I started out at the riverbank, which always seems to be a good place. At least, it is on any other day! Apparently there was some blues concert going on, and the entire area was closed to the "public"! It was $15 to get in, and I was more in the mood to take pictures, not pay to take pictures.
At any rate, I decided to walk across the bridge and see if there was at least a view of the city from that side. NO! While Sacramento has a skyline, West Sacramento does not, other than the old Money Store building, and that's where the concert was being held.
I walked back across the bridge and decided to drive around. Close to where I was at, they've been building these odd condos that remind me of San Francisco in a way, and I saw a guy taking pictures. Ah yes, the competition.
I drove down by the high school and walked around a bit. There were some flowers down there with some pollenating bees, so I took a few pictures... once again, my poor lens doesn't do macro very well so that was a washout. No big deal, I guess.
I walked down the road a bit to the soccer field, where a city team was playing. Now this, I could work with!
After they finished playing, I talked to them about permission to use the images. Not only were they all for it, but the referee said, "Listen, what you should do is come back with the pictures and sell them to the guys for $5 apiece." I told him it was a good idea, but of course I'm not going to do it. :)
When their game was over, I went back down by the high school, which is directly across from the levee that protects the town from the river. I decided to take a walk over there to see what I could find.
I heard blues music coming from the north, but the blues concert I had run into earlier was the south. When I got to the river, there was some private party going on on some marina across from me. I wasn't able to take pictures because of the amount of trees and lack of riverbed.
I walked back and there was a large tree stump. I thought it'd be perfect for a backlit shot.
I'm not entirely happy with it, though, since the ground is so much darker than the upper portion. I probably won't use it for NYIP Unit 3.
I noticed some birds that kept flying back and forth, so I decided to wait it out for a little while. This was a good idea.
The bird's beak is obvious in the second shot, but in this small scan it's hard to see. I also wish I had either a longer lens or an extension tube! Oh well.
With my light quickly disappearing, and the opportunity for a nighttime Sacramento cityscape quickly approching, I took one last picture in this location... a silly self-portrait.
After leaving the levee, I headed to the other side of town, and quite a ways downstream, where Sacramento is visible. I was hoping for a nice shot from the West Sacramento side of the river, looking downstream at the city, reflected into the river. I spent a good 2 hours walking alongside the river, but realized that with the water being high after the recent rains, there's no riverbed any longer! It's all underwater, including the bottoms of the trees. The closest I was able to get to the water was still behind the trees, so there was virtually no view of Sacramento to take pictures of.
I also reached an impasse about a mile downstream from the Tower Bridge, so I headed back. When I was almost at the bridge, someone stopped me, asking me if I was aware of the fact that it was a high explosive area. NO, I was not! He asked me where I was headed, and I said well, back where I came from, and pointed. He said no, because they were about to light off a fireworks display for the Rivercats game, and could I please leave a different way. He pointed out that different way, and I went on my merry way.
Still... fireworks. Yeah, fireworks!!! I spent another 30 to 40 minutes trying to get a good spot to get both the Tower Bridge and the fireworks in the same shot. I didn't think I could get a picture of the stadium, since the lights were so bright. Later, I found out they turn off all those lights when the fireworks go off, but that's neither here nor there.
At 10:30pm, the stadium crowd counted down for the fireworks to go off.
Not the greatest location, to be sure, I had to zoom out to 28mm in order to get both in the shot. I did, however, get the shot, and that's the important thing, right? I'm going to try and get a better vantage point again sometime, now that I know they have these displays for the games.
My Saturday came to a close and I headed home. I'm still going to take some more pictures of West Sacramento, since the deadline for the contest is 5pm on May 15th. Still, out of these pictures, I think the second soccer image will be the one I enter. I'd love to say I was going to enter the fireworks, but they're just too far from the bridge. The next time, I'm going to try and get the bridge larger in the frame and the fireworks visible BEHIND it. We'll see.
