“Tufa, Island, Distant Mountains” — Shoreline tufa formations, an island, and distant mountains, Mono Lake.
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.
“Lokrum Island, Adriatic Sea” — Lokrum Island and the calm Adriatic Sea at Dubrovnik, evening.
We were in Croatia for a week and a half in the summer of 2023, at the end of a ten weeks of travel in (mostly Southern) Europe. Our visit to this country began with a few days in the remarkable old walled city of Dubrovnik. Late one day I decided it was time to circumnavigate the city on the walkways along the top of the old walls that surround it. The day came to an end as I walked, and I made this photograph right around dusk.
You have probably heard of the “rules of composition.” I’m pretty sure I violated most of them, if not all, in this photograph. “Rules” is the wrong context here — that word implies that there are specific right and wrong ways to approach composition. Instead the goal should be to understand the effects of compositional choices on the mood of a photograph. Here I wanted to express the stillness and lack of dynamism in this scene, its peacefulness and quiet. I think that the almost evenly divided vertical helps with that. And I wanted a bit of a sense of mystery — hence the bit of the island intruding into the frame from the far left.
“Mono Lake and Tufa Towers” — A row of tufa towers at the shoreline of Mono Lake.
In early July I spent a few days in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, mostly photographing high country in and around the Tuolumne Meadows area of Yosemite National Park. Since I was camped just outside the park boundary and east of the crest, I managed to get down to the high desert country east of the range, too. In particular, I spent one morning photographing at Mono Lake.
These tufa towers are, of course, more or less the classic subject at the lake. On this morning they were actually more of an afterthought for me. My main subject had been long views of the lake itself, and especially those that include the distant mountains to its east and north. I started photographing that subject before sunrise and kept at it until the early morning warm light dissipated. With plenty of time on my hands, I figured I might as well take a long, lazy walk down to the shoreline where I made this photograph.
“Forest and Pond” — Trees reflected in the still water of a subalpine pond, Yosemite.
I have had my eye on this little scene for a while. The trees stand along the far bank of a small subalpine pond in the Yosemite high country. During the daytime it is a tough photograph, with the sunshine becoming almost unbearably bright. My ideal might be to photograph it before sunrise or after sunset. But this time I found myself here a bit earlier in the day — so I went ahead and made some photographs.
A challenge with scenes like this is that the dynamic contrast between the highlights on the trees and the background shadows can be huge if there is direct sunlight — too big to capture in a photograph. That’s partly why the soft light helps —before sunrise, after sunset, or when something else shades the scene. I timed this so that the trees were entirely shaded, yet nearby subjects in brighter light cast some directional light into the scene.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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