Late September and a trip to the Eastern Sierra for the Fall colors and the overhyped super eclipse moon was a great reason to go.
So where do you go for the ultimate eclipse? Mono Lake, South Tufa, along with forty or so other crazy photographers. We pointed our lenses, and there were some really big lenses, in the exact direction the Ephemeris app on our phones told us to. We waited. The guy who flew in from Ohio, the couple who just drove six and a half hours from San Francisco, the man and wife with telescope lenses too big to lift, two women from the Bay Area, two from Santa Cruz, one from Europe, thirty others. We waited.
The darkening clouds obscured the moonrise, but the sunset in the West was so brilliant that everyone turned away and shot the color.
The sun set, we waited. Many packed it in, the big lenses left, Ohio left, it was just down to four or six of us.
The moon showed up a bit, still covered, but deep red and big.
A newlywed couple in their early twenties showed up at full darkness. In their broken Chinese English they approached me to shoot the moon with their camera. I had a Nikon, they had a Nikon, we were best friends. Handing me their brand new D800 in the dark I reset all the settings, placed it on a rock, and set the timer, they got the shot of the night. I can now say I have good friends in Beijing. My results were less memorable.
Needless to say the experience was worth the time and effort and we all had some good laughs.
Fall colors were spectacular, and we were treated to an ultimate evening alpenglow session at Glacier Point in Yosemite two days later.
Enjoy the images, they will open larger if you click on them.
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| Virginia Lakes |
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| Upper Rock Creek |
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| Looking for the Super Eclipse you take your chances |
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| Hoping for something better |
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| Waiting with the big lenses, it should be over there |
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| A sunset will be the next best thing |
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| South Tufa, Mono Lake |
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| And everyone packs it in |
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| Supermoon eclipse with a landscape lens |
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| Above Mammoth |
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| Night sky and camp |
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| Mammoth Crest |
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| This is real color from Glacier Point |
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| Alpenglow, Glacier Point |
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| Highway 41, east of the Temblor range |
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| Ranch Gate, Parker Creek, above Mono Lake. |
Beautiful! Color, composition, clarity...emotion evoking photographs. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful images, Skip. I love hiking in aspen forests this time of year, the golden leaves falling all around. The clouds are spectacular.
ReplyDelete