A wondrous sky! As the time crept past midnight, I was nearing complete exhaustion from a long, long day. I left the South Tufa, which another car can be seen doing here, and wandered up to a higher vantage point to try to get different views than I had been capturing over the last few hours and to set up a time lapse camera so I could keep shooting even after I passed out. For a moment the aurora seemed to line up perfectly with the boundaries of Mono Lake I could see, with streaks reaching high up into the sky. The camera captured incredible color, while to the naked eye it was just pale glow and shapes in the sky. The color was virtually imperceptible. I’m actually subtracting saturation here quite a bit. No distinct greens could be seen here, but green on the horizon mixed with the reds to make yellowish colors. The whole lake was reflecting the hues of the sky. I never imagined I’d see such a spectacle here.
Tags: aurora borealis california clouds county lake lights mono moon night northern satellite sierra nevada stars tufa
© All Rights Reserved
With expectations honestly of nothing, I arrived at Mono Lake on Friday ahead of the predicted extreme G5 geomagnetic storm. As darkness fell, I could not yet see anything with my naked eye (I honestly didn’t expect to at all), but my cameras had begun to register unusual color in the sky starting with just a vertical red band right where the moon was stretching directly overhead - far further south than I thought would ever happen given that I was in central California. I began running around shooting different compositions, with many other photographers also at the South Tufa of Mono Lake. It had been stormy earlier in the day in parts of the Eastern Sierra, and the sunset had been spectacular. The slowly dissipating clouds lingered nearly stationary in the sky. The sliver of a moon, only 7.8%, was enough to impart some light to the landscape along with the growing glow to the north. When I clicked the shutter on this frame the faintest glow to the north was becoming visible, and the camera detected a whole spectrum of color in the night sky while the moon was blocked behind a cloud. A satellite high in the sky momentarily reflected a little sunlight. I’m still in awe of what I would see as the night unfolded, and this was a tremendous start. My first time ever seeing the Aurora. My expectations of nothing were infinitely exceeded.
Tags: aurora borealis california clouds county lake lights mono moon night northern satellite sierra nevada stars tufa
© All Rights Reserved
It’s a strange thing when you are wondering across a flat dry playa and you encounter a hole. What would cause such a thing? The flat surface just suddenly gives way to a small network of eroded tributaries cascading into an unknown depth. It appears as though the whole thing happened while the playa was a reborn lake, as the entire surface has the cracked mud texture of the rest of the playa. A section of tumbleweed is embedded in the one side, with another branch sticking out from further down. Did the tumbleweed cause this somehow? What else could create such a thing? It appears almost as if it was a model of a miniature black hole with little stones orbiting towards their demise in the singularity until it became dry and frozen in time. I am left with only questions and no answers in one of Death Valley’s more remote lake beds. Given that this area was reborn as a lake for months last year after Hurricane Hilary’s remnants came through, I wonder what this looks like now. Perhaps there are new and different holes and this one is restored to flat.
Tags: california cracked cracks death depression desert hole lake bed mud national park playa valley
© All Rights Reserved
Softly directional light of a sky about to erupt in fiery color illuminates an enormous dune in Death Valley National Park. I am ever fascinated by the shapes of these dunes, which over countless years have formed these shapes and sizes by the winds blowing through the geometry of this specific valley in this specific spot. The conditions are just right for the sand to filter out of the air into these immense piles. In this case, the central massive dune here is on the order of 600 feet tall or more in my estimation, knowing that the neighboring gigantic dune reaches about 700 feet. The conditions of the soil have such a clear delineation between where the shrubs can grow, and where they cannot, followed by the gradient of height from the beginnings of the sand to the massive summit. Further in the distance to the north, smaller dunes cling to a low ridge line hinting that more dunes are perhaps hidden beyond. I love the textures of the desert, and it’s always been something of a fascination for me having grown up loving forests and trees as much as I did.
Tags: california clouds cottonwood death desert dune dunes eureka last chance mojave mountains national park saline sand sunset valley wilderness
© All Rights Reserved
Back in January, I was exploring around Death Valley National Park and I wandered up to the Ubehebe Crater area where I spotted some accents in the foothills of Tin Mountain. The afternoon Sun was backlighting some copper and reddish plants, which I think are possibly buckwheat. Those plants backlit by the Sun accented the undulating foothills and all of the patterns of erosion of ridges and valleys and gorges which the light was raking across. I was able to isolate some of this area with my longest lens as I hunted for compositions of the hills. Many of my attempts were not successful, but I rather like this one. The tectonic forces that form this landscape are slowly under the assault of periodic flash floods which work to tear down the mountains that the Earth is building up. The evidence is everywhere, even if the rains come seldom in human timescales.
Tags: accents backlight california canyons death desert erosion foothils mojave mountains national park telephoto valley
© All Rights Reserved