A solo sport.

These small versions do not compare well to the full size version, so please bear with me until I can have a show to print them. Above I have used a very long shutter, of approximately 15 minutes to create the movement you see in these nighttime clouds.


With a different camera, this is a much more detailed version of almost exactly the same scene. This time with series of shorter exposures of 30 seconds. This is a composite image of 14 photographs to create the final image.


Mono Lake, just outside the gates of Yosemite, is an incredible place. Silica bubbled out of the bottom of the lake bed creating stalagmite towers. A receding water level have revealed these beautiful Tufa formations, some almost 20 feet tall. The lake is one of the saltiest in the world, and a mecca for bird watchers. I have another image of an osprey nested along the shore. The night here was quiet and serene, with almost no artificial lights, and snow capped Sierras in the background. This was one of the most prolific nights of photography in recent memory.


The night images produce a softer quality than that of your typical image. You have greater challenges at times, for example where the entire road below Yosemite Falls is full of cars. This was the night of the full moon during the heaviest flows of water during the year, creating the Moonbow. It was a photography circus out there in Cook's Meadow, where a line of 50 or more tripods with operators waited for their version of the famous shot. This was taken prior to the actual full rainbow effect, but you can see a faint band of color up high on Upper Yosemite Falls.


Down here at lower Yosemite Falls, it was even more difficult to get an image of the Moonbow without human element. People were shining their flashlights all over, and sometimes I wonder why I try to create an image of the parks depicting cool serenity, when in fact rude, pretentious, and unimaginative photographers were climbing all over each other for space below the falls. It was this night that we remember that photography is a solo sport.