My son and I ventured back north of Lone Pine, California to explore more natural sites along US Highway 395. Our first stop was Mono Lake.
I have seen photographs of the tufa in Mono Lake and looked forward to seeing these. While the history of this lake and the science behind the natural creation of the tufa deposits are interesting, we were a bit disappointed in the photogenic appeal of the area; but we were not there at the best time for photography, which might have been the primary reason for our disappointment.
We hiked the loop from the parking lot to the lake twice. I used my 24-70mm lens during the first round, then switched to my 80-400mm with a 1.4 extension for the second round. The photos included in my posts are a mix of images made with those two lenses.
Of course, I made a few shots during our little hike, scouting the area for possible sunrise or sunset shoots, but the two in this post are the only ones that I deemed presentable.
Shooting from another point of view, I thought it would make no difference which way one turned at the T, as either way would let one see more of the awesome geology of this area.
Standing in the shadow of the massive rocks behind me, I watched as the early morning sun began to highlight the top of the rock features in front of me.
I wandered back through and over rocks and boulders to the place of my initial shots this morning. I climbed onto a massive rock and made one last image, wrapping up this sunrise shoot.
After shooting from behind these rock features, I began to wander around the area, looking for other photo possibilities, but you will have to come back again to see how that search turned out.
After our morning shoot at the Hot Creek Geothermal Area, we returned to Alabama Hills, with no clue about where to shoot at sunset. So we drove around looking for someplace inspiring our imagination. We failed with the inspiration and finally settled upon the location for the movie Gunga Din, simply because we had no more time to scout around.
There are still a few remnants from the movie set, where a bridge had been constructed over a ravine.
Gear
I don’t know how these gears were used, but there were at least a couple of these embedded in or near the roadway.
Abutments?
There were some concrete items, which I assume were anchors for the bridge, in some of the rocks near the roadway.
I wandered around the area looking for potential sunset shots, finding little inspiration, but I did get a few images that I liked.
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.
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.
My home was in the path of the total solar eclipse of April 8, 2024. Spring weather here is often unsettled and this year is no different. I watched the weather forecast day by day as the date for the eclipse approached. The forecast consistently predicted cloudy, rainy weather for April 8, although with some variation. There was considerable uncertainty about whether the eclipse would be visible or not and I feared my son, who planned to fly in to photograph the eclipse, would have wasted his time and money flying into Dallas for this event.
April 8th arrived and it was heavily overcast. The cloud cover was widespread, so there was no viable option for quickly getting to any other location with any expectation of having any better weather. So we set up our tripods and cameras in my backyard and hoped for the best. As the time for the eclipse to begin approached, we could not even tell exactly where the sun was in the sky. The cloud cover was moving and we occasionally got breaks that allowed us to spot the sun and at least aim our cameras.
As the eclipse began, there were intermittent brief periods of breaks in the clouds and we shot whenever possible.
I was not able to capture the beginning due to the cloud cover, but got shots whenever the clouds thinned sufficiently to see the sun and find the sun in the camera’s LCD screen. I used Live View touch focus on my D850 with a Nikon 400mm lens and a 1.4 Nikon Extender.
My solar filter took all of the color out of the sun, so I converted a number of my images to black and white. I think the thin cloud cover added interest to these images. Otherwise, there would be only a bright object and a dark sky. I captured a couple of sun spots with one easily visible in the image above.
The total eclipse was much more awesome than I had expected. Viewing this event through my eclipse glasses was so enthralling, that I did not do the best job of photographing the event. I needed to adjust camera settings more quickly, but in the excitement of the moment, I was not thinking clearly or quickly. As a consequence, I did not capture the most amazing part of this eclipse very well. I was really surprised to see those little pink flares of the solar prominence.
As totality continued, a flare of light began to emerge at one point around the circumference, that I’m informed is sunlight passing through valleys on the moon’s surface.
By the time the eclipse ended, the sky was nearly completely clear over a large area around the sun and moon. Yet, I still think, in spite of the tension, uncertainty and missing portions of the eclipse due to the cloud cover, the clouds still added interest to these images, when they were thin enough to allow viewing of the eclipse.
This experience makes we want to witness another such eclipse, but to do so in my lifetime, I will have to travel out of the country. Something to ponder.
This is a continuation of photography in my local area during the Texas spring wildflower season. I photographed handholding my camera with the usual Texas wind moving the flowers around. I tried to use a sufficiently high shutter speed to freeze the wind induced motion and my hand shake, shooting in burst mode, hoping to get useable images. This resulted in many images to sort through and many that I had to pass over. Even so, some of the images that I elected to process and present publicly, are not entirely satisfactory.
When I was a very young, my playmates and I smashed these “Buttercups” into each others noses, covering them with yellow pollen. It is fortunate, none of us had severe allergies.
