• Robert M. Pirsig.

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One of the best parts about being a landscape photographer is watching the morning light. Now I have to give this disclaimer that I am not a morning person at all. In fact, in my early years as a photographer, I altogether avoided sunrises. After I started visiting the eastern sierras, I seriously began to think about waking up early to catch the morning light. Due to the location of the sierras sunrise, your best bet for capturing the golden hour light. At sunset, the sun goes behind the Sierras' peaks pretty early, and the high dynamic range of the light could be challenging.

Sunrises on the Sierras are something else. You have soft, warm light lighting up the mountains peaks and due to the tall nature of the mountains, a bit more time than other places. One of my first experience shooting sunrise on the west coast was at the beautiful Alabama Hills near Lone Pine. You can see the warm tint in the light even when the whole mountain is lit up. I have noticed that the warm hue gets drastically reduced after a few seconds in most other locations. For this shot, I wanted to emphasize the stunning light that we witnessed that morning. I switched to my telephoto lens to compress the distance between the rocks in the foreground and the mountain peaks in the background.

I didn’t use a wide-angle mainly because the rocks in the foreground were massive, and the perspective distortion of the wide-angle was making the mountain look a bit smaller for my liking. The wide-angle was also bringing another rock formation in the middle ground that was distracting from the main scene. My two stop ND grad filter worked beautifully at this scene, balancing the warm tones of Mt Whitney with rocks of Alabama Hills that were in the shade.

• Benjamin Disraeli.

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Today's shot is of the Sierra Nevada mountain range near Lone Pine, CA taken during sunrise. We were originally here to shoot the stunning Mobius arch at the Alabama Hills location and after shooting the arch. We were all packing our gear as the morning glow has been replaced with stronger light. I noticed that the entire Sierra Nevada range was perfectly lit up but the smaller hills in the foreground where still in shadows providing a nice contrast.

I was initially planning to do a traditional landscape shot but was not satisfied by how it turned up with the wider angle of view. So I decided to create a pano stitch shot with a more tele focal length. This is how it turned out, I hope everyone enjoys the shot. I am so glad I got to see this happen. Thanks again for visiting..