Tag: Chumash Trail

Miner’s Lettuce

Yesterday I went out for a bit of a hike, through one of my favorite trails, the Chumash Trail.  Last year we had massive fires, and what I saw was the remnants of that fire.  Burnt mountainsides, devoid of brush and the usual cover (like poison oak!).  Bare and burnt oak trees, rocks.  So many things were revealed by the fire as plants were burnt away.

Sounds pretty awful, doesn’t it?  Here in California, much of our landscape and plants are fire-dependent, meaning that fire is a normal part of the season.  With the drought and firefighting measures – like not letting entire neighborhoods burn down – brush becomes overgrown.  With a drought, you have kindling.

Now, with everything burnt away, new growth is beginning to emerge.  Flowers, weeds, leaves on the oak trees.  I was able to hike into an area that I normally avoid – too much poison oak and a lot of rattle snakes.  It is along a creek into a narrowing canyon.  And, sitting on a rock, listening to birds and the sound of water, I looked around.  That is when I found the first-ever Miner’s Lettuce I have seen in this area.  I took a picture, and this is what I painted.

A perfect spring morning!

Impression

impression

Another film image from the 1930s Voigtlander Bessa Rangefinder, using Fuji Pro 400H film.  There is an Impressionist painting which keeps flitting across my mind every time I look at this picture – hence the title.  I think it is a picture by Renoir, of a lady in a white dress looking around a tree in dappled sunlight . . . .

Touches of Light

touches-of-light

I’ve been on quite a roll using my older cameras.  This is one of maybe 2 or 3 images (out of 8 possible on a roll) taken with my only 6×9 camera, the classic Voigtlander Bessa RF from the 1930s.  This my first experience with Fuji Pro 400H 120mm film.  My scans were not the best, but worse was the amount of crud on the film.  Processor or me?

Overall, pleased with both film and camera, especially how dark the trail was from being underneath so many trees, the fact that it was early morning, and that I had to handhold the camera – no tripod! – to get what I wanted.  Oh, I guessed at all the exposures too!