Well, the third leg was so exciting and so filled with beautiful locations that its account had to be divided into two parts.  So we pick up after sunrise at Mono Lake and continue on with the wonderful ghost town of Bodie, California.

If you missed the first thee posts here they are.

Eastern Sierra Workshop: Leg 1 – Lone Pine

Eastern Sierra Workshop: Leg 2 – Bishop

Eastern Sierra Workshop: Leg 3 – Lee Vining

Bodie is a fascinating place on several levels.  It is one of the best preserved examples of a boom town, supported in grandeur between 1877 and 1880 by the gold that was extracted from its mines.  Many of the buildings are still standing although considering that at its heyday there were around 2000 buildings that housed a rip roaring population of about 5000 to 7000, the several score of buildings that are left is rather small.

And yet, walking along its streets it’s easy to let your imagination run wild and guess what it might have been like to live there.

This was a wonderful day to visit Bodie.  The parking lot was surprisingly empty except for two big yellow school busses up from Mammoth.  The 4th graders were having a field trip as part of their studies of California history.  And boy, what a field trip that must have been.

I’ve never had so much fun photographing Bodie as on this day.  So I think I’ll just let the  photographs speak from themselves and present them without further comment.

And finally as we retraced our steps back down Cottonwood Canyon a farewell party met us to send us safely on our way.

So that’s it.  Not long after this last photograph was captured I found myself unwinding the week that had just passed as I returned down highway 395 towards home.  As I left Lee Vining and passed through Mammoth, Bishop, Big Pine, Independence and finally Lone Pine wonderful memories came over me like passing through a dreamy fog.  I felt a sense of both gratitude sadness, gratitude that we had been so fortunate to have such wonderful light and sad that it must come to an end.

But my family was waiting for me 300 miles away and I was ready and eager to see them again, share my experiences with them and catch up on what I had missed while I was away.

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With two wonderful and highly successful legs already completed we left Bishop and headed further north.  Our travel day was a big day for photography with a lot of very exciting stops planned.

But before heading out, here are the links to the first two legs in case you missed them.

Eastern Sierra Workshop: Leg 1 – Lone Pine

Eastern Sierra Workshop: Leg 2 – Bishop

For our sunrise shoot I had planned to photograph the snow clad mountains from the Alkali Ponds just north of Lake Crowley.  It was going to be a 45 minute drive and we wanted to arrive at 5:00 so you can do the math.

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After a great few days in Lone Pine (click here to read about them) we headed north to Bishop.

We were following the weather north. “What is he talking about?” For the three days we spent in Lone Pine the great weather – magical clouds, wind and rain – was on top of us and extended north from there. This made for some exhilarating photography. But when the weather petered out in Lone Pine and moved farther north, that was when we were planning on heading north anyway. So we couldn’t have asked for more perfect conditions.

Now Bishop is the “big city” in the Owens Valley with a population of nearly 4000.  One of the main attractions for landscape photographers is the Mountain Light Gallery.  This is Galen and Barbara Rowell’s gallery and a kind of Mecca for nature photographers.

There are a number of really interesting places to photograph around Bishop.

For example, once we got settled in to our hotel rooms we headed north of town to photograph the Owens River.  It still runs free in the Bishop area; that is, LA hasn’t diverted most of the water into the California Aqueduct.  We drove out the Five Bridges Road off of US 6 to where it crosses the river.  We got out and walked to the west along the river bank.  The river runs through an open pasture with grazing cattle so you need to be careful where you step.  But between the fishermen that frequent the river and the cattle, there are plenty of good trails.

The sunset was happing to the north so we found a location to shoot from that had a bit of a reflection of the clouds in the water.  The river comes around a sharp bend here, almost 180 degrees, so there is a lot of upwelling of the water that creates a constantly changing texture on the surface.  This was where I knelt down on the muddy bank to get the camera low to the water and maximize the reflection.  It was only after shooting for a while that I noticed the smell – cow pee.  Well, you do what you have to do to get the shot – right?

Above Bishop in the Sierra are three lakes you can drive to – North Lake, Lake Sabrina and South Lake.  The plan for the following morning was to drive up to North Lake for sunrise.  We got up at 3:00 AM to make the drive up.  But when we got there the road was still closed.  Spring is coming really late to the Sierra this year and the snow melt hasn’t really gotten underway yet.  That was a disappointment because North Lake is exquisite and they drain Lake Sabrina and South Lake during the winter so that when the spring melt does come the lakes have enough capacity to hold the runoff.  Otherwise there would be uncontrolled flooding downstream.  But that means there are no photographic opportunities at either of those lakes.

But there is a really excellent plan B in the area – the South Fork of Bishop Creek.  You could tell from the aspens that grow in groves along the creek where spring was.  At the high elevations of South Lake the aspens hadn’t started to bud yet.  But as we traveled down the creek to increasingly lower elevations we first noticed buds, then sprouts and then full blown leaves.

