{"id":414,"date":"2009-05-21T22:42:42","date_gmt":"2009-05-22T06:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/?p=414"},"modified":"2019-11-23T10:51:26","modified_gmt":"2019-11-23T18:51:26","slug":"oc-fair-entry-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2009\/05\/21\/oc-fair-entry-2\/","title":{"rendered":"OC Fair Entry #2"},"content":{"rendered":"

The second entry into the Orange County Fair this year is one that I planned for well over a year – Bristlecone Moon<\/a>.\u00a0 The bristlecone pine are the oldest living trees on the planet.\u00a0 The oldest of these is over 4,800 years old.\u00a0 Imagine, not only will it outlive you and I, not only has it outlived our ancestors, but it has outlived whole civilizations.<\/p>\n

This tree could well be a couple of thousand years old.\u00a0 That means it was an old tree when Columbus sailed the ocean blue.\u00a0 I love being in the presence of these marvelous beings.\u00a0 It’s like touching eternity.<\/p>\n

The photograph was taken in the White Mountains, the ones in California.\u00a0 They straddle the California Nevada border.\u00a0 The trees are at an elevation of 10,000 to 11,000 feet.\u00a0 There are two main groves – Schulman at the end of the paved road and Patriarch another 12 miles up a dirt road.<\/p>\n

As I already indicated, I planned this photograph for well over a year.\u00a0 The plan was to capture the full moon rising in the earth shadow behind the tree.\u00a0 The evening this photograph was taken was the night before the full moon.\u00a0 And we were fortunate to stumble across this tree.\u00a0 It’s right beside the dirt road, the one that takes you back to the Patriarch Grove.\u00a0 It had the eastern exposure I was looking for and was a magnificent, solitary specimen.<\/p>\n

As the sun set the tree fell into the shadow of a rise directly to the west.\u00a0 So the light was this wonderful open shade, very soft.\u00a0 I sat on the rocky slope content to wait for the moon.\u00a0 And then, there it was.<\/p>\n

I chose a composition that deliberately cut off the tips of the branches.\u00a0 This allowed me to place the tree where I wanted it and have it fill as much of the frame as seemed right.\u00a0 I also decided to shoot HDR and I’m glad I did because it did two things – it made it possible to capture\u00a0the warm radiance on the gnarled trunk and you can clearly see the man in the moon (and the rabbit too).\u00a0 As the moon rose I tried slight variations on the composition.\u00a0 This image shows the tree\u00a0reaching for the moon as if to embrace it.\u00a0 I like the symbolism that this suggests.<\/p>\n

The processing in the digital darkroom did the usual HDR stuff.\u00a0 But I also used a contrast mask technique I often employ that gave very smooth gradations to the tonalities and the colors and that also added to the overall luminance of the image.\u00a0 I was very pleased with the results.<\/p>\n

So that’s the story behind Bristlecone Moon.\u00a0 Win or loose, it’s a very meaningful photograph for me and one I’m especially proud of.<\/p>\n

(727)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The second entry into the Orange County Fair this year is one that I planned for well over a year – Bristlecone Moon.\u00a0 The bristlecone pine are the oldest living trees on the planet.\u00a0 The oldest of these is over 4,800 years old.\u00a0 Imagine, not only will it outlive you and I, not only has … Continue reading “OC Fair Entry #2”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[156,32,225,224,223,74,160],"class_list":["post-414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-bristlecone-pine","tag-california","tag-earth-shadow","tag-full-moon","tag-moon","tag-orange-county-fair","tag-white-mountains"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Nl7-6G","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4650,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions\/4650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}