Rainy Day at Jack London State Park

Jack London Vineyard, adjacent to the park

Jack London State Park is in Glen Elen California, in the Valley of the Moon area of the Sonoma valley. Wine country. It is, as you might suspect, the former residence / homestead of the great American writer, Jack London. He intended to make it a model farm/vineyard. The buildings are of local stone. The hills are terraced with vines. There are groves of Eucalyptus and Redwood, a small lake up the mountain above. All in all a fitting tribute to the best of what he loved in the Valley of the Moon. 

I was last there on a rainy day. I almost didn’t go. I almost turned back many times as I wound up the Sonoma valley, but memories of the beauty of my one previous visit, several years ago now, on a better day, keep drawing me on. It was raining hard on and off: misting most of the time, and I kept looking for a break in the clouds, hoping that when I got to the higher elevations at the park, I would somehow get above the rain. Not so. 

Mossy Stair to Nowhere but Dreams

Still, I paid my $6 at the self-service entrance and was committed to getting at least $6 worth of enjoyment out of the wet day there. I took two wet hikes, one from each of the parking areas, doing my best to catch some the beauty of the day, while keeping my camera dry enough so the electrics did not short out. Not easy. I spent a half hour standing the lee of a stone barn waiting out the worst of the rain, and I was pretty wet by the time I got back to the car both times.

Was it worth it? The subdued light of the rainy, misty, foggy day produced interesting views of the vineyards (which still produce wine under the Jack London appellation), the hills, the trees, the moss covered stones. Maybe it was just that I was more determined than usual to find subjects and vistas worth capturing despite the moisture, but it seemed that I found images every where I looked. 

Plums Fore, Vineyard Aft

Cough Tree Bark

The intermittent rain and the lack of what we might consider attractive light forced me to look closely at everything. (Had to get my $6 worth, you know.) Even the bark of the Eucalyptus trees drew me. Such patterns. The sheen of moisture only brought out the colors more deeply. The Plum blossoms hung gloriously pink against the green, yellow, and brown of the winter terraced vineyards, or gloriously smooth against the rough texture of stone barn walls. 

Even the misty fog added atmosphere to what might otherwise have been merely pretty vineyard pictures.

Plums and Stone

I spent about 3 hours there, and brought back 22 images that I will keep in my portfolio. Not a bad deal. That is only $.28 per image. I consider the $6 and the rainy afternoon well invested.

Vineyard in the Rain

You can see the whole set of 22 images, and a few others from that day, in the Vallejo and Sonoma galley on my SmugMug site.

That is the inspirational side. On the technical side, the day posed its challenges too. Low light meant often higher ISOs than I would have liked so it was necessary to fill the frame with detail (which masks the high ISO noise). The fog and mist required some post-possessing in Lightroom to capture the real effect…mostly using the Recovery slider to bring out the transparency of the veils of moisture. I used Program Shift to increase the depth of field in the shots of the Plum blossoms against the vineyard and the stone wall. And I made full use of the full range of the Sony DSC H50s zoom to frame and crop. You can find more detailed explanations of how many of the image were made and processed on my Steve Ingraham’s Pic of the Day blog. Start at 2/6/2009 and work your way forward.

Maybe not the best $6 I ever spent. But close to it.