The place along the road where we stopped to photograph was where the aspens and willows both were just in the sprouting stage.  We photographed the mountain side in open shade which combined with the fresh green and red colors of the emerging aspen and willow leaves to produce a very soft, delicate effect.  This is what keeps pulling be back to the Sierra at this time of year.

From Bishop we’re about an hour and a half drive from the ancient bristlecone pines.  These are the oldest living trees on the planet.  It is a humbling experience to even be in their presence.  You realize that not only have countless generations of humans come and gone in their 4500+ years of existence but entire civilizations and empires have done the same.

But this year we couldn’t get to the bristlecones, again because of the late spring.  The road was not open to my favorite tree.  But along the part of the road that was open is a magnificent viewpoint that looks across the Owens Valley to one of the most rugged sections of the Sierra Crest – the Palisades.  So with thunder storms all around we drove up there to experience this view under some truly remarkable conditions.

While the weather conditions were really exciting, this is still a difficult shot because of the great distances involved.  So I rendered the photographs in black and white to fully emphasize the incredible excitement and power we felt as we watched the weather unfold.

The folks fortunate enough to live in the Eastern Sierra talk about God Beams or God Light.  Well, as you can see they were streaming down all around Mount Tom and the town of Bishop.  You know, you’re up there and see this kind of light go on for literally hours and you get kinda giddy.  It’s difficult to put the excitement and joy you feel into words.

Shortly after the 8:15 sunset we headed back to the hotel in Bishop.  It was close to 10:00 when we got back to our rooms – a very long day.  And the following morning was going to be another 3:00 AM wake up call.  But you really don’t mind.  The energy you get from being in these beautiful places keeps you going.  You can always sleep when you get home.

There’s one more leg to our workshop, the Lee Vining, Mono Lake leg that I’ll share with you in the next post.

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No matter how many times you repeat to yourself, “Bad weather makes for great photography,” it’s always a bit disconcerting to be checking out the skies the day before the workshop is scheduled to begin and see solid high clouds with nary a speck of blue in sight.  And the wind’s picking up.  And checking the Weather Underground website shows more clouds moving in from the west!

So, yes, the prospect of striking out seemed very real.

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A few weeks ago I posed a photographic challenge.  What decisions would you make to capture the Bristlecone Moon image?  Here’s the photograph again.

Bristlecone Moon (2008)

This shot poses some interesting challenges and here’s a link to the first post that spells out the situation in case you missed it.

Photographic Challenge – the Situation

The planning for this photograph actually began several months before. I had the idea of photographing a bristlecone pine with the full moon as it rose behind it through the earth shadow.  The earth shadow is that ribbon of color that is projected in the sky above the horizon directly opposite the rising or, in this case, setting sun.  So the first step was to select a full moon weekend, contact my buddy, Eric Winter and head up to Grand View campground in the White Mountains.  We arrived three days before the full moon to scout the area and find a tree that had everything I was looking for – an open view to the east that looked down on the Great Basin below.  I also new I needed to have enough room to back away from the tree so I could use a telephoto and thus increase the relative size of the moon.

There are only two named bristlecone groves in the Whites – Schulman Grove where the oldest tree is found (4,700 years old) and the remote Patriarch Grove.  The Schulman Grove is at the end of the paved road and just a few miles from Grand View campground.  The Patriarch Grove is another 8 miles down a dirt road and when the rangers say it’s a 45 minute drive you’d better believe them cause it is.

The first day we scouted the Patriarch Grove but unfortunately, it is in a broad   depression that has a large hill to the east.  There weren’t any trees that had what I was looking for.  The next day we killed some time in Bishop and dropped into Vern Clevenger’s gallery.  Vern and I chatted and I told him what I  had in mind.  He advised me to get the shot one or two nights before the full moon, not the night of the full moon.  It turned out to be a critical piece of advice that I needed.

So back up to the Whites and back out the dirt road in a search for THE tree.  We scouted a couple of places but none worked out.  We climbed back into the truck and continued down the road.  “What about that tree?” Eric asked as we drove by.  It was perfect.  Throwing the truck into reverse, we backed up and parked off to the side of the road.

The tree had a clear view of the eastern horizon.  There was a large hill to the west but all that meant was that the tree would be dropping into a shadow long before the sun dipped  below the horizon.  There was enough space to use my 70-200 lens and back up far enough to fill the frame with the tree. 

I had printed the moon charts from the internet so I new the precise time and azimuth of the moonrise and was able to figure out where I wanted to position myself.

I started working with compositions well before the moon was due and decided to crop off the ends of the branches because I liked the proportion better.  Then I sat on Mother Earth and quietly waited.  The shadow from the hill to the west crept across the road toward the tree and finally swallowed it.  I sat, looking to the east, waiting for the moon to rotate into view.  Sitting up high on the side of the White Mountains I got a strong sense of the earth turning on its axis, rotating until the moon appeared above the horizon.  One moment it wasn’t there and the next it was.  It was time to go to work.

