Pinnacles National Park in fall 2011, part 1

This post is the first in a series. To see more Pinnacles fall photos, click here.

In early November 2011, I went camping at Pinnacles National Park. Hold on, wasn't I just there? Indeed, it had only been seven months since my last trip to Pinnacles. That's nothing. The blink of an eye, the beat of a heart, a fraction of a second, when I look back on it now.

But the time that elapsed between the two 2011 trips had felt like years while it was passing. Rather longer than the blink of an eye. During those seven months, I made the decision to leave Red Bat Photography to work on my own projects. By the time Sundari and our friend Aki invited me to camp at Pinnacles with them in November, I had almost wrapped up five years of wedding and portrait photography with Patrick. He would be carrying on with the Red Bat business, and I would be, as I put it then, turning amateur. My photographic world had been changed forever.

Some professional wedding and portrait photographers will tell you that they find it hard to pursue their own personal, non-business photographic interests when they spend so much time working on photos for their clients. Others will tell you it's no problem at all, they can easily do both kinds of photography. During the five years I worked as a Red Bat, I found myself mostly in the former category. Photos from my trips and daily life usually got pushed to the back burner, where they simmered but rarely came to a boil. I never quite mastered the art of juggling commercial and personal projects. Maybe someday I will– who knows? Anything is possible. All I know for sure is that, as 2011 drew to a close, it felt really, really good to stop taking pictures for other people. At last I would have the time and energy to work on my own photos.

It was with an awareness of impending freedom that I packed my stuff into Aki's car. I took the back seat, and found myself snuggled up with bags of food, hula hoops, and everything else that wouldn't fit in the trunk. You will notice that we were not traveling in the RV this time. At the bottom of the stack of stuff in the trunk was my Tent Cot, and somewhere in the car was a camping stove. There would be no kitchen. This was going to be a real camping trip. Somehow the fact that we were traveling without the RV made the sensation of freedom even stronger, perhaps because of the symbolism of leaving behind the heavier, more protective vehicle in favor of something that could navigate narrow, curvy roads.

As drove to Pinnacles National Park, we took a winding route that was new to me. We made our way around the edge of Watsonville and I took pictures through the windows, a far different experience in a car than the shooting through the wide windows of the RV. While Sundari and Aki chatted in the front seat, I made the decision to simplify my photography on this trip. I would use my Canon 50mm EF lens as much as possible. Shooting with a prime (non-zoom) lens reminded me of my earliest days with Red Bat Photography, when I shot almost everything with the Canon 35mm L lens. Back then, my brain couldn't handle the extra variables provided by having the zoom option available to me during a busy event. I thought of those early days with Red Bat, how far I'd come since then, and how that era was almost over now. As I lazily snapped photos of whatever passed in front of my 50mm lens, I found I couldn't stop smiling.    

I noticed right away that when I took a picture through the car's windshield, it came with a bonus picture, in the form of the rear view mirror's reflection. These little vignettes stuck in the top corner of my through-the-windshield shots pleased me greatly. I've always liked photos that tell a story about the location of the photographer, giving a sense of what it's like to sit or stand where the photographer is. To combine that kind of photo with a picture-within-the-picture photo was exciting. Best of all, it required almost no effort at all on my part; in fact, I was so crowded in with bags and coolers that I could barely move anyway. These were the only shots I could get, and they were the shots I most wanted. That's what this trip is all about, I thought. I'm in the right place at the right time, and I don't have to try very hard.

There was another reason for my buoyant mood: it was now autumn, my favorite season of all. It was autumn, and I was about to spend several days outdoors in a place I knew to be splendid, full of unspoiled natural beauty. These are reliable ingredients for happiness in my world. We arrived at Pinnacles, found a campsite, set up our tents, and hit the trail for an early evening hike. I appreciated the willingness of my companions to get right to the main point of the trip. The late autumn light was lovely on the rocks, the trail, the leaves of the trees. It pressed on my heart the way late autumn light will do, making me feel happy and sad at the same time.

My 50mm lens was just right for this hike. It weighs very little and performs well in low light. We climbed higher and I took pictures from the High Peaks Trail at sunset, something I didn't get to do on my previous visit. It was glorious to be up on that trail, watching the golden light move across the mountains, their shadows spreading over the valley. I loved seeing the grass and trees in their fall condition, the green stripped away, the rolling hills covered now with brittle white stalks. As I lagged behind Sundari and Aki and took pictures, I realized that at last I could photograph to my heart's content without feeling the pressure of upcoming Red Bat Photography work. I didn't have to dread the prospect of trying to fit the processing of all these new photos into my schedule. Working on my photos whenever I felt like it: that would be my new schedule.

I felt so light and free that when my camera started malfunctioning on our hike, I only got scared for a couple of minutes. Just relax, I told myself. It will start working again soon. Just before darkness fell, it did.

The moon was full that November night. We descended an unfamiliar trail in the deepening twilight. I wondered about the animals that lived in these hills. Would we encounter any? What might I see if I stayed here all night? The park felt empty of all humans. The fading light and muted colors gave me a wild, lonely feeling.

In my previous post about Pinnacles National Park, I mentioned the fact that it's located at the edges of several larger geographical regions, and that its trails skirt various ecological zones in the park. Walking on a dim path in the park on the edge of night, at the time of year that's between autumn and winter, I felt myself to be on the threshold of everything. I took pictures until it was too dark to take any more, enjoying this feeling of slipping through time and space and leaving behind an old self.

We were drifting down the trail like sleepwalkers now, unable to see details of our surroundings but navigating just fine by the light of the full moon. Then we reached a fork in our trail and took a wrong turn. For a while we were lost. We spent a surreal hour looking at a map under the weird moonlight gleam and backtracking to several faintly remembered points. All of us were exhausted by now, but still in high spirits, and everything was hilarious. When we found our way again, it was mostly by accident. We were still laughing when we finally reached our campsite.