Exploring the Eastern Sierra Blog - July 6, 2011

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The arch at the Alabama Hills, near Lone Pine, CA.
I think it’s safe to say I’m officially on a night photography kick. I’ve got the light-painting bug, I’m itching to get some nice star trail images and I cant wait to start shooting my first time-lapse sequences. (May try that one on next week’s Alaska cruise…)
Before the sun went down, I got this shot of the famous tree duo at the Bristlecone Pines State Park.
After spending a few nights shooting at Mono Lake, we moved on to explore more of the Eastern Sierra region. The Bristlecone Pine trees are located at a state park about an hour south of Mono, down a long side street out of Big Pine, CA. Now the cool thing about these trees, aside from the fact that their twisty limbs look awesome, is that they are the oldest trees in the world (and perhaps the oldest organisms in the world). Some of these badboys are over 4,000 years old! We spent some time hiking around the park while it was light out and then waited for the sun to go down. Apparently, a lot of other photographers had the same idea because it ended up being tricky to find a good tripod spot. We decided to just light-paint the trees and then head out so the other folks could shoot the star trails and such.

A light-painted bristlecone pine tree. I just love the red hue!
The next day we headed a bit further south with the bus. Our destination was the Alabama Hills, but we made a short stop in Bishop, CA first. One of the reasons for our stop was to gather a little inspiration at the Mountain Light Gallery, which features the photography of Galen & Barbara Rowell. The images are just stunning. If you’re ever in the area, I highly recommend dropping in. (The building that houses the gallery is pretty darn cool as well.)
Anyway, we made it to the Alabama Hills that night, which is even further south on 395 at Lone Pine, CA. This is basically a series of rock formations near the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We heard there was a pretty cool arch there, and that’s what we wanted to shoot. We went at sunset to set up for some light painting and stayed for a few hours. We parked the bus not five minutes from the trail head, so it was easy to return again at sunrise to shoot the early morning light. Overall, it was a lot of fun, but a long nap was definitely in order when we returned to the bus! (Image of the arch is at the top of this post.)
Next stop: Lake Havasu City (which, we learned on the way there, was to be a balmy 122 degrees!)
More to come…
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