The moonrise was playing out just like I had hoped.  This is when I get nervous.  “Slow down, don’t make a mistake,” I kept telling myself.  Depth of field: f/16.  Shutter speed: 1.2 sec at ISO 100.  Too slow.  Bump the ISO to 200.  I heard Ansel Adams speak years ago at Pasadena City College.  He told the story of taking “Moonrise over Hernandez.”  He didn’t have time to take out his spot meter and do his usual zone thing.  So he exposed for the moon.  He knew it was in full sunlight and he knew what its luminance was without having to measure it.  So he put the moon in Zone VII and fired away.  I was thinking of him when I realized that I needed to shoot HDR if I wanted the moon to be more than a blank white disk, if I wanted to catch the man in the moon.

So I turned on the camera’s Highlight Tone Priority function to gain a little extra dynamic range, kept the ISO at 200 and bracketed the exposure by one stop.    The focal length was 185 mm and the total elapsed time for the three exposures was about 2 1/2 seconds.  At 185 mm you have 3.2 seconds to get your shot off without the moon (or stars) moving perceptibly.  (There’s a formula for calculating that.  It’s 600/focal length in mm.  It’s a handy formula to know.  See Ten Tips for Exciting Nighttime Photography.)

So that’s pretty much the whole story.  There are other ways go solve this challenge.  Carefully exposing the moon to fall at the right end of the histogram without highlight clipping would result in a capture in which both shadows and highlights could be recovered in Lightroom or Photoshop.  A graduated neutral density filter is problematic because it would cover part of the tree.  So HDR works well in this situation because you get a good exposure on both the moon and the tree.

I’ve returned to this tree several times since September of 2008 when this photograph was taken.  It’s one of the stops on our Eastern Sierra workshop.  Each time I return it has a different feel to it, a different mood.  Here’s what it said to me this year.

Bristlecone Dusk (2010)

It’s a remarkable tree and I plan to keep on coming back.

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There’s a simple compositional technique you can apply to quickly improve the quality of your pictures.  It’s fun and easy and works in so many situations.  It’s called the “Rule of Thirds,” and it goes a little something like this.

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In the first post I talked about photographing Yosemite Valley at sunrise from Tunnel View in a snow storm.  I imported the images into Lightroom and reviewed them there.  One stood out.  See The Making of a Photograph Part 1 – Selection.

The next step is to explore the image for possibilities.  I do this in Lightroom, making virtual copies of the image that I can then adjust.  I adjust such things as color temperature, exposure, highlights, shadows, fill, contrast, saturation, hue and more.  The goal is to see what’s in the image and what it’s capable of expressing.  I’m also looking for something that gets me excited.

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I spent a night in Yosemite Valley a few weeks ago.  See 24 Hours in Yosemite.  It was great to be back; no, it was fantastic to be back.  Both sunset and the following sunrise were shot from Tunnel View, the parking area just as you emerge from the tunnel on state highway 41.  You can always count on company, especially for sunset.

I’m working on one of the photographs taken there that weekend.  But before showing you the image, let’s start with some comments about the light.  Sunset was a near cloudless sky.  The only clouds were a few cotton balls floating over Half Dome.  The rest of the sky was clear.  As the sun set the shadows filled the valley, eventually claiming to the tops of the cliff faces.  But as they did beautiful warm light embraced the the mighty granite but gradually gave way to approaching night.

The morning was quite the opposite.  During the night the anticipated storm rolled in and rain started to fall.  The valley was now full of clouds swirling about, shrouding the eternal granite.  And snow flurries came, keeping all of us at Tunnel View on our toes, protecting our camera gear and warming our fingers.

It was an image from the morning shoot that I selected to work on.  There were long periods of waiting.  The snow flurries passed over us and moved on up the valley obscuring most or all of it.  Then they would pass but the clouds wouldn’t be in the right positions.  Eventually a wonderful, exciting light came shortly after sunrise, imparting a very faint warm cast to some of the clouds.  The rest of the scene was cool, both in light quality and air temperature.

This is the image I started from as it appears unaltered in Lightroom.  I selected it because of the sense of mystery created by the clouds that just give us glimpses of Bridle Vail Falls and the Cathedral Spires on the right and towering El Capitan on the left.  The hints of the beautiful warm hues in the clouds that I would try to pull from the image are present but not apparent in this image.  Rather, we see the predominantly cool mood.

Over the next several posts I’ll take you through the process of trying to recreate what I saw and felt that morning as well as what I discovered in this image.  There were some wonderful surprises in store.  So stay tuned.

The journey continues – read part 2.

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It had been way too long, too many years, since I was last in Yosemite Valley.  I’ll tell you how long it was.  I didn’t even have a decent camera at the time.  So a chance to spend just one night there was, well, something I was not going to pass up.

It was late Saturday afternoon when we arrived in the valley.  The sky was clear with a few scattered clouds.  My wonder at the immensity of the walls was reawakened as I drove to Curry Village.  There was enough time to check in and make it back to Tunnel View for what was to prove to be a very nice sunset.  It wasn’t one of those million dollar sunsets but nice nevertheless.

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