This is a different view of Mono Lake than most people see. Most often it is viewed and photographed from the shoreline near the west side of the lake, often in areas with the famous tufa towers. To make this photograph I went south of the lake and up to a mountain ridge — high enough to no longer really be part of the sage brush basin and range terrain.
Continue reading Mono Lake, Paoha Island
This view looks roughly north across the expanse of Mono Lake and Mono Basin. The foreground formations are tufa towers, exposed as the lake’s level dropped decades ago when Los Angeles began taking the water from feeder streams. The main body of the lake lies beyond the tufa. What appears to be the far shoreline is actually Paoha Island, a volcanic feature. In the far distance are desert mountains of the basin and range country.
I knew some history about the fights over Mono Lake’s water, but I learned something new on this visit. A few decades ago Los Angeles Water and Power bought out water rights up and down the Eastern Sierra, drastically changing the environment — and in places turning former lakes into dusty wastelands. This taking dropped the level of Mono Lake by many feet (it was too late for Tule Lake in Owen’s Valley) until court orders and regulations forced an agreement that LA would begin to protect the watershed, with a goal of eventually restoring the lake to a level closer to its historic level. I thought that serious progress had been made… but decades later the lake’s level is still dangerously low.
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
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
(All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.)
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.
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.
Part of the challenge of photographing a familiar subject is finding a different perspective on it. This is especially true with “iconic” subjects that everyone has seen, and which we know by way of familiar views. If you think about any famous place you can probably visualize the scenes I’m thinking of — familiar views of familiar things. (I’m not against them. In fact, it is an interesting challenge to try to make those views different.) There are several familiar approaches to photographing Mono Lake. Yes, I’ve done them, too!
But this is not one of those familiar views. For one thing, the camera position here is not one that most people visiting the lake would think of or even know about. It is a pretty good distance from the lake — in fact the photograph was made with a very long lens. It is also elevated, up in mountains where sage meets aspens. I photographed in the early morning on a clear day, when the low morning sunlight was angling across the landscape from the right.
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.
Join the discussion — leave a comment or question. (Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Links in comments may be removed.)