Because I am often the one who brings several bottles of wine to an event, people ask if I am a wine connoisseur. I tell them if you put my knowledge about wine together with my wife’s taste buds, we may be able to make one. I like the history, complexity, and diversity wine – the intellectual part of it intrigues me a lot. My wife doesn’t care to learn about it, but can tell the difference between numerous wines and describe them accurately. Plus she can hold her liquor much better than I can. A big plus after visiting Napa and we need to make the drive home with her at the steering wheel.
Sensor: Canon 6D
Location: Napa Valley, CA
We drive up to Napa many times during the year, but I have yet to seriously take a number of photos. I try to look for something really great and unique, but just can’t seem to find many if any. Perhaps I need to spend a few days there and seriously explore and be there at sunrise and sunset, but since we live only about a couple of hours away we rarely stay overnight, much less a few days.
The photo above is a close as I’ve gotten. It was taken early in the year before the grapes started growing and the mustard flowers were out littering the meadows out there. I took this shot off of Silverado trail and ventured a little further into a vineyard than the fence surrounding it would have wanted. But it was necessary to get the right glow of dusk and the light hitting the mustard flowers just right.
I took the photo at: 100 ISO, 35mm prime, f 5.6, 1/50 sec
Sensor: Canon 6D
Location: Napa Valley, CA
The photo above was taken in one of the long vast corridors of the wine cave at the Far Niente winery. It probably doesn’t have the character and history of the those in France and Italy, but it is one of the older caves in California at about 125 years old. For New World wines, that’s pretty old. I tried to take one of these last year, but never brought my tripod. This time I remembered and brought my whole pack. I set my camera up, resting it on a barrel and shot at:
100 ISO, 24mm, f9, 15 sec
I didn’t take that many shots. After all, every second I spent down here, was a second not drinking the over 20 varieties of wine they were serving.
