ND filters – Slow Shutter Speed

We just wanted to go shooting for enjoyment, and not too far. So we found the Indian Grinding Rock State Historic Park in Volcano, California. This land preserves a large amount of marbleized limestone with about 1185 mortar holes–the largest collection of bedrock mortars in North America. Women would gather together and visit as they ground their grains in the mortar holes.

There’s also the Chaw’se Regional Indian Museum and a reconstructed Miwok village on the grounds. The one building I had fun photographing was the Ceremonial Roundhouse which is used for various social gatherings and ceremonial events. Since it is used currently for those purposes, we couldn’t go in.

My challenge during this outing was the brilliant sunshine and the shade. This drove the camera sensor crazy–me too. I tried some handheld HDR (tripod wasn’t with me), and focusing on the shade and then raising the camera which blew out the sunny area. The best I could do was to focus on the sunny area and move the camera. Fortunately Lightroom has a graduated ND filter and a shadow slider. Both came in handy during post processing!

But, it was a perfect outing, and we did enjoy it. Sometimes you just have to get out!

The museum

On the way to the village

Miwok dancer sculpture

Eating area

Another eating area view

I loved the structures that we think were made from tree bark.

A close up of the texture

One of the buildings

The large rock

Another view

A smaller mortar rock

The Ceremonial Roundhouse

A side view

Around the back

Have you ever chased windmills, you know the big white ones? Photo buddy Linda and I went out the day before a scheduled Meetup to catch the scenery, windmills, moonrise (which I didn’t get a good shot of) and sunset. Tall order for tall windmills!

We got to the area an hour later than the Meetup group was scheduled for the next day. Well, an admission, we didn’t get to the appointed area until we saw it on the way home. Typically when we meet with the Exploring Photography group, we enjoy a meal together and our organizer gives us directions and tips on where we should go to shoot. Not having these directions, we sort of got lost, but had a great time.

We stayed mostly on Montezuma Hills Road, stopping whenever we could after seeing something worth shooting. The area is farm country with windmills sitting in the pasture land. It’s not unusual to see windmills among the cows and farms.

I can’t say that the images I’m going to show you are my best, but they were the best I could do without an ND filter system. I wanted to get those giant windmills in slow shudder, but the sun was too bright. And by the time we got back from dinner, we almost missed the sunset. By the time we were on our way home, we were tired and thoroughly enjoyed chasing the windmills.