Clear Sky Over Humboldt Bay

Olympus, Hasselblad, and Ken-Labs at 11,000 feet

Along the North Coast of California, skies do not get much clearer than this. From about 11,000 feet , Mount Shasta pokes over the horizon like a snow cone between the Marble Mountains and Trinity Alps. Distance to Mt Shasta from our coastal vantage point looking across Humboldt Bay and Eureka is about 120 miles

Ten-minute flight over Humboldt Bay extends to two hours

All I needed last week was a quick 10 minute flight for the first in a series of monthly construction photographs to be taken from about 1200 feet altitude. The site was so close to Eureka's Murray Field that we were barely at altitude as my pilot set up the steep bank for an almost vertical oblique photograph. Mission accomplished, we marveled at the clarity of the air, just scrubbed clean by two inches of rain the day before.

"What better way to already start spending the expected profits for a 31 month project?" I thought. Some additional flight hours won't break the bank.

"Let's take 'er up a ways, " I said over the intercom to BIll, my pilot, "and see just how clear it is today." The Cessna 172 did not climb at quite the rate of the F-86 Sabre jet that Bill flew a few years back, but the beefed up engine gave us a steady climb closer to a 182. As the view unfolded, we weren't in a hurry anyway.

As we climbed above 5000 feet, Mount Shasta began to poke over the horizon in all its snow-clad glory, fresh-fallen from the same storm that had washed our air so clean. Just three weeks before, Bill and I had flown to Redding, CA, 58 miles south of Mt Shasta, when it was a brown peak with hardly a trace of white.

I used the Olympus camera for the earlier 1200' commercial photograph and had the Leica Vario APO 70-180mm f2.8 lens along for the E-330, but the clear skies made for more of a wide-angle day. I was especially grateful to have a Hasselblad H1 16-megapixel camera with 50mm lens and a Ken-Labs K-6 gyro stabilizer along for the ride.

Waves are breaking within the entrance to Humboldt Bay from about ten foot seas left over from the storm that cleared the air so well. The little community of King Salmon at upper left bears the brunt of really big storm waves.

The Eel River dumps fresh sediment into the Pacific. The two inches of rain that fell is nothing compared to winter North Coast storms that have filled the entire green delta above. At flood, the Eel River carries as much sediment as the Mississippi.

Olympus E-330, 14-54 f2.8/3.5 ISO200 1/500 f5.0 at 14mm, -0.3ev, RAW capture.

The white spots in the green fields are large dairy barns, giving some perspective to the size of the Eel River at its mouth.

Olympus E-330, 14-54 1/640, f5.0, 14-54 f2.8/3.5 at 45mm, -0.3ev, RAW capture.

Ocean currents carry sediment north and create some interesting banding effects along the shoreline by Table Bluff. The white shapes on the bluff are large buildings from a retired Coast Guard station, now known as the Light House Ranch, where I lived when I first showed up on the North Coast in 1971.

Olympus E-330, 14-54 1/500, f5.0, 14-54 f2.8/3.5 at 14mm, -0.3ev, RAW capture.

The Elk River in a green valley and the wooded Humboldt Hill just to the right are directly across from the bay entrance. The old-growth Headwaters Forest is directly up the valley in the horseshoe shaped watershed defined by ridges of tall Redwoods.

The channels of the South Bay show clearly at low tide, while large waves diffract into circle patterns inside Humboldt Bay entrance.

Hasselblad H1, 50mmf3.5, Kodak DCS Pro Back 645, 16 megapixel, B+W Multicoated Polarizer filter, Ken-Labs K6 gyro stabilizer, 1/750th, f4.8, Aperture Priority, ISO100, RAW capture to .DCR file

Below, a tighter crop shows how the diffracted wave patterns hit the straight line of the railroad dike at left and reflect back smaller curved waves.

From 10,000 feet and looking southwest into the sun, a polarizing filter keeps reflections down to show a Pacific quilt of blue and green.

Olympus E-330, 14-54 1/1600, f5.0, 14-54 f2.8/3.5 at 37mm, ISO200, -0.3ev, RAW capture.

[[ March 2008 Note: The above photograph won the "Judges Choice" award from the 120 prints submitted at the Professional Aerial Photographers Association conference in Redondo Beach California. See last photo on the PAPA 2008 awards page. ]]