Vineyards Dressed for the Fall Ball

Last Wednesday I ventured out just before sunrise to capture the blazing fall colors of the vineyards near to where I live in Northern California. The night before I fastidiously set my alarm to go off at six so that I would have plenty of time to take a shower and get everything ready to go. Instead I lurched awake at six fifty seven realizing that somehow it was too late and the alarm didn't go off as expected. I groggily pulled my gear together and headed out the door without my shower. The cool fall air awoke me by the time I drove my pick up down our road to the main street. When I looked to the east there was a nice bank of clouds in the sky. This was going to be great for photography I thought to myself. About a half an hour later I arrived at some vineyards that looked really nice. The leaves were all reds, yellows and greens and the vines were heavy with over ripe grapes. At this point the sun was already a little ways above the horizon and there was very little time to photograph as the clouds had all disappeared! The soft warm light lasted little more than ten minutes before it started getting to harsh for photography. I drove around Redwood Valley looking for some good spots and came up empty handed. Finally I found some grapes in the shade. I created a few images of them and then I was pretty much done photographing vineyards for the day. Such a beautiful harvest of images. God bless, chris