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Archive for the ‘Sierra Nevada’ Category

Spent a day nosing around the Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park, in the Sierra Nevada foothills in California. You might be interested to know that this is the site of the USA’s very first environmental law, it was issued by the federal government.

Malakoff Diggins was home to the country’s largest hydraulic gold mining operation. Using high pressure jets, huge sections of the country side were literally washed away, in an effort to get at the gold. The subsequent release of the mud, gravel and debris clogged streams and major rivers all the way from these foothills to the San Francisco Bay! Sacramento farmers complained and filed a law suit and in 1884 a law was passed declaring hydraulic mining to be illegal. Today, there is a mighty big “hole” in the cliffs, which has, thankfully, been reclaimed by Mother Nature.

Malakoff Diggins can lay claim to another first. In 1880, electric lights were installed in the mine and the world’s first long distance telephone line was developed to service the mine.

What you see in today’s picture is one of the few buildings left of the old town. It is the main office of the Historic Park.

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Sand Harbor is a piece of Lake Tahoe’s North Eastern coastline. There is a sandy beach there, but it is of particular interest to photographers because of the boulders that lie around in the water. They can make for some fantastic photographic subjects.

This shot was taken just about at sunset, which had the sun disappearing over the mountains on my right. It caused these rocks to be bathed in beautiful soft light. I was quite happy with this as I had to scramble down to this area from the road. Not particularly smart when carrying tripods and some expensive gear.

Anyway, I made it without a mishap and got this picture for my efforts.

As usual, it is an HDR comprised of my usual 3 shots. I used Photomatix (with some “gentle” setting to minimize noise), then opened in Photoshop and blended it with a layer that has some Topaz Adjust treatment to it. This all let me get great detail, nice color and minimum noise. The little noise that was there, I got rid of with the new noise reduction tool in Lightroom V3, which I find very good.

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As promised, here is a shot with the wonderful fluffy clouds that were so abundant on this trip. As I said in my last post, previous trips to Mono Lake had all been cloudless so this was a real treat.

The reflections were SO intense they almost look fake, but I can assure you they are not. This shot was taken about 6pm, which was 2 1/2 hours before sunset. Linda and I actually went here to scope out where to be at sunset, but the conditions were so nice we pulled out our cameras and took a series of shots. There was no wind at all which is why the reflections are so intense, the water was like a mirror and because it was still quite light, the overall effect is quite spectacular.

Linda and I actually did come back at sunset, but there was nothing going on, wind had picked up and there was no color whatsoever. Conditions were so “blah” we didn’t even get out of the car, so were happy we got these shots a few hours earlier.

This shot is a single picture with some treatment in Topaz Adjust. I applied Topaz to one layer, then blended the other, original, layer to get the look I wanted. I find this lets me control noise pretty well.

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Linda and I managed a quick visit to the Lee Vining area and got to visit Bodie and Mono Lake.

My previous trips to Mono Lake always seemed to coincide with rather uninteresting weather and I never really got the shots I had imagined could be had in this wonderful location. This time however, the weather was much kinder. As you can see from the shot below, there was no wind and there were clouds. I’ll post another shot tomorrow where the clouds are more pronounced, but today’s shot is one of calmness.

The time was about 10 minutes before sunrise (which occurred at 5:37am that day). I have this cool little iPhone app that tells me when dawn starts and when sunrise (and sunset) occurs. So I knew exactly when the sun would appear and I was ready.

This is actually an HDR, comprised of 3 shots. Processed with Dynamic Photo HDR, which produces much more “natural” photos than, say, Photomatix. It also produces a heck of a lot less noise, one of the real problems with Photomatix I find.

While I would have liked to have seen a little more of the clouds, I am happy with this shot. Everything came together for me. The composition, the reflections, the colors and, perhaps most importantly, the overall “mood” of the scene.

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Isn’t flowing water fascinating?

I remember as a kid, growing up in the Netherlands, I loved to go visit places like Scotland where creeks and “bubbling brooks” were a must see for me. I could waste away considerable time mesmerized by the flowing water.

Now, living in California, with a wealth of rivers and creeks, I still love visiting places like that. As a photographer, catching the sense of movement is an easily accomplished trick. By slowing down the shutter speed, the movement of water creates blur which gives us that “look”. Often, in forested areas or in deep canyons, this is really easily achieved as the amount of light will be less so selecting a slower shutter-speed will be not be hard. In bright sunlight though, it can be a bit more of a challenge simply because there is so much light, you cannot slow down the shutter enough to get the look without over exposing the shot.

