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.
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.
