Off to Nevada in a few days...

[mikewhi]

Hi:

I could use some advice on places to shoot 8x10 and 7x17 in the are. I plan a 2-3 day trip to Death Valley and Bristlecone Pine. Where do I find Badwater?
Always wanted to shoot that place. I know about the big dunes in Death Valley. Mono Lake should be great with possibly dramatic clouds this time of year. I know there is Yosemite, of course, but I'd like other suggestions please. I like the eastern Sierras a lot.

-Mike

 

[Jim McD]

If you're heading to Mono Lake, Bodie is right down the road

 

[donbga]

Hi:

I could use some advice on places to shoot 8x10 and 7x17 in the are. I plan a 2-3 day trip to Death Valley and Bristlecone Pine. Where do I find Badwater?
Always wanted to shoot that place. I know about the big dunes in Death Valley. Mono Lake should be great with possibly dramatic clouds this time of year. I know there is Yosemite, of course, but I'd like other suggestions please. I like the eastern Sierras a lot.

-Mike

Mike,

Just go up 395 from Lone Pine. Oh course the Alabama Hills are off 395. If you have time stop in Bushop and visit the Galen Rowell studio, which BTW is very nice.

You may also want to consider the Devils Postpile. If you go up to Bristlecone you may need a jacket, it can get very cool at that altitude.

This is a great time of year to travel in the Eastern Sierras, have fun.

Don Bryant

 

[Dave Wooten]

If you stay in DV all of the places you mentioned are a reasonable drive and all of them are in California....depends on which way you come into the valley....Bad Water IMHO is best to photograph in the morning with Telescope peak in the background, the dunes I like best in the evening...you can stay close to the dunes at Stove Pipe Wells....Furnace Creek is a bit pricey for my pocket and had been closed due to the flood...

Have a good one

 

[jimgalli]

There's so much to do in E. Sierras you could spend a lifetime discovering. Check out the Tufa towers on the S. side of Mono lake off hwy 120. You could give the 717 a workout there. Bristlecones remains my all time favorite place on earth to photograph. Beware: the light at 10,000 ele. with near 0% humidity is more than challenging. Your film will not see what you're seeing. Lots of blue up there. Cerro Gordo E. of Keeler is an interesting haunt. It's all private though so you need to call Mike Patterson and ask permission to come on up. Keeler is worth a stroll too. Just depends on where your heart's at as to which direction you go. If you wind up in Tonopah, give me a call.

Just went and looked at your gallery page. Gorgeous stuff. You WILL enjoy the Tufa's! Go also to the 'sand tufa's' at Navy Beach. Different direction from a Y in the same road. Bring lots of film. Also the drive up to Cerro Gordo may be an end in itself. (4wd required) but the rock formations on the way up are spectacular. In DV make the hike into "Mosaic Canyon". There's a gorgeous 717 shot about 1/4 mile in where the canyon makes an S turn.

 

[Kerik]

While you're in Lee Vining (the town adjacent to Mono Lake) you will want to have lunch at the Mobil Station on Hwy 120 right near the junction with 395. Yes, you want to have lunch at the gas station. The food there is absolutely incredible. Not your typical coke and corn dogs. You will be amazed at the menu...

Enjoy your trip. The East side of the Sierra is one of my favorite places on the planet.

Kerik
www.kerik.com

 

[Loose Gravel]

Sounds like a California trip. Did you want Nevada?

 

[mikewhi]

While you're in Lee Vining (the town adjacent to Mono Lake) you will want to have lunch at the Mobil Station on Hwy 120 right near the junction with 395. Yes, you want to have lunch at the gas station. The food there is absolutely incredible. Not your typical coke and corn dogs. You will be amazed at the menu...

Enjoy your trip. The East side of the Sierra is one of my favorite places on the planet.

Kerik
www.kerik.com

What a great idea! Do they have clean bathrooms<g>. This I will defenitely have to checkout! If I have my friends from Carson City with me, they'll get a kick out of it, too.

Thanks!

