Notes To My Mother

  Whenever I think of the Eastern Sierras one of the first images that comes to mind is Mono Lake.  I've. known this lake since I was 4 years old and I can remember driving by it on highway 395 with the water very near the road.  It has lost a lot of water since then (1946-47) but it retains its beauty.  This image was taken in February when the Milky Way is low in the horizon in the early morning.  You may already know it is best to shoot the stars in the darkest hours and that would be after Astronomical Twilight ends at night and before it begins again in the morning.  It goes like this:  in the morning first there is Astronomical Twilight when the dimmest light begins(about 30 min), then Nautical Twilight (another 30 min) then Civil twilight followed by sunrise. The Golden Hour is just before and after sunrise.  This image was taken in the last moments of darkness just as Astronomical Twilight was beginning.  You can see the beginning of ...

  In 2021, in the middle of the pandemic, my grandson, Levi, and I took a road trip to the Eastern Sierras. These images are from that trip and are intended to be examples of a few of the different kinds of light you can experience at relatively high altitudes.  These were all taken at around 7,000 feet.  The one above is morning light on Laurel Mountain with foreground reflections separated in the man made fence, mid ground. One of the delightful characteristics of the weather in the Eastern Sierras revolves around cloud formations.  Clouds will often build first thing in the morning as the sun is making its first appearance.  They can then pretty much disappear.  Later in the afternoon clouds will often begin to build again.  I recall one time being up Lee Vining Canyon and getting caught under one of those afternoon build ups and getting drenched in rain and pelted by hail.  On the afternoon depicted above one of those storms was developing wit...

 In 2017 I visited Glacier with my son in law, Francisco.  We spent three days together and then met up with a photography workshop led by Andy Cook, of Rocky Mountain Reflections and photographed for another five days.  This year I met up with eight good photography buddies three days before the workshop then joined Andy Cook for another five days.  We were all completely exhausted by the time we did our last evening shoot after 8 days of hiking in the park. On our first morning, I looked out my window at 5:30 am and the sky was on fire!  I grabbed my camera and tripod and ran for the shore of Lake McDonald.  We were staying, as before, in Apgar on the west end of the lake.  I caught the above scene and within a few minutes the colors faded.  I later talked with a ranger and he said it was unusual to experience such intense sunrises here, so I felt very lucky. Later that same morning we made our way to the Hidden Lake and Mount Reynolds overlook....

As you may have gathered from previous posts, the Eastern Sierras is one of my favorite places to spend time.  Here are a few of the spots that I particularly like.  Highway 168 out of Bishop, CA, will take you into a beautiful area of the Sierras following Bishop Creek to the west and into the mountains. The scene above is Bishop Creek on the way to South Lake. Not far away is North Lake a very pretty lake in late September and early October. It is the place to be early in the morning just before the sun hits the mountain peaks. You will know you are in the right place by the crowd of photographers. A picture of this lake was the screensaver image on iMacs a few years ago. Whenever I am in the Sierras in early October I head for this lake to catch a beautiful sunrise. What I really want is an image of this location during Autumn color with snow on the peaks. Just missed it a  couple of years ago. The next best thing is North Lake with mirror-like reflections, autumn colo...