The padlock
dropped, clanking on its chain against the post. Ingrid had spun the brass
dials to a secret code and was pushing the gate open wide. She jumped in as Todd
pressed the gas peddle and led a caravan of SUVs up the steep dirt road amongst
swirling mists. Up! up! up... into the coastal prairie wonderland that is the
Jenner Headlands Preserve.
(click the images for a slideshow)
Perhaps it was a bit risky to run an evening photo tour this
time of year at the 5,360 acre property, where the Russian River and Pacific
Ocean meet. During August the inland heat draws cool ocean air inland and the possibility
of impenetrably thick fog is a daily reality. But the chances were also high that
we could use the vertiginous hillside topography to our favor, rising into the magical
transitional light just above the clouds as the sun reached the horizon.
Todd Pickering and
I were working pro-bono, leading twenty five valued members of the Sonoma Land Trust on an excursion to photograph “On The Land” as part of a membership
benefit program organized by Ingrid Spetz. It was in part due to the generous donations of members that allowed the Land Trust to purchase the land in 2009.
The acquisition
was a result of a dedicated four-year partnership between the Sonoma Land Trust, the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, and
Five other funding sources (the California Coastal Conservancy, the California Wildlife Conservation Board, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and Forest Legacy Program). The Wildlands Conservancy loaned and guaranteed loans totaling $10.6
million to insure this acquisition when funding was threatened. It is the
single largest conservation land acquisition in Sonoma County history.
In
September 2013, Sonoma Land Trust transferred the fee title of the property to
The Wildlands Conservancy to manage as a preserve governed by consensus
management decisions between TWC and Sonoma Land Trust.
Our tires crawled
up the slope out of the fog into a landscape that could be a Salvador Dali
painting. The dirt track wound through ancient grasslands, around stone
outcrops, and entered a forest of live oak, bay, fir and redwood. We parked in the
woodland and walked back down the lane toward the light. Two days earlier we
had scouted the location and determined that if the same weather persisted,
conditions high up the hill would be ideal. California weather is amazingly
reliable, and as luck would have it, the predictions were correct.
The group spread
out across the terrain as Todd and I helped people understand their
equipment and make decisions about how to portray a sense of this place. Story
telling was emphasized, because if you know what you want to communicate, many
of the technical photographic decisions needed to achieve that effect are made by
default.
Fog licked at our
feet and thin clouds stretched like wings across the sky as the sun dipped to
the west. I was immersed in the scene and looked across to see people just
standing in wonder behind their tripods, gazing at the grandeur of nature. A
thousand clicks of the shutter were heard that night, but in the end the best
images were those recorded in our memories, of a wonderful evening spent “On
The Land.”
For more information about the Sonoma Land Trust and opportunities to visit the Jenner Headlands, Please visit these sites:
Also, be sure to sign up for my mailing list in the side bar and visit my site to learn about upcoming photo workshops: http://jerrydodrill.photoshelter.com/