-Mike

 

[mikewhi]

Cerro Gordo E. of Keeler is an interesting haunt. It's all private though so you need to call Mike Patterson and ask permission to come on up. Keeler is worth a stroll too. Just depends on where your heart's at as to which direction you go. If you wind up in Tonopah, give me a call..

I see Cerro Gordo is off Hwy 136. I will be driving My Jeep 4WD down with rugged tires and camping gear, so I'll have no problems. I have lots of experience offroading. I have driven Hwy 190 and photographed rock acstracts along the roadside (a 'geometric explosion!' - does anyone know who I'm quoting?<g> Can you PM me how to contact Mike Patterson? If you saw my gallery (thanks for the kind words), up can see I love rock formations and I will go far out of my way to find them. Next year, I"m chartering a small yacht to take me to a remote island for 4 days of shooting odd rock formations, even, so a 4WD trip is no problem for me. Please PM me his contact info as this alone could 'make' the trip for me.

Just went and looked at your gallery page. Gorgeous stuff. You WILL enjoy the Tufa's! Go also to the 'sand tufa's' at Navy Beach. Different direction from a Y in the same road. Bring lots of film.

Yes, I have been to Mono Lake a few times but only for brief stay each time. I see the fall time is some of the best time to get nice skies, is that right? I hope I"m not too early for rain clouds, etc.

In DV make the hike into "Mosaic Canyon". There's a gorgeous 717 shot about 1/4 mile in where the canyon makes an S turn.

How do I find this Canyon? Is it on a topo map?

 

[mikewhi]

Bad Water IMHO is best to photograph in the morning with Telescope peak in the backgroundHave a good one

Can you please tell me how to find Bad Water?
Also, I've seen shots of a place in DV (I think it was EV) with the 'racing rocks' that seem to move on their own. I'd like to see that. Does anyone know where they are?

-Mike

 

[mikewhi]

Sounds like a California trip. Did you want Nevada?

I may be in Carson for 2 weeks, so I'll have time for trips in NV reasonable close to Carson. I mostly plan a trip down 395 to Lone Pine and the environs.
But my friend and I may only be able to get to places near Carson to photograph. I know one place near a place called Red Lake that has a rough high-clearance vehicle road. Do you know of places we can go in NV near Carson?

Thanks!

-Mike

 

[jimgalli]

Mike, "The Racetrack" is on all of the Death Valley maps as is "Mosaic Canyon." Good sky's for photographs are all about good luck. I was at the Palisade Glacier overlook above Glacier Lodge out of Big Pine on Labor Day and the sky was just as bald as can be.

 

[dmr]

Can you please tell me how to find Bad Water?

Badwater (they tell me it's the lowest elevation paved road in the hemisphere) is on the main Death Valley road between Furnace Creek (to the north) and Shoshone (to the south/east).

There are some shots at Badwater among many other things on:

http://www.letis.com/dmr/pics/vegas1.html

http://www.letis.com/dmr/pics/vegas/vegas3/

Page 3 above has some of the Badwater salt flats last spring when they were very moist after the long rainy spell, something you don't see all the time.

 

[Loose Gravel]

Badwater is south of Furnace Creek (maybe 20 miles) in Death Valley.

Pyramid Lake, north of Reno is interesting. I found the shoe tree east of Carson interesting, but I don't know that it is photographically interesting or not. Lake Tahoe can be good, if not a zoo. Virginia City is good, as is the mine south of town, but some say the bldgs are dangerous (not because of the bldgs, but the local ne'er do wells). That was years ago.

I have found Nevada's wide open spaces beautiful and when I just stop beside the road and poke around I find all kinds of interesting and sometimes photogenic opportunities.

 

[Kerik]

Yes, I have been to Mono Lake a few times but only for brief stay each time. I see the fall time is some of the best time to get nice skies, is that right? I hope I"m not too early for rain clouds, etc.

Mike,

You may be a little early, but you never know over there. The Mono Lake Committee operates a couple of webcams. You can keep track of the weather conditions that way as your trip approaches.

http://monolake.org/live/monocam.htm

Kerik

 

[hanaa]

If you're heading to Mono Lake, Bodie is right down the road

bodie is a really good place to take photographs... the old buildings and the cemetry are really neat. The perfect ghost town. And the surrounding are fun to play with on your camera.

