Gold Country

Autumn sunsets in the Gold Country are golden.

I was updating the Fall Color Map when I heard the call, “John, you should see the sunset.” That’s happened every night for the past week. Each night, I’d grab a camera and head outside to get a disappointing photograph.

They were never sharp, always too soft. Tonight, rather than just grab the camera and hand hold it, I took a moment to get the tripod out, set it up and mount the D850 to it.

The most important tool for a photographer is none of those. It’s his/her brain. Think your photo through. The best photographers anticipate the image and have everything ready: the tripod, the camera, the lens, the ISO, the mode, the location. Until tonight’s image, I’d been impatient. I’d forgotten to think.

On this image, I anticipated that the camera’s meter would misjudge the light. So, in Manual mode, I stepped the exposures (which are constantly shifting as the sun is setting) to get the right balance of sun and sky.

To avoid camera shake, I spun the knob to timer. Such exposures take longer to trigger than by using a remote, but when losing light, I never seem to find the remote and the timer’s always there.

A photographer’s rule about sunsets is that they keep getting better. Don’t put away the tripod and camera when you think you’ve got it. A minute later, it’ll be better.

Sunsets by themselves are beautiful, but boring. I look for something to be silhouetted in the foreground: a couple embracing, a sailboat, anything that has meaning. In this instance, the photo is about fall color so a blue oak was my foreground.

The blue oak is native and common to the Gold Country, though its fall colors are subtle. Silhouetting the tree made it more interesting than it is. I was in a blue oak woodland today and worried that one of the many acorns falling from their limbs might injure me, they fell with such surprising force. Birds and squirrels are busy gathering and hiding the acorns, often damaging street lamps, eaves and gutters in their effort to conceal them.

Gold Country woodlands became increasingly gilded this past week. The change has been more noticeable each day. From Oakhurst north on CA 49 to Downieville Near Peak to Peak colors are developing and at the end of each day, there’s a golden sunset to enjoy.

• Gold Country, CA 49 (1000′ to 3,000′) – Near Peak to PEAK (50-100%) Go Now.