Picture of the week

Minaret sunrise

The Minaret peaks at sunrise.  Located in the Ansel Adams wilderness, these jagged peaks are some of the most steep and dramatic in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.  I hiked up to the base of these mountains the last week with two friends (John and Randy), camping at Minaret Lake the first night.  We then crossed over an unmarked pass to the north, skirting the side of Cecil lake by scrambling over loose skree, before picking up a different trail at Iceberg lake and dropping down into the separate basin of Ediza Lake.  Both lake basins were scenic with plenty of photographic opportunities from a landscape perspective.

While out exploring in this area I also ran into another older outdoor naturalist and photographer based out of Yosemite: Ira Estin. As I approached a waterfall with good photographic potential, I found Ira with his head in the stream, apparently looking more closely at the waterlife at the creek bottom.  After almost giving him a heart attack in my greeting, we chatted for a bit.  Interestingly, Ira used to be an engineer, but hated the desk job and traded it in for a life in the wilderness. He now scratches out a living as a travel guide working and living out of Yosemite. Ira kind of reminded me of what I would expect of John Muir if he was still alive, based on his interests, individualism, and demeanor. His knowledge of the natural history here seemed impeccable.

Skies were clear most of the trip, which made interesting photography more challenging. For the picture above, I only had about 5-10 minutes of good light, while also struggling with wind. This particular body of water was chosen by scouting the surrounding area for a sufficiently protected tarn the afternoon before. But on the third day the weather suddenly turned from clear skies to dense clouds, and later snow in a matter of hours, hastening a decsion to get out of the high country. We hiked out via the canyon of the middle fork of the San Joaquin River and back to Agnew Meadows of the Devils Postpile area where we originally started.

On this trip I carried my new Canon 70D which I picked up about 2 weeks prior. The new 70D has met my expectations, reasonably light with the plastic body, and seemed to perform well in terms of its dynamic range and high ISO sensor performance. I only carried one lens to conserve weight: the Canon 17-55mm EF-S f/2.8 IS. I have liked this lens for its sharpness, large aperture, and reasonable flexibility in the focal length.  But on multiple occasions on this trip I found myself limited on the wide angle side of the focal length. In the future if having to carry one lens for such backpacking, I may bring my Tokina 12-24mm f/4 lens as the first priority.  It is a wider angle, lighter, fairly sharp (but not quite as good as the 17-55), but has no IS, which is not that important given I was shooting from the tripod most of the time.  For a backpacking tripod I have a fairly lightweight but older Gitzo G1128 mk2 that works reasonably well. It is 4 segmented, and does not have the new G-lock mechanism, so you have to be a bit patient in deploying and recollapsing it.  For my ballhead I first experimented with a new lightweight Giotto MH-1003 at about 6 ounces, hoping to shed almost a pound compared to my beefy and dependable Markins Q-10. However the Giotto MH-1003 was not sufficient to keep my body and lens in place in a reliable manner, especially with the body in the vertical orientation.  It may work OK with the lighter lens or if torqued down extremely tightly, but I decided I couldn't risk it, and after a day hike the previously to Rainbow Falls with less than stellar results, I resorted to the Markins instead for the longer backpacking trip into the high country.

You can see more high quality images of the high sierras from previous trips in my image gallery collection here.

All content and images are property of Stephen Fischer Photography, copyright 2013.  Last updated: 9/22/2013   ()