Ebb and flow

Of all the hikes during the years there is one I look forward to most.  Once the rains come Alice and I plan our trip to the Waterfall Trail at Uvas Canyon County park near Morgan Hill.

It is not a long hike or particularly strenuous.  But in it's short troop is walk along a series of cascading waterfalls as Uvas Creek winds beside the trail.  Rocks, boulders and fallen trees provide ample place for the water to divert and cascade down into foaming pools.

Arriving at the park we were greeted with one of the largest crowds gathered i have seen for a hike.  But as we started Alice and I lost the cord in the tangle of fallen trees and brush and moss covered rocks.  We spent just over four hours on the trail stopping at different pools or falls as we worked our way along the trail.  There was no real plan just whatever caught our eye in the water.

Time exposures help capture the movement and flow of the water so I packed heavy with my Induro tripod with bullhead, electronic cable release and four lenses.  In the four hours I shot just 380 pictures but composing the shots and the time exposures took quite some time.

I played with the shutter speed quite a bit, the slower the better to capture the power and movement of the water's course.  Sometimes I increased the shutter speed to stop some of the water's motion but rarely went above 1/30 of a second.  My usual shutter speeds were one second or a half second.  A low ISO sensitivity setting of a 100 for most of time let me keep a slow speed with a small aperture setting.

I weeded down my shoot to about 100 shots and from there I picked just over 70 to process.  Some shots are the same scene tat different shutter speeds which gives a completely different look and color to the image.

If we have tome I would like to try for a visit to the falls of Mount Tamalpais.  They have a different feel there and we missed our visit last year.  But if not i will wait another year for the rains to return and plan my trip to class and their special beauty.