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Archive for the ‘California’ Category

We’re on a quest this weekend to find fall color. The time is right, the Eastern Sierras are full of Aspen groves, so there should be no problem finding some, right? Well, as you can see, we did, but it was harder than we thought, but what we found was spectacular. We sought out the lakes as the Aspens seem to thrive along side the wetter areas such as creeks and lakes.

We stayed at Mammoth Lakes along Hwy 395 and used that area as a base. We visited Convict Lake, several lakes around the Mammoth Lakes district and Sabrina Lake. On the way to Sabrina Lake we passed a town called Aspendell where we stopped for lunch. After lunch we decided to look around a bit and we found this pond (full of trout) which was literally surrounded by these trees, in full color. Just spectacular and the reflections just enhanced the whole experience.

We found a lot more spectacular places and I will post some more soon.

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Over on the North Eastern shores of Lake Tahoe is an area called Sand Harbor, where you will find these awesome rocks. They can make for excellent subjects and foreground interest in any photograph.

This shot was taken early around 7pm as the sun was setting behind those mountains. The lens was my trusty EF17-40 f/4L at its widest (17mm) setting. On the 5D full frame, you get some vignetting at that wide an angle, but Lightroom’s lens correction feature fixed that without a problem. A wonderful feature indeed.

It did take a bit of a scramble down the rocky banks to get to this point. The best results with a wide angle lens are obtained when you get right up close to anything you want in the foreground.

As usual, this is a 3 shot HDR, processed with Photomatix the given some treatment with my Warming Vignette preset.

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It’s 5:30 am and Linda and I are on our way to Mono Lake. As we approach, we see the sky turn this magnificent orange and we had to make a decision. Do we stop and shoot this from the side of the road and run the risk of missing anything colorful at the tufas. Or do we continue on and hope that there will still be color in the sky when we get to the tufas? What to do!?

Well, we stopped and shot the sky. Side of the road on Hwy 395. The guys in the fishing boat just made it perfect. Fire in the sky, clouds in the sky, just perfect.

Best of all, when we got to the tufas, the clouds were just perfect and we ended up getting some of our best Mono Lake shots that morning. What a morning! All this before 8am – wow.

There is very little post processing here. Pretty much straight out of the camera, it was that gorgeous! A little vignette and tweaked up the black a bit, that’s all.

Enjoy!

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I don’t often do B&W. not because I don’t like it, but I just don’t “think” about it. For some reason I rarely do a B&W conversion, but this time I did and I must say, I LOVE the outcome.

There are two processing techniques here. The first is an HDR treatment, using 3 shots at 2 stops apart. I liked the result, but I then started playing with my Lightroom Presets and I really liked the result on this.

As stated in a previous post,, California will be closing Mono Lake State Park next year due to budget cuts. This is what prompted us to go see this lake again.

Hope you like the B&W

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Sadly, Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve is one of the 70 California State parks that will close due to budget cuts. This will happen next year in July. So Linda and and I decided to go and shoot at Mono Lake over the Labor Day weekend and make sure we got shots of this awesome place.

We visited several times and, while nice, there were no clouds and the light was very “blah”. We decided to have one more attempt, on the day we had to leave, and got up at 5am. To our delight the sky was filled with clouds and the whole feel of the place was just amazing. We could not stop shooting!

So here is a shot taken at the South Tufas. It’s an HDR made from 3 shots, two stops apart.

While I am unsure how one closes a lake, it will be sad to see this state park be closed. As you can see, you can walk right up to many of these tufas and I hate to think of them being damaged by vandals. The South Tufas are up to 1000 years old so not something that will “grow back” quickly.

So, if you are a photographer or just someone who wants to see this place, go before July 2012.

I can highly recommend it.

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We visited the White Mountains in California today, where you can find the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. These Bristlecones are the oldest living things in the world and there is one tree that is an alleged 4750 years old!

The tree here is not quite that old and you can see it has struggled. I found this tree up at 11,000 (!) feet elevation after a 12 mile drive on a dirt track. I needed to go into 4-wheel drive mode to navigate the steep trails, quite exhilarating and not something I had done for a long time. To my delight, Linda thought it was just fantastic, never having done this before.

Our drive was rewarded with some of the most spectacular scenic views ever. It is so beautiful up there. I was not kidding on the elevation. The visitor’s center is at 10,500 feet and is where most visitors stop. There is another grove about 12 miles further on and only accessible via that dirt road. It took about 45 minutes to get there.

