Posts Tagged Eastern Sierra
Cloudless morning, Mono Lake
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on August 18, 2010
Last week I spent a few days in the Eastern Sierra. My son leaves for the Navy early next week. The trip was the last chance to spend some time with him, outdoors, for quite a while. Other than the decision to move from one campground to another, it was a relaxing trip. We collected trout and mosquito bites before finally heading home.
While the weather was perfect for a vacation, it wasn’t very conducive to good photography. California summer “blank blues” were the dominant weather pattern. Regardless of the conditions I still choose to get out and experience the calm of the morning. After walking around and doing some shooting in the South Tufa area of Mono Lake, I turned and saw that the sun would be cresting the mountains at any second. I literally ran towards the water’s edge to get in position. I dialed in the exposure and with just a few seconds to spare was ready to catch the first ray of light.
To get the starburst on from the sun I dialed my aperture to f/22 (a setting I rarely use for any other reason).
Morning reflection
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on July 8, 2010
This is another image from my archives. Summer, historically, is the busiest time of the year for my IT job. It’s also the “crowd season” in Yosemite valley. I go to Yosemite to relax and sitting in a traffic jam isn’t my idea of relaxation. What is comes down to is that I don’t spend nearly enough time photographing during the summer months.
I made this image a couple of years ago on an Eastern Sierra workshop. We were shooting the sunrise at North Lake, near Bishop, CA. As it often happens in California, we were greeted by blank blue skies. After shooting a few standard shots of the area I started looking for alternatives. It was a very still morning and the lake was like glass. I knew I wanted to shoot a reflection so I just started walking the bank until I found something to catch my eye.
These rocks, quite boring on their own, were just enough to anchor this frame and give context the the flowing lines and early morning color on the hillside. Sometimes simple is good.
Cheers
Ever feel like this?
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on December 3, 2009
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The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest is an amazing place. Up in the white mountains, across the valley from the Eastern Sierra, stands the oldest living things on earth; many are over 4,000 years.
I took this image during one of the fall Eastern Sierra workshops. A few days before the workshop I did something that made my back incredibly angry. This tree is a pretty good representation of what my lower back felt like most of the trip. The only saving grace was that Gary’s brother, Jay, was along and was able to take over driving duty for much of the trip; I’m not sure how I would have made it without him. Ironically, the only time that my back was comfortable was when I was out shooting. Walking around with a camera; good. Sitting in a car; not so much.
This tree resides in the Schulman Grove. While the actual oldest tree isn’t marked, for fear of vandalism, there is speculation that it may be at or near this location. To make the image I used my 15mm fisheye lens and my ground tripod. Distances in this scene are wildly exaggerated due to the distortion of the lens. I setup, on my knees, less than a foot from the tree to frame this scene. Like many fall evenings in California the skies were cloudless and blue but there was still a hint of color on the horizon. An exposure of 4 seconds, at f/11 was required to bring it out.
Cheers
Everything’s better with butter
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on October 9, 2009
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People often struggle with landscape photography. They visit all of the iconic locations, take tons of photographs but never really capture the scene. They fail for a variety of reasons but more often than not it’s the light. The single most important thing that you can ever learn about landscape photography is that the quality of the light is far more important than the scene.
Most, but certainly not all, successful landscape images are taken within an hour of sunrise/sunset. The reason is simple: the warmness and softness of the light. Near sunrise and sunset the light of the sun is arrives at a very low angle. That low angle requires that the light travel through much more of our atmosphere before reaching the scene. Like the cheesy sunglass advertisements, our atmosphere is nature’s “Blue Blocker.” With much of the blue wavelengths being filtered out by our air, the light takes on a warm reddish hue. The warmness of the light makes just about any scene better. It’s a lot like cooking with butter; just about everything tastes better when fried in butter.
I shot this shortly after sunrise near Mono Lake‘s south tufa area. I liked how the light was just hitting the tips of the grasses and just barely kissing the small tufa mounds. Just as important as the warmness of the light was the fact that it was coming from the side. Side light can be very effective at adding depth and texture to a scene.
