Tag Archives: mono

Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Tufa Tower, Lake, Blue Mountains

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Tufa Tower, Lake, Blue Mountains
“Tufa Tower, Lake, Blue Mountains” — Mono Lake, a solitary tufa tower, and distant blue mountains in morning haze.

It is always a pleasure to visit the Mono Basin and its namesake lake, especially in the early morning when it is often still and quiet. I was there last week, dropping down one morning from a camp high up near the Sierra Crest. When I arrived I saw only one other car, and ts occupant was nowhere to be seen — it was as if I had the entire basin to myself!

I arrived well before sunrise and continued photographing right into the blue light of early morning. It was calm and the water reflected the blue of sky and distant mountains. I used a long lens to focus on a small section of those mountains, aligning them with a single tufa tower far out in the water.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

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Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Mono Lake, Morning

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Mono Lake, Morning
“Mono Lake, Morning” — Pahoa and Negit islands silhouetted against early morning lake reflections with desert mountains in the distance.

I have shared a few other Mono Lake photos made at this elevated location some distance from the lake. This camera position gives a different and broader sense of the lake and its surroundings. It is a huge body of water — there’s far more water on the far side of the islands than between them and the near shore. The desert mountains are many miles beyond the far edge of the lake. All in all, Mono Basin is a place of immense space and great distances.

I photographed very early in the morning. I had gone to this location to photograph something else, but by turning my camera 180 degrees the lake was in the frame. It was a generally clear morning with some high clouds, but the great distances still turned the atmosphere a bit blue with haze, and that haze mutes the details of the distant basin and mountains.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Burned Pines, Mono Basin

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Burned Ponderosa Pines, Mono Basin
“Burned Pines, Mono Basin” — Burned trees near the end of a giant pine forest, Mono Basin.

This desolate scene is along the fringes of Mono Basin, the large valley holding Mono Lake. It is just east of the Sierra Nevada, but it is a very “un-Sierra-like” place, being dry sagebrush country for the most part. The photograph looks past a sparse forest of dead snags and in the direction of Mono Lake itself.

There is a vast pine forest near here, stretching over nearby mountains toward Mono Lake. Most of it appears to be quite healthy, and it features open forest with space between the trees and lots of light. However, at some point in the past a wildfire swept through part of it and left behind many dead trees, including these that used to make the very edge of the forest.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Instagram | Flickr | Facebook | Threads | Post | Email

Links: Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Info.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Sunset Storm, Mono Lake

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Sunset Storm, Mono Lake
“Sunset Storm, Mono Lake” — An evening storm moves over Mono Lake at sunset.

Occasionally nature throws some light at me that seems just plain unreal — effects so unusual that even I start to doubt what I saw. Often this happens at sunset or sunrise when the conditions align just right, as they did on this evening. It had been cloudy and raining, and there was still moisture in the air as the clouds began to break up in the north and west. As that happened, colorful sunset light came in over the Sierra crest and illuminated the clouds from within.

I had anticipated that something interesting might happen on this evening, but this intensely colorful light took me by surprise. In the photograph we look at and across Mono Lake from a high point to the southwest of the lake, right into the brilliantly colored clouds to the north.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

Blog | About | Instagram | Flickr | Facebook | Threads | Post | Email

Links: Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Info.

Scroll down to share comments or questions. (Click post title first if viewing on the home page.)

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.