• Confucius.

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One of my favorite shot from our last trip to the beautiful eastern Sierras. This one is the stunning Lundy Lake taken during a spring sunrise. We had to wake up at 4 am to get here in time for sunrise and as cliché, as it sounds, it's always worth it to see massive mountain peaks get that orange glow and to see perfect reflections of the scene on lake water.

I saw the small concrete structure that they used to board people into boats while I was there and wanted to include it in one of my shots. Now, my primary lens is a 24-70mm Nikkor f2.8 which is not wide enough for such an expansive scene. So this shot was taken as panorama shot of 4 to five images in portrait mode. The secret to a good pano when the light is constantly changing is to use your cameras manual mode and take the shots really quick. I usually set my camera to aperture priority and take a shot to get my metering and then use that reading to set my manual mode taking into consideration any light I lost from using the polarizer or ND grad filters. Here that was about 3 stops.

Next step is to nail focus using AF and then set your lend focus to manual so it won't change while you are taking your pano shots. It will also make your life a lot easier if you have a panning tripod head but most DSLR cameras have some leveling aids built into their live view, so this is not much of an issue just will make your life a lot easier. Once you are done all the above, all that’s remaining is to start at the left most of your intended frame and shoot overlapping frames (about 30% is the best in my experience) till your frame's end point. I usually include a bit extra in my shots so I can crop later. I also take a shot before and after my pano sequence of my hands so while importing to my PC I know which images are part of the pano shot. Hope this helps.

• Golda Meir.

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The final shot I took at Lundy Lake, a beautiful Alpine lake surrounded by massive eastern Sierra Mountains near the little town of Lee Vining. This was our first visit and we only reached the spot just as the sun started to light up the tip of the mountains due to some overflowing creeks. I kind of realized that my options were limited in regards to scouting and thus was forced to look for interesting compositions from just the lakeshore near the parking lot.

Thankfully this was one of the locations where the scene itself is grand enough to make up for lack of variety. We tried to find the trailhead for the hike up Lundy Canyon but were unsuccessful. Plus my wife was very interested in getting her hands on the delicious coconut mascarpone pancakes that are served at Toomey’s a local breakfast joint at Mammoth Lakes.