Jeremiah and I left Comfort Inn in Ukiah, California at 7:00am Pacific Time, and immediately went across the street to Starbucks. Coffee was greatly desired. Jeremiah then drove the remaining 3.5 hours to Redwood National Park via 101.

We came upon a beach right outside the park entrance, and exited the vehicle to walk down the sand to be closer to the water to admire the coastline. It was a beautiful beach that extended far down the horizon to a rocky cliff on the Northern end of the shore. It was not a swimming beach, there were several signs warning people to not go into the water because of a steep drop off. Nonetheless, it was beautiful to look at, and the sea air was sharp yet welcoming.

The trail is quite popular and has an unfortunately small parking lot, so we ended up driving up the road a bit and parking on the shoulder. We walked down hill back to the trail's parking lot. At the end of the lot, there's a ramp (not stairs, which I was pleasantly surprised about) that you go up to get to the bridge that goes over Bald Hill Road. The trail starts at the other end of the bridge.

One of the first giant trees you encounter has been burnt through. We took turns standing inside the tree and posing for photos. We could stretch our arms out, and we still didn't touch the sides of the inner tree!

There were a lot of sister trees (trees that start separately but grow into trees that share a base trunk). We also saw tropical looking leaves with pink flowers. Shout out to Lynnette Fox for helping us identify these flowers as rhododendrons!

We also saw what looked to be giant three-leaf clovers, but these ones had pink on the underside of their leaves. I was extremely fascinated with the "giant shamrocks" in the "giant woods", but it turns out they weren't clovers at all! They are called Redwood Sorrels. I learned that an easy way to tell the difference between shamrocks and sorrels are the shape of the leaves - shamrocks have rounded leaves and sorrels have heart shaped leaves. Learn something new every day!

On occasion, there would be a fallen tree along the trail. The park cut the trunks of the fallen trees so that you walked between the pieces of the trunk on the trail. We thought that was a pretty cool way to preserve as much of the tree as possible for natural decay/compost, as well as allowing the trail to remain accessible.

The trail was about a mile long, and was a loop - which is always nice so you don't have to turn around and go back whence you came. The uphill walk back to the car was honestly more difficult than the entire trail, ha!

We continued on in our original direction on Bald Hill Road, stopping at Redwood Creek Overlook. We didn't see a creek, but the view let's you take in the mountains and the distant ocean.

We hopped back on Bald Hill Road, this time journeying back towards 101. Remember the questionable fenced area I mentioned earlier? We still don't know what it's for (sorry), but there was a herd of elk behind the fence, and so we pulled over so I could take photos. The herd included several fawns, they were absolutely adorable.

We turned back onto Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway and found the trailhead for Corkscrew Tree. This was, by far, our favorite giant tree we saw in the park. For a short while it was just us, admiring the tree, but after bit another couple joined us at Corkscrew. We talked for a bit about cameras and photography, and then went our separate ways.

Two locals were having an argument at the bar. The woman was offended that the man didn't remember a night they shared together. The bartender was also quite obviously drinking behind the bar. As we closed our tab, the bartender tried to give us travel advice, but most of it was slurred. He mentioned driving down to the scenic road that goes along the river, driving through a brown gate, and going by the "Indian stuff" to find the mouth of the river. Unfortunately, we were never able to find this brown gate and "Indian stuff", as you can imagine.

After lunch, we went back out to 101 North, turning left onto Requa Road. Requa Road turns into Patrick J. Murphy Memorial Drive. This lead us up to Klamath River Overlook, where we got to see the mouth of the Klamath River as it flowed into the ocean. It was the first time either of us had seen a mouth of a river, and it was intriguing to see where fresh water met salt water. 

We made our way back down to 101, this time heading South. We did end up turning on the scenic road the bartender was telling us about, and we found a few side roads that were interesting, but we did not find the "landmarks" he told us to search for. Who knows, maybe he was playing a prank on a couple of tourists.

We continued on 101 South, making our way back through the park.  Right outside the park is a place called Elk Meadow Cabins, where there was a different herd of elk than the one we saw previously. We stopped to take photos, and then continued onto 101 South. 

Jeremy and I decided to book a hotel room at the Comfort Inn in a town called Eureka, California. It was okay, I think we'll try somewhere else if we are ever in Eureka again.

After showering and getting refreshed, we went out to dinner at a seafood restaurant called Jack's Seafood. The food was delicious, and funny enough, the couple in the booth behind Jeremy was the same couple we had conversed with at Corkscrew Tree. Funny how life works sometimes!

