North Lake
– Ernest Hemingway.
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Today's photo is a square crop stitch panorama photo of the beautiful shores of North Lake near Bishop California. This spot is special to photographer’s in California as its one of the few spots were, we get some fall colors. I make it a point to make at least one trip every year during Autumn to the eastern side of Sierra Nevada. This year I had a lot of commitments during the weekend to make the trip, so I decided on a solo trip to Bishop to combine a milky way shot and a sunrise shot of foliage at North Lake.
This shot was taken just before sunrise using the very even ambient light that was present. In my opinion, this is one of the best lights to shoot autumnal colors as the light is very even providing the best rendering of color. I really liked the stones that were right by the shore and wanted to include them into the frame as a foreground interest but wanted to get something different than a portrait composition. So I decided to take about three shots in landscape orientation and then stitch them together as a vertical panorama. I also used my polarizing filter to a medium setting to get a perfect reflection I the water and to eliminate any unwanted reflected light in the scene.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
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Todays shot is from the shores of the wonderful North Lake near Bishop, California. This shot was taken just after the sun peaked over the mountains behind me and flooded the lake and the mountains around it with light. This is my favorite kind of light for shooting fall foliage, the only thing I could ask for is a bit more cloud cover in the sky. I used a short Telephoto focal length to take this shot and focused a bit more on the details in the mountains.
While I was taking photos earlier, I had noticed some fisherman that were already there and going about their business. I wanted to include them in a shot to provide some scale of this amazing scenery. Technicality-wise, I added a 1 stop nd grad to the scene and a polarizing filter to cut the glare a bit but other than that this is a pretty straightforward shot taken in Aperture priority.
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- Anais Nin.
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This shot was taken a few steps away from the North Lake campground near Bishop, California. I am used to something or other coming up during the very short fall window which we have here in California. This time I was determined not to miss my opportunity and wanted at least one shot of the beautiful yellow aspens and the towering mountains. After watching the California fall colors website diligently, I ventured a guess regarding when the North Lake Grove will be peaking and thankfully it perfectly aligned with the new moon date. So, I made a two-day trip to Bishop California. I reached just before sunset at the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains to get my astro shot with the Bristlecone Pines and then drove to the North Lake campground to car camp for the sunrise shot.
After waking up and walking a few paces I was at this stunning location primed to capture the first light on the mountain peaks. I don’t think I will ever get tired of the sight of the first light of the day. Usually this light is very faint, and you have to pay attention to see the slight difference in warmth at the top but at the Sierras usually, the intensity of the warm tones is much higher and hard to miss. I only used a polarizing filter here and took care to meter on the light at the tip of the mountain. The camera and tripod were set as close as I could get to the freezing water and focus were manually adjusted via live view.
- Dante Alighieri.
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As I started out in landscape photography, I loved catching the colors of the sunset as the landscape gets bathed in beautiful golden light. For some reason when I tried to do the same technique in the morning, I didn’t get the same pop in my images. For reasons beyond my understanding, my pictures looked rather flat for the excellent light that was available. Still, I persisted with the sunrise shots, which was not an easily achievable feat considering the fact that both my wife and I were not morning people.
Couple of things came into focus as I gained more experience with sunrise shoots. One, was that the magic actually started to happen before the sun actually rises and is usually over very quickly once the sun is about a quarter over the horizon. Don’t get me wrong there is still beautiful light, but the “wow” light only lasts a precious few moments. I am talking about the time when the first rays of the sun hit the tallest elements in the scene. It's also very important to get your metering game on point to capture it. The image needs to be underexposed to so as not to let the ambient light overpower the first rays. I have been in locations where the first ray is almost invisible because the horizon is elevated and there is enough ambient light in the scene to almost completely overpower the first light of the sun.
So, when I was at North Lake in Bishop to get my fall foliage shot, I was ready. My preparations included setting the focus manually and metering with the brightest point in the scene. Here there was so much difference in dynamic range that it warranted the use of a 2 stop ND grad filter just so that I could even out the sky a bit. The images came out much better than I expected, partially thanks to the excellent sensor on the D850 and its ability to handle so much dynamic range. Other than a bit of sharpness and contrast adjustments nothing much is done to the image and I am really happy how it turned out.
- Lucy Maud Montgomery.
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As a fulltime professional with a part-time hobby of photography, I find it increasingly difficult to find time to chase my photographic and travel interests. Just after our marriage, my wife and I would often go on road trips almost every other week by taking the odd Friday off and stretching our weekends to long weekends. As I grow in my career, its difficult to get vacation times that would help to get away for longer periods of time. So as of late, I have noticed that we have been taking a lot of short trips that often just last the weekend. We are exploring areas closer to our home but taking our time with each location. I think it's getting me more intimate images as I now have the opportunity to take my time with a good location rather than rushing through a great location.
This amazing spot is about 4 hours from my home near Bishop California, in the eastern sierras. We often visit these parts of California but usually, our trips are longer and cover much more spots. On this trip, I only went to two spots, a milky way shot at white mountains and a sunrise shot at North Lake. I have planned the trip to get the fall colors at their peak. This shot was taken just before the sun rose through the horizon. We had beautiful even morning lighting and I used the step stones on the lake shore as foreground interest leading up to the magnificent yellows in the trees on the other side.
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Thanks to all Phoide contributors to North Lake!
Most notably Sandeep Thomas.