The mechanics of this shot aren’t anything unusual. I started by setting my tripod at it’s lowest level. I was using my Canon 24-70 f/2.8L at it’s widest position: 24mm. I set the aperture at f/11 to give me adequate depth of field which resulted in an exposure of 1/6th of a second at ISO 100. The sky, even shortly after sunrise, was already several stops brighter than my foreground so I used a 2 stop, soft edged, graduated neutral density filter to bring it down.
Cheers
The gates of Mordor
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on October 3, 2009
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I’m home again after spending the last 5 days in the Eastern Sierra Mountains. I enjoy doing the workshops but at the end of the 5 days I’m definitely ready to come home and sleep in a familiar bed.
I took this image on the first night of the workshop in the Alabama Hills, at the base of Mount Whitney. Mount Whitney isn’t normally a great sunset location but sometimes you get lucky. Tuesday night was one such night.
We drove to the parking area for the Mobius Arch trail and headed out toward the arch. The actual sunset was very uneventful but the real magic started about 15 minutes after the sun was down. A faint red glow began to develop to the North of Whitney and slowly worked it’s way down the Sierra crest until most of the horizon was awash in color. Because it was quite a while after sunset it was quite dark, requiring a 30 second exposure to capture the color. The long exposure also added to the looming feel of the image by blurring the motion of the clouds. It felt very much like we’d been picked up and dropped into the middle of a Lord of the Rings movie.
Cheers
Bodie
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on September 24, 2009
With my next trip to the Eastern Sierra just a few days away, I’ve been going through older images from the area. While not a place that we’ll be taking workshop folks to, Bodie, California is an interesting side trip.
Bodie, like many towns in the Sierra, sprang up in 1859 after gold was discovered. Over the years, it’s estimated that over 34 million dollars in gold was extracted from the mines in the area. While a hand full of residents remained into the 1960s, most of the gold had dried up and folks moved on a decade or two after the turn of the 20th century. In the late 1060s, Bodie became part of the California State park system.
What makes Bodie interesting is that it just looks like everyone “got up and left.” There glass still sitting on tables, merchandise in the store window and billiard balls still out on their table. It really is the epitome of a ghost town.
The only way in to Bodie is via a section of graded, but unpaved, road that becomes impassable during bad weather. It spends much of the winter buried in snow, accounting for much of the preservation. The blanket of snow and ice protects it from the harsh Sierra winter.
This image was taken a couple of years ago, during the same trip as the Mono lake image in my previous post. There were some nice high clouds filtering the light and it was only an hour before sunset. The lowness of the sun in the sky was giving everything a nice warm glow. To capture the image I used my Canon 24-70 f/2.8L at 25mm. To get enough depth of field to keep the whole scene in focus I chose f / 11 which gave me a shutter speed of 1/30th at ISO 100.
Cheers
Mono lake sunrise
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on September 22, 2009
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There’s something really special about watching a brilliant sunrise and having the area all to yourself. It’s like nature is putting on a personal show, just for you.
Most of use spend our lives during daylight hours. While we might be awake for the sunrise, we seldom see it because we’re in the house preparing for the day. A few years ago I took a nephew along for a sunrise shoot at Lake Tahoe. He’d never seen anything like it and I hope that it’s a memory that he won’t soon forget.
This particular morning was in mid November a couple of years ago at Mono Lake. The town of Lee Vining had all but shut down for the season, the tourists were gone and it was cold. My wife and I left the boy sleeping in the motel room and headed out to Black Point. It’s off the beaten path and generally free from the hordes of photographers that plaque the South Tufa area. It was still quite dark when we arrived and the air was crisp and calm. I could already see that we were going to be in for a show as just a hint of light started to appear on the Eastern horizon.
Shooting sunrise is always a challenge because of the speed that the lighting conditions change. I had my pockets stuffed with my full arsenal of Singh-Ray split-grads and knew that I was going to have to use them. The story in the image was very clearly the color in the sky. The shapes in the foreground added visual motion but this image was all about color. I knew that the dynamic range was beyond that which my camera was capable of so I used a 2 stop split-grad to bring down the sky. I metered on the foreground rocks and set my camera two stops below the meter reading to render the foreground black. The result was an exposure of 1/6th second at f/11 and ISO 100.