Beth, Jeff, Rebecca and Jeremiah left Natural Bridges and drove to Santa Cruz. We were ready to bum on a beach, but wanted to check out a few shops in Santa Cruz first. The first store was a place called Mythic Games, which, contrary to what you may believe based on the name of the place, had very few games for sale. Despite that, we bought Azul: Queen's Garden. We went to Bookshop Santa Cruz, which we thought was a second hand book store, but it was mostly new books. There were very few used books. Right next to the bookstore was a place called Comicopolis, which wasn't on our list of places to check out, but we are glad we did! They had way more board games than the game store, and we picked up two: The Tea Dragon Society and Autumn Harvest. Afterwards we made our way to The Hat Company, where Rebecca purchased a giant straw sunhat, and a green sunhat. Next to The Hat Company was another coffee shop, called Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting. Jeremiah and Rebecca both got blenders, and they were delicious!​

After seeing how busy the beach in Santa Cruz was, we decided to drive a bit further to more quiet beach called Rio Del Mar, located in Aptos. Jeremiah and Rebecca did quite a bit of seashell hunting, while Jeff tried out his brand new metal detector. Towards the end of our time at the beach, we saw an otter, though it was too far away to get a good shot. ​

We made our way back to Campbell, to Beth and Jeff's house, where Beth made orange chicken with white rice and broccoli for dinner. Jeremiah and Rebecca then re-arranged their luggage to fit a few night's worth of outfits in the smaller suitcase, and hit the road. Beth and Jeff let Jeremiah and Rebecca borrow their car, which was kind of them.

Jeremiah and Rebecca left the house around 9pm and drove North toward Redwood National Park. We arrived in a place called Ukiah, and stayed at the Comfort Inn, where Jeremiah had booked us a room. ​

The name, East African Crowned Crane, is very on the nose. As one can imagine, the bird is primarily from East Africa, and the yellow plumage on its head does resemble a crown quite well.

The East African Crowned Crane is native to Africa and can be found between Northern Uganda and Kenya to Southern Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia.

As with most craned type birds, the East African Crowned Crane prefers to live near water. The water habitats it prefers includes wetlands, rivers and lakes. This bird enjoys stomping through wetlands, which causes the insects and other small prey to splash up making them easy to catch and devour. They also like to move in herds to scare insects and small prey into revealing their locations so that they can eat.

Though these birds tend to move in large flocks, they can vocalize loud enough to be heard three miles away. There are many different types of calls that cranes make to communicate with one another, and one of those methods is called the "Unison Call". East African Crowned Cranes mate for life, and once they have picked their life partner, they come up with their own unison call that is unique to them. Typically the male will have a series of low calls, with the female responding with a series of high pitched calls. This helps each couple mark their territories. As you can imagine, there are several pairs of cranes in each herd, and the multiple unison calls creates a chorus of sounds that can sound quite pretty to anyone within those three miles to hear it.


If you would like to see an Eastern African Crowned Crane and you're in my hometown area, they have an exhibit at the Denver Zoo and at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo!

Those that know me personally know that I no longer market my business for photography sessions. I am more-so focused on the wall decor aspect of my business, however, if a client reaches out to me wanting a shoot, of course I'm on board!

Shalon's mother contacted me via the Nextdoor app requesting information on a maternity shoot. A few days later, i was giving a free consultation to Shalon and her sister, whom I met at Milly's Community Cafe, one of my favorite locally owned coffee shops. We got along well, and her session was booked for April 10, 2022 at Chautauqua Park.

Shalon, her mother, and her son showed up at Chautauqua Park with Shalon looking like a freaking Goddess. 

Now, let me tell you a bit about the weather that day. We had had a series of warm days leading up to April 10th, but on the day of her photoshoot the temperature dropped to 45 degrees. The 45 degrees was already chilly enough, as you can imagine, but it was also incredibly windy.

She was very cold, but she handled it like a boss! I mentioned to her that while the wind was making her suffer a bit, the photographs were absolutely not suffering. The wind was the cherry on top of an already beautiful session.

I was so impressed with her confidence in herself. She absolutely nailed the poses and was quite literally picture perfect.

Her son popped in for a few pictures which was absolutely magical. He looked positively like a royal enjoying a leisure day.

This post will discuss how to utilize the ISO settings on your camera. ISO refers to the light sensitivity of your camera in digital cameras, or the sensitivity of the film if using film cameras.

The ISO is one of three parts to controlling the exposure of photographs you take.
1. Aperture, also known as f/stop (Read about Aperture here)
2. Shutter Speed
3. ISO

ISO has a unique quality to it that Aperture and Shutter speed does not, it controls the grain, or noise, in your image. The image below is a cheat sheet for ISO settings to noise/grain level in an image, but please note that this is not an exact cheat sheet and that sensitivity differs between cameras.

Grain/noise mean the same thing and refer to the speckles/dots you see in images. Grain is a term typically used with film photography, whereas noise is typically used referring to digital images.

Grain/noise is typically unwanted in professional photography services, but sometimes you can't help but to have some ISO in darker conditions. It is also good to note that if you only adjust ISO to increase your exposure, you will also lose detail due to the grain/noise.

So how do you increase your exposure without risking losing detail and without adding grain/noise? You adjust your aperture and shutter speeds! Open up your aperture (make the f/stop number smaller) and slow down your shutter speed. You can also utilize a flash, of course, just make sure to have a soft box over the flash, or another way to diffuse the light to avoid harsh shadows.

Grain/noise can be used purposefully in photography, for example, to make an image look more vintage.

I would highly recommend not avoiding grain/noise at all costs. I would recommend playing with your ISO settings on your camera and see at which setting you find the ISO to be acceptable or too much, and then think of the grain/noise with a creative mindset. 

Photography is a science in ways, and in others, it's an art! Don't be afraid to experiment with camera settings.