You heard a tea pot blowing its top, multiple train whistles, car horns, nearly every sound you can imagine as Porcelain Basin in Yellowstone put on one heck of a show. With magma just two miles below the surface, the heat has to have a place to escape on yesterday morning Porcelain was the place! We stood on the rim as time flew past photographing the every changing landscape below. I’ve been coming here since decades and this was the first time I’d ever seen this show. Wow, Mother Nature, it has some inner power!
That shot of trees covered with snow takes a couple of weather factors, the first is water. It’s the snow with a lot of moisture content that tends to cling onto trees limbs as it falls. The wetter the better but then the key is cold. But if you have cold when the snow is falling, it’s not wet. That’s why often you’ll see the snow cling and then your won’t as once warmth hits, it drops off from its weight (pine boughs are adapted just for this). The moral of the story, you want the photo of the snow covered tress, or this case, a rock in a creek, shoot it ASAP, don’t come back to get it later. It will be gone!
In 1942, a young congressman, Lyndon B Johnson arranged for the US Army to build one of their new ammunition plants in Texas on the Louisiana border. Shortly, 8493 acre were purchased on Caddo Lake and the plant was built. During WWII, Monsanto Corp produced 393,000,000 pounds of TNT at this location! For fifty-five years, the plant built everything from incendiary devices to rocket motors. Thiokol Corp modernized the plant from making liquid rocket fuel to producing solid rocket fuel after the Korean War, the Cold War era. Then in 1987, the plant was used as part of a treaty as the site where the Pershing I & II missiles were destroyed. And now, it’s a National Wildlife Refuge … dang!
What you see above is what’s left of Production Area #1 for the production of TNT. We were there birding, looking for the Red-cockaded Woodpecker (which we did find) when we literally stumbled upon Production Area #1. As you can see, the forest has reclaimed the area bringing an eerily yet beautiful landscape. It’s completely open to the public with signs that have photos to show you what the buildings once looked like (we only explored one of the many sites). A number of the blockhouses have their doors removed and a big wire in their place. Looking in with our lenses (I shot with the Z 6 / Z24-200) we say paychecks from Thiokol dated from 1984 amongst all the papers just lying there on the shelves.
The most amazing thing is it would seem taggers and souvenir hunters have not found the place. We weren’t there to shoot the haunting structural ghosts but took a few moments from our birding to give it all a gander. It’s a really cool place deserving more of my camera time and I will in the future cause it’s not what you expect at a place called Caddo Lake NWR!
Yep, in our landscape photos and in general, red just loves black! We love our reds, we love them saturated, deep, vibrant and if at all possible fire engine red. Its just part of the human condition and as such, let’s just give ourselves what we love.
There are many ways to do this. Saturation is by far the most common method of delivering that gorgeous red. I prefer more subtle methods such as using White Balance and exposure. In this example at Caddo Lake, I set the White Balance manually to 8000k and underexposed by 1 2/3 stops. The underexposure not only saturated the color but made sure the black went truly black. Our mind’s eye sees that black and uses it to determine other colors and by association, we see other colors more vibrant. Or in real simple terms, red loves black!
Long, long ago Caddo Lake, TX was put on my list of locales I had to get too. Sadly, it’s taken nearly four decades to make that happen. It is such a gorgeous place, I’m sadden it’s taken so long to get here but so happy I finally made it. Not widely known to folks, I came here for birds amongst the bayou but it’s the bayou itself that has grabbed my imagination and fills be with awe each sunrise. The dew point is perfect to bring out a fog across the water. The batches of color here and there bring the eye to the vertical texture of the intriguing Cypress. Man, it’s simply gorgeous.
Caddo Lake captured by D6 / 180-400VR
The question comes up with every click though, color or B&W? It’s a very texture rich target that looks romantic with every click in B&W. The subtle shades of gray punctuated with orange and red here and there makes color a slam dunk with any click. So then when you’re assembling the elements in the viewfinder, which way do you turn? This is how I solved the question in my own mind. With the hint of light kissing the fall color, I shot in color. And when there was no direct hint of light and the Spanish Moss really brought out the texture, I went B&W. The toss-up was the cold blue trunks leaking through the fall color. Sometimes I went color and sometimes I went B&W. The one thing for sure, I plan on being back to explore Caddo Lake much more thoroughly. A boat appears to be a key in that exploration which is exciting to plan. More time is also needed as this is a place time has forgotten. It’s a local all wrapped up in delicate, sublime beauty!
The color has really popped in the last 24hrs with the cold snap. The combination of crisp air and the warm autumn light made shooting the fall color a snap, and incredibly relaxing. And this morning, the background was just as cool as the foreground.
Sheep Creek, UT captured by Z6 / Z14-30
The photo at the I was pointed to the south. I turned to the west still standing in the same spot and shot the photo above. The only skill I brought to the situation was able to get up early and drive, Mother Nature did all the rest.