A little over a week from now I’ll be in the area again with Gary. While I won’t be completely alone, I’m hoping for the personal show once again.
Cheers
Getting back to nature
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on September 17, 2009
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You can feel it in the air. The nights are getting cooler, the days are getting shorter and a few leaves are starting to turn. That can only mean one thing, time to head to the Eastern Sierra. Summer is always a slow time for my photography so I look forward to fall and the chance to get out and do more shooting. Starting in the next few weeks I’ll be doing three, nearly back to back, workshops with Gary. One in the Eastern Sierra (still a few spaces left) and then two in Yosemite.
Fall is a really pretty time but especially so in the Eastern Sierra. Timing the color is always tricky but from all reports conditions should be really nice. I can’t wait.
While the color in the trees is often the focus, the leaves don’t still have to be on the tree to make interesting subjects. This image was taken very near the end of last year’s workshop. We were all heading back to the cars in Lundy Canyon. In a few minutes we’d all be saying goodbye to each other. Not far from the car I looked down and found this single leaf, still wet with the morning’s dew and it was just begging to have it’s picture taken. I liked how the little bit of grass frames the bottom of the scene.
To make this image I used my Canon 100-400 at 400mm. (A medium or super telephoto lens can be a great addition to your landscape kit. Not every shot needs to be wide angle to be interesting.) I set the lens wide open, f/5.6, to minimize depth of field and set the shutter to 1/45th at ISO 100.
Cheers
Rock Creek Aspen
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on June 22, 2009
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One of the best things that you can do for your images is to learn to accept the conditions that you’re given. Too often photographers arrive at a scene with a preconceived notion of a particular shot. This is especially true of workshop attendees or people on that “once in a lifetime” trip. Nearly everyone who embarks on such a trip has an idea, in their head, about the shot that they want to get. Pre-visualization is a powerful creative tool but sometimes it can obscure your vision.
Landscape photography is all about light. Ignoring the quality of the light can mean the difference between a really nice fine art image and a travel snapshot. Unless you are content with the travel photo, sometimes you need to step back, evaluate the light and rethink the shot. That isn’t to say that you should ignore your pre-visualization but it is important that you know when to say “not today” and move on.
Look down every once in a while
Posted by Doug Otto in Photography on June 5, 2009
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When you’re out photographing a beautiful location it is really easy to ignore the little details. As nature photographers we often default to “wide vista” mode and try to capture as much of a scene as physically possible. A problem with that approach the image can become very generic. Sure you’ve captured a very nice scene, with gorgeous light, but does the image tell a story or is it just pretty?
The number of images that we are subjected to on a daily basis is staggering. Everywhere you look there is an image being displayed. It might start with the morning paper or the bumper sticker on the car in front of you during your commute. We’re barraged by images in print media, on the Internet or coming into our homes via the television. That constant flood of images numbs our senses to the minute detail that makes up the world around us. That detail is often lost in the vast, grand landscape images that we try to create. That isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy capturing that type of image as well, because I do. It is, however, important that we occasionally look beyond the vista and see what is really happening around us. Doing to adds impact and meaning to our photographs.
This is a very simple image but it tells a really intricate story. I took it early one morning on the shore of Mono Lake. Stories suggest that the lake was actually named by neighboring peoples rather that the Paiutes that lived there. The word Mono is believed to have been derived from a Yokut term meaning “fly eater”. The extreme salinity of the lake prevents most organisms from living in the lake with just a couple of exceptions; that alkali fly and the brine shrimp. Long ago the larve of the alkali fly was the primary food source for the Mono Lake Paiutes. Today those two organisms, and their place in the food chain, make Mono Lake a huge habit for migratory shorebirds. The shorebirds aren’t aware of the political fight over Mono and it’s water, they just come for the shrimp and the fly larvae; that’s really what Mono Lake is about. Read the rest of this entry »
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