After I photographed the tree trunk and green spring leaves, I got back into my truck and made my way into the park. I didn’t really have a clear plan of where I wanted to go and soon found myself at the trailhead to the Rock House Cave. Grabbing my gear, I headed down the trail.
The trail leads to a large rock shelter that purportedly contains several pictographs. I have visited the cave numerous times, and I have never seen them. Perhaps it’s because they are too faint to see in the early morning light, but I tend to think the more likely explanation is that I don’t know what I’m looking for. But, I’m going to keep looking for them, and, hopefully, I will find them one day.
Between the trailhead and the Rock House Cave is an area known as Turtle Rocks because the rocks look like the shells of a turtle. It’s this area of the trail where I invariably spend most of my time, and this visit was no different.
I spent a few minutes just walking around focusing on the details of the area. I noticed several small scrub pine trees growing on top of the rock with trunks that twisted and turned; there were patterns of lichen on some of the rock; there were fallen, decaying trees with amazing textures. It seemed that everywhere I turned, I was finding something interesting.
After photographing all these subjects, I began to pack up my equipment. That’s when I looked down and noticed this old pinecone lying amid what appears to be juniper moss. There was no way I could pass up this opportunity, so out came my gear. Just as I did with last week’s picture, I reminded myself to take my time and come up with a good composition first and then determine the settings I needed.
I set up my tripod to frame the composition as I wanted it while being careful to avoid damaging any of the moss. I attached the camera to the tripod and positioned the back of the camera so it was parallel to the plane of the scene. This would allow me to maximize depth of field to ensure the entire frame was sharp, which is imperative in a picture like this. I made a few minor adjustments to the tripod’s position to refine the composition until I got the final framing I was happy with.
Then, I turned my attention to camera settings. Again, with depth of field being my main concern, I needed to use a small aperture. I considered using f/22, but that can lead to image softness because of a phenomenon known as diffraction, in which light bends as it enters the camera. To mitigate this as much as possible while maximizing depth of field, I selected an aperture of f/16. This resulted in a shutter speed of 0.8 seconds at ISO 100, which was fine since there was absolutely no wind blowing.
With everything set, I pressed the shutter button and captured the picture.
For the record, I walked the rest of the trail to the Rock House Cave and again looked for those ancient pictographs. I can report that, once again, I could not find them.
Well, maybe next time. . .