• Persius.

| facebook | 500px | ferpectshotz |

One more shot of the fantastic Hot Creek. For this shot, I used a longer focal length to give the mountains afar a bit more prominence. Basically, the past two visits we made to this location I didn’t have much luck with the spectacular sunrises this area is known for but thankfully the location is so spectacular it doesn’t really matter. The tame sky actually brings more interest to the stunning mountains and the beautiful Hot Creek snaking its way down into the valley. Thanks for visiting I hope you enjoy this image.

• Henry Morton Stanley.

| insta | blog |

Hot Creek Geological site is a hidden gem of the eastern Sierra Nevadas. Thousands of people visit Mammoth Lakes' town just across the highway every year, but only a few venture to the well-graded desert trails on the other side of the road. This seemingly barren desert landscape provides a fantastic view of the sierras and some awesome geologicaly active site constantly reminding us of the Sierra Mountains' volcanic past.

I learned about this location quite by accident but knew about the area and decided to make it our next long weekend destination. We reached Hot Creek well before sunrise and scouted out the site a bit before settling on this spot. It’s a short hike from the parking lot with a nice view of the creek zigzagging from the mountains in the background. One of the added advantages of shooting sunrises in the mountains is that the light's warm golden tones say longer, giving you a bit more time to get your compositions right. I tried many compositions, from a portrait image to a stitched panorama. Still, I like this almost square framing the best as I feel like it says everything that I want to convey about this location.

• Edward Abbey.

| facebook | 500px | ferpectshotz |

It’s now four years since I moved to California after about 9 years in the various cities of northeast US. Before my marriage my future wife and I were working at NYC and San Jose respectively and were forced to make a choice on where to settle down after the upcoming nuptials. My wife absolutely refused to do the long distance relationship even for a minute after the wedding so we mutually agreed to look for jobs at each other’s cities and to move to a city where both had good offers. Thankfully fate interfered and the consulting project that I was a part of came to an abrupt end a week before my wedding, my wife had her doubts but I took it as an absolute sign and packed everything I owned into my trusty little mazda cancelled my lease and drove cross country to the wonderful state of California.

I’d be lying if I claim that I was sure it would turn out ok, I simply wasn’t, as with most people I never liked change and was absolutely scared shitless. But it has all worked out in the end we both ended up moving to West Hollywood and having pretty decent jobs with wonderful new set of friends and tons of national and state parks to keep us entertained. For some reason all this thoughts went through my mind when I was working on this shot night and I think I found the perfect quote to go with the image of this amazing location.

• King Solomon.

| facebook | 500px | ferpectshotz |

When I first saw an image of the Hotcreek geological site, I couldn’t believe a location that pretty was just a few hours away from our home. So, we planned a trip immediately and the location turned out to be everything we hoped for. The spot is perfec for a sunrise shot with the steamy hot creek perfectly aligning with Laural and Bloody mountain peaks providing a classic mountain vista.

A year later we had an unusually wet winter and we thought it would be great to get to the location again so that we can get a different shot of the mountains with some snow on the top. The sunrise was not as spectacular as the first time, but the increased spring melt has caused the creek to sell up considerably giving us a very unique shot of this classic viewpoint.

• George S. Patton.

| facebook | 500px | ferpectshotz |

As we were walking back from the Hot Creek outlook, we noticed that the sun was now illuminating the small hiking path in beautiful golden light. So when we passed this tree bathed in golden glow and I took the camera out trying to get a shot and when I turned around I realized that instead of getting the whole tree in the frame, if I could use a short tele focal length I could bring the mountains in the background really up close and make an interesting photo.

So I created this stitch panorama shot with about three images, trying not to get anything overexposed. When I took the shot, I couldn’t see any color on the mountain top, it was pretty much in bright sunlight. But when I processed the images in camera raw and increased contrast, I got decent orange glow back on the tip, which was a total surprise. I believe this is another solid reason to stick with ND Grad filters.