Wine Country

My wife and I spent a few days last week in wine country, visiting Napa and Sonoma Valley for 5 days. It was a non-photographic trip, mainly a quick getaway to escape the Florida heat, enjoy some good food and wine. The weather, although very nice, was not conducive to a lot of photography anyway; I didn't bring much equipment and didn't do any research ahead of time. Every morning was completely overcast and foggy, until the late morning when the cloud cover gave way to very harsh sunlight. There were no epic sunrises or sunsets. After a couple of days I did notice that for a few moments during the transition from clouds to sun there was some really nice diffuse light, usually around 9:30 in the morning. Seizing this brief opportunity, when I noticed the clouds starting to lift, I quickly found a composition and set up (for a couple of these I had to set up my tripod on the roof of the rental car to get a higher perspective --- a sight, I'm sure, for the passers-by). These images were captured with my 5DII, 24-70 lens with my SinghRay circular warming polarizer. The lighting circumstances really made the greens pop, and the vineyards gave some nice lines to the hills in the distance.


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