I have been on two Sierra Nevada backpack trips during the past month… with very different photographic results. The first trip was a six-day visit to the Ediza Lake/Thousand Island Lake area near Mammoth, California. I came back from this trip with a bunch of photographs that I think are very successful – both from the pack trip itself and from a pre-trip visit to Mono Lake. I just returned yesterday from the second trip, a week-long adventure in the highest portion of the southern Sierra Nevada during which we crossed three spectacular 12,000’+ passes – but I didn’t have nearly the photographic success on this trip.

What could explain the difference between the outcomes of the two trips? Probably quite a few things – here’s a short list:

• The nature of the trips – On the first trip we stayed in the same place for as long as three days at a time, providing lots of time to learn the area a bit more thoroughly. On the second trip we moved every day, and some of the days were quite rough. On day three of the trip we travelled cross-country (e.g. – no trail) across a class two 12,600′ pass. The best early morning hours were often spent getting up and onto the trail, and we were tired enough in the evenings that crawling into the sleeping bag was a more attractive proposition than doing photography.
• The weather – On the first trip the clouds built up every day, leading to afternoon thunderstorms on more than half of them. In fact, on several days the clouds had already appeared by dawn. On the second trip we experienced a full week of nearly “perfect” (in the backpacking sense) weather with hardly a cloud to be seen. While the second trip’s weather was arguably better for backpacking, it was not nearly as interesting for photography.
• The terrain and conditions – The timing of the first trip was fortuitous; we hit the peak of this summer’s meager Sierra greenery and flowers east of the Minarets. Two weeks later, much of the spectacular country we traveled though on the second trip was extremely dry and brown. In addition, while traveling over high passes is indeed a spectacular thing, I find them difficult to shoot during the middle of the day, the time when we tended to make our crossings.
• The company – My companions on the first trip were my photographer brother and his family. It was easy (unavoidable, actually! :-) to include photography as an integral part of the trip. My companions on the second trip were the talusdancers, a group of friends who backpack the Sierra together every summer. The main focus of the latter trip was travel through the mountains, not photography.
• Imponderables – Sometimes everything looks like a potential photograph… and sometimes it doesn’t – you either are thinking photographically or you aren’t For whatever reasons, sometimes the mind and the eye seem fully engaged in seeking out photographic images – and at other times it just isn’t happening. It wasn’t happening nearly as often on the second trip as on the first.

All of this is a reflection on the fact that I probably came back from the recent trip with no more than a half dozen – if that – photographs that really “do it” for me. On one level this is a bit disappointing. However, I’ve learned that not every trip produces a ton of great images, and that even the trips that aren’t immediately successful may lead to something more successful in the future.

Besides, it was a great pack trip!