TECHNICAL DETAILS
Fall Tamaracks, St. Louis County, Minnesota, 2015
Leica V-Lux (Typ 114) Focal length: 15.51mm (actual) ISO 125 1/320 at f/8 The camera was on a MeFoto Backpacker tripod along the roadside. I bracketed exposures and thought about an HDR approach, but there was too much breeze to get good image alignment. In the end, it didn’t matter. I had enough dynamic range to bring out what I wanted in the final image.
FALL TAMARACKS & THE UNDER-APPRECIATED PALETTE
The weekend found me up at the cabin with friends, enjoying a last glimmer of fall before the onset of the true cold. Saturday morning, we set out for a hike up off the Echo Trail to the Angleworm Lake loop in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. It’s about half an hour’s drive to the trailhead, and we needed to swing through Ely to pick up a map as we struck out. It was a beautiful, brisk fall morning, with a stiff northwest wind, and low-slung clouds driven seemingly right across the treetops. The temperature was around 40 degrees Fahrenheit and we were prepared for a cool day trip, hoping the wind would drop a little. Before we got to town, along Highway 88 not far from the junction with 169, there is a big expanse of bog that opens along both sides of the road. Fortunately, I have very patient friends (and wife!), and they heeded my call to pull over for a photo. In the pantheon of fall color palettes, there are no doubt some heavy hitters worthy of their renown: Colorado’s brilliant aspens, Vermont’s flaming maples. But I testify that a greatly under-appreciated contender for the glory is a northern boreal bog full of tamaracks at their gilded peak. Their hues are so intense it’s like someone slid the saturation slider all the way to 100. And in the low October light this Saturday morning, Tut’s tomb couldn’t match their splendor. The birches and popples dropped their contributions to the fall festivities a fortnight ago. The early vermillion sumacs are but a distant memory. The few maples and the occasional scrub oak are barren, their photosynthesis shops closed up for the season. We had driven up the previous night in a steady rain, tense in the glare of passing headlights, eyes straining to the ditches on both sides of the road for deer, now seasonally oblivious to the dangers the asphalt carries. Through the wipers in the dark, the colors were absent. But this morning as the car slowed, completed its U-turn, and pulled onto the shoulder where a small creek flows out of a bog, we were drawn in by the incredible splash of gold across the far side. As is the photographer’s usual lot, the sun instantly faded before I could get out and shoot, but our hurry had abated, the wait began, and I started composing small scenes around both sides of the road. The fast-moving clouds spotted the landscape with pockets of passing light, a disco-ball on a grand scale. So I knew it wouldn’t be long before the tamaracks across the bog got their moment in the spotlight. I set up the tripod next to the water and framed the scene while waiting for the right light. Others were poking around the edge of the road, looking in the water, marveling at the intensity of the color – unexpected after the falling of the deciduous plumes. Shortly, on cue, the clouds parted in the perfect spot, and the tamaracks glinted in their full magnificence. I reeled off a dozen shots, bracketing the exposure up and down, reframing slightly, and trying to concentrate on the task and not be distracted by the beauty. At length, we piled back into the car, turned tail again, and headed into town. Throughout a wonderful day of hiking, we saw tamaracks all around us. We continually marveled at the richness of their gold, not appreciating how much a part of the landscape this inconspicuous tree really is. Usually, it’s silent, a muted grayish green, and small in comparison to its neighbors. But for a week or so as Halloween is nigh, after the others have taken their bow, it’s encore across the fall landscape paints a last grand shimmer and sends us off toward the inevitable season of white.
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