Uvas Canyon County Park
Uvas Canyon County Park is a hidden gem located in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. This park is known for its lush greenery, cascading waterfalls, and serene hiking trails. It is a perfect destination for nature lovers and photographers alike. The park offers several photography locations, including the Waterfall Loop Trail, which features three stunning waterfalls, and the Knibbs Knob Trail, which offers panoramic views of the surrounding mountains. The park also has a variety of wildlife, including deer, bobcats, and several species of birds, making it an ideal location for wildlife photography.
- Albert Camus.
Took this shot during a recent hike to Uvas canyon county park, the waterfall loop hike is about a mile and full of wonderful small waterfalls and beautiful moss covered rocks and trees. The hike is pretty mild but has some elevation gain and pretty strenuous four out of shape people like me. Even though I was out of breath and little miserable due to the pouring rain I really enjoyed the trek and the beautiful falls all around.
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Another waterfall from Uvas. This is Black Rock Falls, which is ~55ft high. It was harder to get this shot because the viewing area is pretty small...
- Edgar Allan Poe.
Uvas Canyon in central California is a great spot for a short hike, especially if you are interested in waterfalls. It has a lot of small easy to access waterfalls on the aptly named waterfall hike. Granuja falls is not the biggest waterfall on the trail but arguably the most photogenic. I tried various compositions at this waterfall, focusing on numerous elements of the waterfall.
For this shot, I included the ni canyon created by the creek and how the gorgeous light was showcasing the moss growing on the canyon wall. The scene was not as dark as depicted here, but I cut the reflected light on the water and slick rock surface using a polarizing filter. The polarizer also helped in removing the reflection from the leaves, making the green pop.
Decided to hit up Uvas again, since we've been having so much rain recently. This time around, I wanted to check out a couple falls I didn't see the...
- Ralph Waldo Emerson.
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Keeping with the woodlands there, today’s hot is from another woodland setting. Still from the west coast, but this time from Central California. After moving to California, this was one of the first trails we hiked. It didn’t disappoint, there were a bunch of amazing waterfalls at varying heights, and all of them provided exciting composition possibilities. The trail closely follows the Swanson creeks along the moss-covered Uvas Canyon.
This waterfall is known as the upper falls and is one of the tallest along the trail. The widest focal length at my disposal was 28mm, so I went downstream and framed the falls with the creek bed as the foreground interest.
A bit about equipment, I used a D7000 and an old Nikkor 18-70mm, which I bought off eBay for $65. I used to have the plastic Cokin filter system with a horrible magenta cast. Lees were so expensive me and often had months-long waitlists. Still, while processing the image, I couldn’t differentiate the shot from any that I have taken with D800 or D850 with my 70-200 or 24070 f2.8 pro lenses. Does this mean the expensive gear is a waste of money? No, it doesn’t. I had to be very careful with this equipment. The D7000 was a champ, but the 18-70 was a beaten piece of equipment, and I did not trust its focusing abilities, so manual focusing and taping the focus ring was the norm. The Cokin filters were a literal pain to use. There were countless instances were, its sharp edgest relieved my fingers off the skin. Plus, I had to be ever vigilant of light leaks because the cheap plastic got scratched up quickly and created horrible flares. The D850 and 24-70 f2.8 and breakthrough filters don’t worry me like my older setup. And that’s what expensive equipment gives you, peace of mind and a lesser chance of failure but it does not improve the quality of shots, your skillsets will do that. So don’t get discouraged if you are not using top of the line equipment, it’s the crappy equipment that will develop you as a better photographer.
I'm not overly excited about this image. It was raining pretty steadily and the dog was getting antsy, so I didn't have much time to make any good...
Thanks to all Phoide contributors to Uvas Canyon County Park!
Most notably Sandeep Thomas.