Unfortunately, I missed most of Spring in Minnesota, but was fortunate enough to spend some time in the Los Angeles National Forest in California.  This was the first time I was able to spend time creating photographs in an area varried terrain height.  The terrain let me explore a large gamut of photograph styles from elevated intimate shots to grand vistas with large depths of field.  While I wasn’t able to spend as much time as I would have liked, the time I had afforded me enough time to learn quite a bit.

In Minnesota, with very little variance in terrain height and often tall vegetation, my wide-angle lens has been my favorite, but in the hills more often I reached for my 24-105mm and used it at the 105mm stop.  While walking or driving along the ridges I would see a photograph on a hill across the valley but the 105mm would not allow me to crop the scene down to the photograph that caught my eye.  During one of my few weekends home I was able to purchase a 70-200mm lens and on the following trip I was able to make some of the pictures I had found on previous trips.  By zooming in further, I was able to isolate only the elements of the scene that I wanted, without resorting to excessive cropping in post-processing.  I wish I would have spent more time experimenting with my wide angle, the times I did, I wasn’t able to find good forground subjects.  Next time I guess.