Hanaa

 

[mikewhi]

Mike,

You may be a little early, but you never know over there. The Mono Lake Committee operates a couple of webcams. You can keep track of the weather conditions that way as your trip approaches.

http://monolake.org/live/monocam.htm

Kerik

That is too cool for words. I'll check it out and jump in the car if starts to look cloudy! Thanks a lot!

 

[hortense]

If you wish to find sites in Nevada, I would recommend Lamoille Canyon. It's about 35 miles from Elko. As I recall there is a web site for this canyon? At any rate, have a good trip. This state is one of my favorite areas to photograph.

 

[mikewhi]

OK, I packed up all my gear, loaded it in the Jeep and drove all night and got into Carson City at 11:30am. I am psyched to get photographing and helping my friend get his darkroom setup. I brought down my spare Beseler 45MX for him to setup.

I brought the 5x7, 8x10 and 7x17 and tons of film holders and film so I'm all set.

I will do my very best to hook up with jimgalli. And of course check out the great food at the Mobil Station in Lee Vining! I have driven buy it several times, but I've never gone in.

Thanks for your suggestions, if you think of any more, please let me know.

-Mike

 

[raucousimages]

Stop at the DV visitors center and pick up a map and guide book. If you can go to the Race Track. PBS did a special on it a couple years ago and it became very popular and due to the theft of the rocks by tourists the rangers told us they make it a premit only area efectivly closeing it. Also badwater has a walkway being built (it might be finished) that stops several hundred yards short of the actual lowest spot due to a spider they are trying to protect that lives in the salt. It survives off of insects that fall onto the salt pan and was being steped on. So if you can go all the way to the pipe that the USGS uses to do water surveys. Scottys castle, ubhebe crater, and the mesquite trees at the visitors center are fun to shoot. Good food for the best price in DV is at the Indian reservation, Follow the Fry Bread signs on the main road. Rhyolite NV has some great images. It is next to Beaty NV along the east enterance road.

 

[mikewhi]

About to head home. Was in DV yesterday. Drove in at night, hit some flood damaged section of the the road and my Jeep Cherokee went airborne, all 4 wheels off the ground. Cool. They sure do build those Jeeps tough. I rattled around on washboard so bad for so many miles that when I got up to shoot in the morning, parts of my Canham 8x10 had vibrated off so I had to reassemble part of it<g>.

I went to Eureka Dunes, but they've closed off the areas where you could drive up close. So, I found serendiptdity. Not only did the floods bring jeep-launching ramps, but they brought really cool cracked mud beds. I found one big one right alongside the road about 200 feet long and 20 feet across. The mud cracks were about 5 inches deep, realy gorgeous. So I spent the afternoon shooting straight down at mud and not up at the 600 foot dunes. Go figure.

I did catch the food at the Lee Vining Gas station. Very good food, but it was pricey, like everything in that tiny place.

I caught some very nice clouds at Mono Lake one afternoon. I was still fumbling around with the Cooke XVa and I think I forgot to change the aperture ring when I switched elements around and may have ruined a few negatives. Ouch.

I also got up to Bristlecone Pines and the Westgard Pass area for rick abstracts. I found one boulder and spent about 2 hours shooting it. It had an amazing surface on it. I think my friend got the best shot of it, though - a very nice abstract. Then we went up to Brsitlecone and photographed the landscape. There is an area where you can stand on a ledge and look right out over Bishop to the Eastern Sierras. We watched (and photographed) the sun set behind the Sierras. On the drive down, some bighorn sheep ran right in front of the Jeep. We got out and watched them watch us and the ran off after a while - beauitful sight. We drove down the 4WD road to Bishop in the dark - my friend was glad he could not see what was in the pitch black out there!

I am pretty convinved that that Cooke XVa is an awesome lens. It has everything I need. I can shoot 8x10 and 7x17 with it, it is very sharp, beauitful wide open, easy to use. I have only used one other lens on this trip and that is the 240mm Dagor. That Cooke is a great lens. If anyone is holding out, all I can say is that I love mine.

-Mike