I previously shared another photograph made from this same vantage point. That photograph is more tightly cropped and does not include sky. By using a somewhat shorter focal length I was able to include a bit more of the forest at lower left and the rising ridge at the right, though these choices required me to include the sky in the frame.
Continue reading Lake, Forest, and Ridges
This was a slow, quiet Sierra morning. I had set up camp at Tuolumne Meadows the night before, and this was my first early outing of the trip. I headed up Tioga Road before sunrise and decided to cross the pass and visit some favorite areas on the east side of the crest. I started by going up high where I could photograph sunrise light on the highest peaks. After finishing that — and poking around a few interesting nearby spots — I decided to head back down the way I had come.
Continue reading Trees and Peak
My landscape photography often involves what might be described as hunting. I look for the potential of good light conditions and for locations with subject and compositional promise and then I… hunt. I wander, I go with hunches. I use what I know about light and terrain — but often I very much do not set out with a specific photograph in mind. This photograph was not made that way.
Continue reading Tuolumne Meadows, Evening
Mono Basin is a fine place to contemplate geology and immense spans of time. Mono Lake itself is an ancient body of water, and one that has not always looked like it does today. The lake is probably 3/4 of a million years old, and its ancestor lake was, at times, much deeper and larger than it is today. At times its waters rose high enough to overcome its current landlocked state and drain either north or south. (To really bend your mind, its waters may have drained to ancient Lake Manly in Death Valley.) Today, as large as the lake is, it is greatly diminished in size and depth by comparison.
Continue reading Early Light, Mono Craters