Laguna Beach – Valido Trail

With Booker taking up a ton of time and energy, we’ve been appreciating our local outdoors a lot. Valido Trail, located in Laguna Beach, is a short ~1mi hike with amazing views of the ocean and the city below.

The Ascent

Parking at the trail is a little tricky. It’s in a cramped neighborhood, and the entrance isn’t marked well. Once finding it, there’s no kidding around either. The ascent starts off steep and gets the blood pumping. In addition, the narrow path makes it harder to maneuver around other people. Nevertheless, it’s a really fun hike and has some interesting foliage. When I went, I tested my (then) new Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 75-300mm F/4.8-6.7 II and Olympus M.Zuiko ED Zoom 12‑40mm F/2.8 Pro lenses. That’s why some of my camera settings might seem a little odd.

I’m not entirely sure what the plant is in the following image on the left. It reminded me of a caterpillar, and I love caterpillars. I had to stop down to f/5.6 to get the full caterpillar-like plant in focus. In the right image, I shot some wheat (I think that’s wheat?) against a nice blue sky with some clouds.

• 

• 

Top of Valido Trail

Here’s an overhead view of Valido Trail from a little further back. I like how you can see the path winding, then splitting into two. The left path is flatter and has some good views. However, the right path, in my opinion, has the better view. I’ll have another post on framing leading lines to guide the viewer through an image in a later post. As an example, when looking at the following image, your eyes might start at the bottom, then follow the trail away from you, towards the ocean. It’s a neat little compositional trick.

After taking the right path, the incline led us to the following view. To frame the shot, I used the Rule of Thirds and a bit of zooming to put the horizon in the upper third of the frame, and the city in the bottom third. I really like the small boat you can see in the distance, as it adds a nice component to the otherwise featureless water.

And here’s a zoomed-in view of the city:

A swallowtail butterfly teased me at the summit. It flew around and only landed for a second or two, without giving me time to change lenses and get a good shot. Therefore, I stuck with my telephoto lens and finally got really lucky to get the following shot of the butterfly with the wings spread wide.

And here’s a lone bench at the summit of Valido Trail:

One of the unique things about shooting on this particular day was the cloud cover. As you can see in the following panoramic image, the clouds covered the sun on the left. Meanwhile, on the right, the clouds were scarce. This led to a very contrasting view of the Pacific Ocean. The water appears grey on the left, but deep blue on the right. I really like how this shot turned out.

History Postponed

Although I normally end these posts with a bit of history, I’m saving it for another post. Valido Trail is part of the Aliso and Wood Canyons Wilderness Park, which has a pretty interesting history. However, most of the history relates to other parts of the park, so I’ll write about it when I show you some images from those areas.

As always, comments, questions, and feedback are welcome!