After shooting from an elevated location here, my son and I drove to the parking lot at the official visitor area and hiked down the steep, icy path to the creek level.
There are signs posted at frequent intervals warning visitors of the scalding hot waters of the creek and to stay at least ten feet from the creek bank and from steam vents.
At about this point and westward, Hot Creek is fed by snow melt before the water enters into the portion fed by hot springs. Anglers fish the waters here and to the west. I’m guessing the fish are smart enough to turn around before getting into the scalding hot water area.
I stopped to photograph this lone, bent tree with the mist from the hot water behind it as I was hiking back up the trail to the parking lot. This image, which I almost neglected to even process, was chosen for Flickr’s Explore Page May 30, 2024.
At an earlier sunset shoot in Alabama Hills, we encountered another photographer who told us about Hot Creek Geothermal Area, showing us an alluring photo. Hot Creek Geothermal area was about an hour and a half drive north of our location. We decided to make the drive to scout the area. We were impressed with the scene, but thought it was maybe too much of a time consuming drive for the limited photographic possibilities. Yet, we did return early one morning to shoot at sunrise.
It was a cold morning with temperature at 23 DF, when we arrived at our destination. As is the usual case, the scene was magnificent, but compositions were still a challenge. How much to include, how much to exclude for the most impactful image?
Hot Creek Geothermal Area
Being the big picture person that I am, I nearly always begin with including as much as possible in an image. We were shooting from an overlook above the creek with lots of busy foreground and, if zoomed wide enough, one could include parking lots, restrooms and other structures in the area above the creek. Some of my initial images included too much of these distractions and I realized that I needed to simplify the images.
The mountain range extended to the south and to the north and it was temping to include much of that range, especially as the light changed along the range as the morning progressed.
I began to exclude some of the immediate foreground of the elevated location and the buildings to the south (left of the images), then I had to decide how much to include to the north (right side of images).
As the sun rose and the mountain peaks began to be illuminated, I adjusted my compositions to include more of the sunlit peaks.
I have numerous images from this location, some with more of the mountains to the south and/or north, some with more foreground, some with the creek positioned at various points in the foreground, but I think this last one might be the most impactful and most simplified capture, with the creek snaking through from the bottom towards the most prominent peak, sunlight reflected in the creek and mist rising from the hot water into the cold air. By the time this image was made, the sun was well up and the entire mountain in the background was illuminated by the early morning light.
I think this pre-sunrise shot is the best that I got this morning. It is very similar to a composition I made the previous evening, except the evening sky was heavy with clouds, while it was almost totally clear this morning.
A sliver of Owens Lake is visible on the horizon. Owens Lake is listed as a “dry” lake, but recent heavy rains over the past two years have resulted in shallow water in the lake.
Sunrise light on the Sierra Nevada Mountains as seen through a gap in rocks in Alabama Hills, California. I had to resort to an HDR for this image, as a the exposure was difficult.
Alabama Hills and Sierra Nevada, March 19, 2024Alabama Hills and Sierra Nevada, March 19, 2024Early Morning Light and Shadows, Alabama Hills, California, March 19, 2024
Other than the first image in this post, I was not happy with other images from this morning’s shoot. As I was giving up and retreating down this area, I suddenly noted that the rocks around me were glowing as the early morning sunlight finally began to impinge upon some of the rocks around me. I made this last image to capture a little of that golden hour light.
For our sunset shoot on March 18, 2024, my son and I hike up a steep hillside near a feature known as The Eye of Alabama Hills. (I only have iPhone images from exploring around the Eye, which might be included in another post later).
It was a cloudy evening, which is both good and bad for photography. Good in having an interesting sky, bad for getting the best golden hour light on landscape features.
As I’ve said many times, early morning landscape photography is the best for a number of reason, but especially for being alone on location. Most casual tourists and visitors to a popular location, seldom get out and about in the early morning hours, so we seldom have to worry about people popping into our shots.
Shooting from the rounded rocks in front of the arch, made using a tripod very difficult for getting down low, so I ended up shooting hand held, using a higher ISO to get my shutter speed high enough to counter my hand shake.
I shot many images at this location today and could include more, but these are representative of the morning’s scene. Having those magnificent, early morning clouds was a bonus for shooting today.
This arch is so named because it is supposed to look like a boot. Maybe the base looks a little like a boot, but I’m not quite seeing this strongly enough to have it so named.
I can partly see the naming of this arch, but I’m thinking another name like “Lobster” or “Crayfish” might be more suitable, especially when other view points are considered.
Upon arriving at the Mobius Arch, we began to work around it checking out various photographic compositions. I suspect every possible view point of this arch has been photographed many times in all sorts of weather conditions, so the prospect of achieving any unique photo here is remote at best.
