Southern California Foliage

Today was the first good storm of the rainy/winter season here in Southern California. Since rain happens so infrequently here, I decided to take advantage of the ideal bad, wet, and chilly weather and head out east towards the mountains in San Diego county.

Now, I had a few things in mind, when I headed out the door today, to do some photography. One, the wet weather gives a change of the usual scenery. Two, I was hoping for a little bit of snow, at around the 4,000 ft level. Three, I was hoping that there might be still some fall color out there. Four, I was hoping for some mixture of fall color and perhaps a dusting of snow. Lastly, the wet weather is a nice natural saturation brush from Mother Nature. When it is cloudy and wet, just a tad of light will really make colors pop.

This photo was taken right below a bridge/overpass about 5 miles off I-8, along Buckman Springs Road, heading out towards Campo. There was a nice grouping of fall colors around this bridge area. I remember there use to be a stream along here years ago. But, the lack of rainfall has dried this stream out. Now, it is commonly used as a bridle path (horse path). The good thing is that it makes it much easier to walk down there and find a good composition.

I am guessing the split tree which dominates this photo is some sort of willow tree. There are other trees in the background intertwined in the scene. I composed it not only so the tilted tree would finish in the upper right, but I also made sure that I had some nice background trees filling in the right side, along with the dried-up grass, which when wet, is really golden yellow. This was taken in between some rain showers.