Arizona Treks

Last Friday a friend and I went to Oak Creek near Sedona.  We planned to hike the West fork Trail but found it covered with ice and chose to avoid injury to self and camera gear.  We worked the ruins near and the confluence of Oak Creek and the West Fork.  Then we went to Red Rock Crossing.  This was an unusual trip in that I was pleased with most of the photos made there.

Recently, few of the photos I make please me, at least the ones made on outings.  Another friend mentioned the Ansel Adams quote a week or so ago.  

"Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment."

 - Ansel Adams

This has been so true of what I have shot recently that I find myself not venturing out quite as much as before.  Waiting and hoping I would get past that for I believe it is a temporary condition, being hyper-critical of my own work. I like to think this is merely something many who do subjective, creative work find along the way and that it will help me to improve.

There have been few posts recently, partly because of the lack of satisfaction in my work, and partly because I have several critical software projects to be done and have been focusing on them.

The top photo is in the West Fork just above the waterfall at the confluence.  The ice, still clinging to the logs but above the water created some interesting lines and reflections.  The photo below is part of the ruins near there.  The ivy-covered stone column caught my eye.  The sun was filtered through the trees and made interesting patterns on the column.

That was one of those days that there were no clouds so we had to be creative with what we shot.

Mono Lake was perhaps the single largest attractor to me for this trip.  More time was spent there than any other location and about 40% of all the photos taken were there.  The structures that are the icons of Mono Lake are called tufa.  Sunrise and sunset there are crowds of people with every type of still camera. There are several places where the tufa rises above the water but the main place people go for photography is the South Tufa area that can be reached via a graded dirt road off of 120 East of 395.  The lake has many faces and can be calm then suddenly have strong winds.  The storm that passed through the area came quickly and left the same way, reminded me of what is called an Alberta Clipper in Wisconsin.

The photo above was taken the morning we left Lee Vining, the air was cold so mist was rising off the water and shrouding the bottom of the tufa.  Due to the distance and my lack of a lens adequate for the task, this is a crop from the 4X5 negative.

 This was taken on the snow day as the storm was falling down from the mountains.  It is a bit deceptive because of the tufa on the left.  It almost appears to be part of a larger formation.  There are no cliffs along the shores of the lake that I am aware of.

Another thing that is interesting is the fact that Los Angeles was diverting so much of the input water from the lake that the level dropped.  New legislation has been enacted which disallows diversion of the water until the lake reaches a specific level which is enough higher than the level now that it will make for some very interesting changes.

There will be a second Mono Lake post tomorrow.