it is there. It's only visible from a low traffic part of Eighth St and the lot is mostly overgrown. Except for a couple assignments I had for the newspaper when the property went up for sale I had forgotten about it.

I'd been wanting to try a star trails photo lately. In thinking of good foregrounds most of my ideas were old oak trees further out in the county that would require parking my car on the side of a lonely road for an hour or two. Then I remembered the collapsed barn and truck south of town I had shot over the winter that was only a 20 minute bike ride away. As the new moon approached it dawned on me that the perfect test subject was only a few blocks away. So last week I rode my bike back behind the cemetery to make sure the barn hadn't been bulldozed yet. It was still there. Either some homeless or drinking teenagers had pried open one of the doors so I took a look inside and wondered why I'd waited so long to come here for pictures.

That moonless night around 9:30 I loaded up the tripod and camera and headed out to the barn. I was surprised to see how many stars were visible here in the middle of town, I could even see the Milky Way. I put a fisheye on the camera to get as much sky as possible and started clicking away, one minute at a time. It was dark and just breezy enough to make the leaves rustle creepily behind me for the hour plus I was out there. After compiling the shots together in photoshop I'm pretty happy with the result.

After my peek inside the barn I decided I needed to come back for some daytime interior photos. The barn sits in a north-south position and the picture I envisioned was light slipping thru the barn boards at high noon, which is technically closer to 1pm this time of year. I took some test shots before the sun was in place,


Then when the sun was lined up with the boards I stirred up some dust to make the rays of light really shine.



The barn was a gem hiding right here in town. Just east of East Davis I found another little hidden jewel. A few weeks ago, while driving back from an assignment in Sacramento, we had a rare cloudy summer evening. Thinking of a good place to shoot the clouds I remembered a lonely shack, hidden by the train tracks and a cell tower, that I'd seen in the distance of a Duck Days falconry exhibit two years back. I pulled off the freeway, headed over the tracks and took a right on probably one of the least used roads in the county. I parked the car and walked down the old driveway to the shack. Some homeless had obviously called it home in the past but now it was the perfect subject for my sunset photo. I backed away to emphasize it's loneliness in no-man's land outside of town and let the sky dominate the shot.


So close to town, just a few hundred yards from the freeway, yet seen by almost no one. Kind of the same way I feel about Yolo County's scenic value when compared to the better known locales in this well photographed state of ours. Sometimes I feel blessed to call this place home.