This is where a grey filter can be indispensable as it simply darkens the scene without affecting the colors.

In the following two shots I was lucky enough to be get the look without the need of such a filter.

The first shot is of the Yuba River, just a few miles north of Nevada City in California. After spending a few hours exploring Nevada City, a photographer friend, Ken, and I were all hot and bothered (it was a 105 degree day, or 40 degrees Celsius) and decided to continue going North on the North Bloomfield Rd and see if we could find some relief near the Yuba River.

We got some great shots of the water rushing by, as you can see in this picture. There was a quite a lot of light, but by stopping down to f/22 I could slow the shutter to 1/8 of a second, just slow enough to get that feeling of “flow” in the water.

This second shot is of the Merced river. It was taken late in the day so light was already fading. The metering was 1/3 of a second at f/6.3 – a lot less light!

So which is the better shot?

Personally, I like both, but for different reasons. I believe the top picture conveys a sense of “speed” while the bottom pictures gives me sense of “volume”. Both work.

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Spent Valentine’s Day with Linda up at Lake Tahoe. We of course did what photographers like to do and sought out a romantic sunset

This hot is taken from the Eastern shores of Lake Tahoe. Not quite as much color as we would have liked, but still nice.
Blended two shots here, one exposed for the sky, one for foreground. The long exposures also softened the water as it was quite choppy.

I loved these rocks in the foreground and took quite some shots, all with different compositions. I liked this a lot, but will post more in due course.

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It was one of those Saturdays, nothing planned, not wanting to sit at home, kind of strange weather, not bad, but not particularly good either. What to do? So a friend and I decided to drive towards Lake Tahoe and see if there was anything worth shooting.

Rather than taking the freeway, we decided to go the back roads and took the Emigrant Mormon Trail and then Hwy 88 through Carson Pass and Hope Valley. The higher the elevation, the colder it got. At 8000 ft it was 37 degrees and this was only October!

In many ways it was kind of boring. Fall color was gone and no snow yet, that in between kind of day.

We spotted an area with interesting trees and rocks and decided, considering we’d come all this way anyway, to get out and shoot something, ANYTHING!

This is the result of that outing, kind of cool actually and I am quite happy with the results and it shows that there are photo opportunities hiding almost everywhere.

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Finally got around to looking at my Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon pictures, places I went to with my son Rens.

We found, quite by accident, this magnificent picnic spot, overlooking the Sierras and King Canyon.

As you can see, we sat on a rocky ledge with a magnificent view spread out in front of us. I could have sat there all day, just absorbing the splendor of this view.

Just to the left of the bushes you see here on the left side of the picture, was this view seen below.

The canyon you see just to the right of the tree is Kings Canyon. We didn’t actually go there that day, so it is still on the “to do one day” list.

This shot is an HDR comprising of three shots, –1, 0 +1 EV apart. The HDR treatment added extra drama to the sky.

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I just heard from a friend that the road to Bodie is closed due to snow. He was very disappointed as this probably means Bodie will be now closed until spring.

This inspired me to post some of my favorite shots of Bodie as I was there just a few weeks ago. As you can see from the blue sky, snow was the last thing one would expect to see just a few weeks later.

I really like this first shot, I couldn’t resist shooting through the old wagon wheel. I was lying on my belly for this one.

The second one is one of my favorites. I just love these old rusted cars. They just tell a story I find and I end up wondering who drove it, where they went in the car. Great to let your imagination run off.

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Emerald Bay is part of Lake Tahoe and is designated a National Natural Landmark for its brilliant panorama of mountain-building processes and glacier carved granite. It is found in the South West corner of Lake Tahoe and is an inlet that can freeze over in a severe winter due to its shallower water.

This is a location I’ve been wanting to shoot for a long time and finally got around to doing it. This was taken about 30 minutes before sunrise from a rocky ledge at Eagle Falls. My plan had been to get the gushing water of Eagle Falls in the foreground, but alas, it’s September and the falls were just a trickle. Besides, at this time of the morning, it was too dark to see anything in detail.

The island you see in the middle of the picture is called Fannette Island and is the only island found in Lake Tahoe

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