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.
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.
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.
Texas is famous for its spring wildflower season. It starts in the south in March and progresses northward as the weather warms. Here in northeastern Texas, the season usually arrives in April with flowers peaking around the middle of April.
This spring has been warmer than normal (if normal is even a thing anymore, due to climate change) and the wildflowers began to show up in late March and peaked well before the middle of April.
Some years, my schedule causes me to miss the best portion of the wildflower season here, but this year, I took time to get out on several occasions to view and photograph the wildflowers.
The Bluebonnet is the Texas state wildflower and these abound in the spring in fields and along highway medians and borders. There are many other wildflower varieties, with the Indian Paintbrush, being maybe the second most prevalent in many locations. I’m more partial to the paintbrush for its color and shape. So even in masses of bluebonnets, I am drawn to the paintbrush.
The mass of tall yellow wildflowers (mostly cropped out of this image) at the top of the image above is an invasive Mediterranean species that is threatening to crowd out native wildflowers.
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.