Note: After migration of my blog site to another hosting provider, there are ongoing problems with the migration. I am finding (hopefully) temporary work arounds, so that I can resume posting, until a permanent fix for the website problems are found.
I began to realize early in this scouting outing that photographing the scenes here would be more challenging than I had anticipated. The scenery was spectacular, but the foreground tended to be so immense and dominant as to become a distraction for letting the eye get past it into the rest of the photo. And those mountains! The Sierra Nevada mountains were domineering as background, seemingly demanding to be included in every shot. As a result, I’m not overly pleased with many of my photos, even those that I choose to present here.
The images in this post have embedded links that will take the reader to that image in my WordPress Image Library. The photo captions are links that will take the reader to that photo on my Flickr page.
This spring’s photography trip was to Alabama Hills, California. This was a long trip and some thought was given to flying into Las Vegas, renting a 4 wheel drive vehicle and driving from there; but in the end, my oldest son and I, felt more comfortable with one of our own 4 WD vehicles, which meant a long road trip, especially for me since I first had to drive from Texas to Colorado by myself, then we would travel together to California.
March weather is always uncertain and can be a challenge for travel and planning. This year was no exception. Prior to my departure from Texas, a strong spring storm was forecast, so I left Texas a day earlier than planned to avoid the worst of the expected storm. Still, in portions of Colorado, I drove through intermittent rain, sleet and snow.
That first night in Colorado the storm dumped heavy snows across Colorado, especially in the mountains. I-70, our route over the mountains was closed and we were not at all sure that we would be able to keep our scheduled departure date; but we got lucky, I-70 opened to all but commercial truck traffic just in time. There was heavy, slow traffic along long sections of I-70 and slushy, snow packed intervals, sometimes with only one lane open.
The Western Slope of the Rockies was clear and we were able to drive much faster into Utah. Still we kept seeing warnings of an expected storm along our route and we did drive through some heavy snow before reaching our first stop over destination.
Even though, I’ve traveled portions of I-70 and I-15 west of Grand Junction, Colorado numerous times, I always seem to forget how beautiful and varied the scenery is along this route. This is another reason, I prefer highway travel to air travel. So much is missed in route, when in an airplane.
Our route to Alabama Hills took us through a portion of Death Valley, which is another of our favorite places. In one of the broad valleys between mountain ranges the land was covered in yellow flowers, no doubt due to the heavy rains in this area this year.
We had motel reservations in Lone Pine, California and would stay there for a number of days. Lone Pine sits between two portions of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. There was snow on the mountains and those mountains are beautiful.
We went into Alabama Hills, which is a few miles outside Lone Pine, and did mostly scouting the first morning here, since we did not know the area and had no fixed destination in mind for early morning photography.
Alabama Hills, California, March 17, 2024
The Sierra Nevada mountains dominate the background here and it seemed impelling to include those mountains in our photos.
Alabama Hills and Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, March 17, 2024
Perhaps, one of the most interesting and most photographed rock features here is the Mobius Arch. So we parked in the parking space at the loop trail to that arch and set out to explore the area.
Heart Arch, Alabama Hills, California, March 17, 2024
The Heart Arch is visible from some distance and the Mobius Arch Trail goes past it.
Alabama Hills, -Shadows, Light, Mountains and Clouds – California, March 17, 2024
For those of us old enough, these scenes might jar some early childhood memories of early western movies and TV series. Over 400 movies have been filmed in this area, beginning with the silent movie era and continuing into recent times. I well remember some of those early westerns, like Hop along Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Gene Autry, Have Gun Will Travel, The Rifleman, Wanted – Dead or Alive and many others. More recent movies include Django Unchained and The Gladiator.
The movie museum in Lone Pine is well worth a visit for anyone passing through.
More information about Alabama Hills and how it became known as “Alabama Hills” is found here
Sunset light fades away on the peaks. I’m so grateful for the natural lines and textures in the amazing geology and natural sculpture here, without which the photographs would not be nearly so interesting.
Peak Gold 2
With a cache of fallen rocks in the eroded portion below the peak.
Getting the Shot
I could have yelled at this photographer for intruding into my composition, but I think he adds to the theme of photographing the geology here, as well as giving a human scale for reference.
Regular followers of this blog might recall that in an earlier post about this final sunset shoot I made a statement about thinking that there must be a better composition in the area where I made an early shot before sunset. Well, there was. I came back to that area, as the sun was very low in the sky, where I shot some of the images above. As I moved around the area, I found rocks that made very interesting foreground objects. These last three images are my best (I think) images from that location.
The Cast 1
The rocks of Valley of Fire are the stars of this series, so it seem appropriate to name these last photos for those rocks.
The Cast 2The Cast – Final Bow
Thanks for following this long series of blogs with photos from Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada.
