A Trilli, a trilli, a trilli… Trillium Falls

Taken Tuesday, September 30th, 2014.

After camping in Crater Lake with my friends, Hage and Jared, we headed to Eugene, OR, where I picked up my rental car, and had a bite to eat from a food cart at Ninkasi Brewery. I happened to leave Eugene later than intended, which found me driving on the beautiful Redwood Highway after dark. There’s a section of US 199 (between Cave Junction, where i filled up on gas, and Crescent City) that is just beautiful, and you can tell even driving after dark. With the road weaving through the groves of trees, you are just in awe of the towering trees around you, while trying not to go careening into them around curves at 45 mph.

Elk Prairie & Redwoods National Park

In any case, fast forward a couple days to Tuesday, September 30th, and I’m camping near Orick, CA at the Gold Bluffs Beach Campground. It’s in the Elk Prairie area of Redwoods National Park (where you’ll find elk just wandering around, and possibly blocking the dirt road leading you back to your campsite). While I spent a lot of my time trying to take time lapses on the beach, I did get a chance to hike a bit and take a few photos.

Nearby my campsite, there were hiking trails that allow you to hike through the tallest trees in the world, through green and lush landscapes (including an beautiful and aptly named area called Fern Canyon). Here is a photo from one of those hikes, a short 2 mile loop called Trillium Falls. Unfortunately, the water flow was a little low during this time of year, but it was really quite stunning watching the fall leaves fall then there was a strong enough gust of wind to blow through the trees.

I used an ND filter to make this a long exposure, and I would have loved to stack my polarized filter on as well to cut down on the glare off of the rocks and leaves (it really does make a difference), but at that moment, it was stuck screwed onto another filter and I spent a good 15 minutes trying to unstick it like it was working with a jar of spaghetti sauce. Anyway, this turned out pretty good without it, but you know, it could be better.

Polarizing Filter

Here’s another angle of the falls with a polarizing filter. Notice the reduced glare on the foliage. It definitely changes the dynamic of the image.

Oh… and here’s a 3 frame animated gif!