Two Aspen Trunks & Red Creek Dogwood

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Inyo National Forest, Inyo County
late afternoon Monday September 29, 2003, slide 03Y8-32
Pentax 67 AEII with 55-100 zoom, Gitzo G1325 Mk2
Drum scanned Fuji Provia 100F 220 film to 200mb RGB file
Adobe Photoshop 6.0 processed for accurate image fidelity
Lightjet5000 printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper
signature bottom left

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Close up shots of the beautiful fine grained white tones of aspen trunks are a favorite with photographers. In the Sierra Nevada, no vegetation turns a finer hue of red than dogwood and the bush here was as deeply red as they come. Thus when I came upon this exceptional combination of the two, I put my best into framing it as well as I could. In outdoor scenes photographers often don't have the luxury of putting elements in the scene wherever they wish. The direction of the sun illuminating the scene, shadows, the background, issues of depth of field, and various objects in the way, among an assortment of other things, limits what is possible. In this scene I could not get too close to the trunks or dogwood because the target objects vary somewhat in distance from any possible lens position. So I needed back up some to obtain adequate depth of field as I wanted to have everything in the foreground tack sharp.

Thus I set my focus plane at the trunks at a fully stopped down f32 on my big zoom lens. In the background are some boulders and other trees and bushes. None of those objects are too sharp which matters not as I minimized their area in the frame. On the right side, the top of the dogwood was just a bit above the top of this frame. I wished to include some of the two aspen trunks unobstructed by dogwood leaves. Fortunately dogwood leaves on the right side rose up above those on the left side of the bush, which worked out just fine. To add some color character to the frame, I also wished to include some of the dried plants in the foreground below the dogwood. So I positioned my tripod high and then back just enough to get those and the rest of the elements. An intermittent breeze rustled the leaves most of the time so I waited maybe ten minutes until a momentary calm allowed me to trigger the shutter release cable at the optimum still moment. There were some other images in the area I was also interested in shooting so I did not dwell at this spot with any bracketing. Just as well as this one image turned out perfect.

In the Eastern Sierra, quaking aspen, populus tremuloides, and creek dogwood, aka American dogwood, cornus sericea, usually begin turning to fall colors between later September and mid October. Higher elevation trees, and trees at colder and drier locales turn earlier than those at lower warmer elevations. These trees are in the South Fork of Bishop Creek canyon. In the background left upper corner are some other aspens with fall turned yellow leaves. Lower mid left are also a few yellow and green aspen leaves but they do not come from either of the two trunks. Just below the two trunks is a whitish piece of what looks like fallen dead wood. Actually it is where a third trunk emerges from the ground on a grotesquely oriented tree that has a trunk lying parallel to the ground. More of that tree bends back upward just left of the frame edge. The yellow leaves are part of one of its small branches.

Creek dogwood as the name implies tends to grow along streams or seeps as is the case here. Most do not change to such a vibrant red as these but rather a less saturated purplish red hue. A few lower leaves still show their usual summer green. Note the deep red color of the branches. During the winter against snow, their naked red branches are striking. Some of its small round white berries can be seen in the upper mid right edge of the frame against a red leaf. The dark object behind the dogwood is a flat granite boulder well mottled by dark lichen. In the lower right corner, the drying yellow plant is crimson columbine, aqualegia formosa, which have exquisite yellow red flowers during the summer. Just left are several stems of drying dull light purple to brown leaves of common fireweed, epilobium angustifolium. A week or two before the fireweed would have had bright red fall leaves. During the summer it would further grace this magnificent seep with flowers of dark rose hues.

Crop at 100% print size:

   David Senesac
   email: sales@davidsenesac.com

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