Clouds in blue sky are reflected in the surface of Gaylor Lake next to melting winter ice.
This photograph is very similar to another I made on this late June evening in 2010 when a small group of us hiked over a ridge near Tioga Pass to find a snow covered valley and this lake that was still almost completely covered with ice. The deep blue water near the edge of the melting ice along the shoreline reflected evening clouds passing overhead, and there were quite a few possible compositions combining the clouds, blue sky, curving edge of the ice and the interesting formations where the ice surface was melting. I made quite a few photographs – some up close like this one and others taking in the larger landscape. As I was recently reviewing raw files from 2010, I ended up spending quite a bit of time with this set of images!
Pools of water between sections of melting ice reflect evening clouds above Gaylor Lake, Yosemite National Park.
I continue to mine the vein of photographs from this early summer afternoon and evening visit to a lake not far from the Sierra crest at Tioga pass. In my defense I’ll point out that the conditions were variable and that I shot this subject in a number of different ways – close up views of ice and water, images that focus on the clouds, some that take in the more distant landscape of the surrounding ridges and peaks, others that focus on just the patterns of water and ice, and all shot as the light transitioned toward evening and was occasionally interrupted by clouds.
It is very unusual for me to get to visit a large lake with quite this combination of conditions. Sometimes in the early season I might encounter a lake that is still covered with ice, and later I often pass by lakes that are mostly clear but have snow banks and ice coming down to the shoreline. But in this case the lake was still covered completely in ice, but the ice was melting and creating pools of blue water on top of the remaining ice, and this water reflected the sky and passing clouds. I think the first things that might catch your attention in this photograph are the white areas of ice and the blue areas in between. But if you look a bit closer you see that the blue areas are anything but uniform. The shades of blue vary tremendously, sometimes approaching black in the shadows along the edges of the ice, spanning a range of shades in the open water, and then heading towards white in areas that reflect the clouds floating above the lake.
A forelorn branch sits near pools of reflecting water on salt flats of Death Valley National Park.
After the brief dawn light on the Panamints ended (see the photograph I posted yesterday) and the world went gray over in that direction, I noticed this odd log or branch sitting out on the mud in the salt flats between some of the ponds that streak this section of the flats. While the two minutes of beautiful color on the Panamints had ended, the increasing light was transforming what had been a fairly solid covering of gray into a transparency that revealed interesting layers and patterns of clouds in the morning sky.
I moved a bit closer and made one final sequence of Death Valley photographs before heading back to Stovepipe Wells to take down my camp and start the long drive home. I tried a couple different compositions, including some in which I was closer to the log, but in the end I prefer this one that put some distance between it and me and, I think, suggests the huge spaces that are among of the most compelling characteristics of this landscape.
Shadows cast by sodium vapor lamps shining on old turnstiles at Mare Island Naval Ship Yard.
This old row of abandoned turnstiles stands at the entrance to an alley through which we almost always walk as we begin shooting in the core area of the historic Mare Island Naval Ship Yard near Vallejo, California. It seems odd to see the structure here since now one can just walk around them, but I suspect that this area must have been somewhat secure at times since military ships were built here.
This isn’t an easy subject to photograph. Several of us were talking about how we have struggled to find a composition built around the turnstiles. I have one other photograph that I made a few years ago that I think works pretty well. In that one I aimed a bit higher and let the metal structure pretty much fill the frame, and I also ended up making it a black and white image. (It was used as a cover for a book at one point.) But on this evening a few of us were staring at the turnstiles again and remarking that there must be more photographs in there… somewhere… but that we are still trying to find them.
I thought it might be interesting to make the long and complex patterns of the shadows fill most of the frame, so I moved back just a little and pointed the camera down so that just a portion of the turnstile structure appears at the top of the frame. This also helps with a couple of technical challenges: the bright lights beyond the structure create a tremendously large dynamic range in the scene, and it can be difficult to keep some distracting background elements (like a stop sign!) out of the image. The garish yellow/orange light is from a large sodium vapor lamp that sits above the intersection on the road in the background. That coloration is part of what made me choose to make the previous photograph of this subject black and white, but on this night I decided to go with the color.
The final image is a blend of two exposures. The shorter one was selected to avoid blowing out the brightest areas in the upper part of the frame, and the longer one let me keep a bit more detail in the shadowed asphalt foreground.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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