This tree was still alive even if part of it had died. It clearly struggles to survive in this challenging environment, but very beautiful.

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I received several nice comments about a previous post of Cathedral Rock so thought I’d post this shot which was taken from the same spot, using the same log in the foreground.

El Capitan is of course one of THE dominant features in Yosemite. It is a favorite piece of rock for experienced rock climbers. Rising more than 3,000 feet above the Valley floor, it is the largest monolith of granite in the world. During the summer, you can spot climbers making their way up, but you need to look hard and have a pair of binoculars, the rock face is SO large and the climbers are SO small, it is hard to see them with the naked eye.

About the making of this shot:

> Camera: Canon 5d mark 2 – ISO 100
> Lens: EF 17-40mm f/4L USM @ 17 mm
> 3 bracketed shots, +/- 2 stops
> Initial clean up in Lightroom, exported each exposure as 16 bit TIFF
> Merged to HDR and Tonemapped in Oloneo then exported as 16 Bit TIFF
> Opened in Photoshop CS5 for some additional work including Topaz Adjust and Topaz DeNoise
> Saved as PSD
> Imported back into Lightroom and exported to Zenfolio, Flickr and Facebook

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This beautiful little chapel is the oldest structure in Yosemite Valley and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is a representative example of the way early chapels in the Sierra Nevada mountains were constructed.

The chapel is 130 years old and the first services were held there on June 7, 1879.

From a photographer’s point of view, it is a wonderful subject, all year round. This shot was taken in early winter, before any snow, but well after all the fall color. The large tree you see on the right, with the yellowish leaves, turns a bright yellow in fall and makes for some fantastic contrast against the red chapel. Unfortunately, I have not been able to synchronize my trips to Yosemite to coincide with that. Some day I will of course.

I always find it fascinating to learn a bit more about the history behind these old landmarks. It was interesting to learn therefore, that originally this chapel was surrounded by the original village, a cluster of buildings, including a canvas-roofed hotel and by 1900, offices, houses, shops, hotels, photography studios, saloons, and stables lined the wagon road leading to Sentinel Bridge.

Park managers gradually relocated the village to the other side of the river, where Yosemite Village is now. The chapel remained here and now stands all alone among the trees. There are still services held there every week.

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I can’t image there are many things that can be more beautiful than a landscape after freshly fallen snow.

This is a location near South Lake Tahoe. Getting to this location was by pure accident, as we had no idea this even existed. Let me explain.

First of all, it was by on a whim, and by pure chance, that we decided to turn off Interstate 50, a highway that runs along the Southern shores of Lake Tahoe. We had picked a small road that lead us into an area with some vacation homes nestled in a forested area covered in freshly fallen snow. After parking the car and wondering off among the trees, we heard, rather than saw, water rushing. Following the sound, we stumbled upon this scene of almost unimaginable beauty. Furthermore, someone had been there with a snow mobile and had created a track of compressed snow. This allowed us to actually walk up to the creek as the compressed snow prevented us from sinking into the fresh stuff which was at least 2 feet deep.

Needless to say we had a ball wondering around this area and capturing the beauty of it all from every angle possible.

If you have even been in a forest after a snow storm you know how quiet it can be. The snow acts as a thick blanket and absorbs sound, making the surroundings even more magical due to the silence. It’s just you and nature and humbles you in the majesty of it all.

It was one of these days when everything turned out right. We picked the right road to turn off, did the right thing by checking out the sound of rushing water and by luck, someone had created a trail for us to walk on. Yes, it was a good day.

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It’s been a long time since I posted here. All thanks to me moving house. Some advice, and trust me on this, if you ever move house, make sure you do not do that around the Christmas holidays! Anyway, I am now fully moved in and while there is still a lot to do, I have found some time to go process some pictures from various photo shoots.

This is the famous Cathedral Rock, taken from the valley floor. I walked into this meadow to get that fallen tree in the foreground. Hope you like it.

Last year (sounds strange to say that, the new year is barely a week old) Linda and I visited Yosemite several times. This picture was taken in October, when we went to see if we could catch some fall color. Turns out there was not a lot of it to be found at that time, but that didn’t bother us one bit. Yosemite is so beautiful, there is always something nice to shoot, regardless of time of year or weather. As you can see we had fabulous skies and two days of great shooting.

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