Picture of the week

View through the Portal

The snow-capped Eastern Sierras as viewed through Whitney Portal Arch.  I traveled through the Owens Valley this last week between storms, photographing the landscape along the way.   I find this valley with its mix of rural grazing lands uncluttered by any development, with the Eastern Sierras in the background quite attractive. It is one of my favorite areas for photography in California.

For this trip the weather window for good light ended up being more limited than anticipated.  The image above was captured as a morning storm cleared enough the shine on this unique and more obscure arch in the Alabama Hills.  One of my goals for this trip was to capture some particular subjects like this arch in better light.  I ended up being fortunate in this case after initially hunkering down at a Lone Pine cafe for breakfast on a rainy morning, peeking out the window, waiting for a break in the weather.

After proceeding on to Death Valley, my trip was unexpectedly cut short due to a transmission failure with the car.  This only happened after getting as far as Bad Water after racing there in time for sunrise, leaving Lone Pine that morning at 5am.  I was hoping after some recent rains, the salt flats at Bad Water would have more water to facilitate some morning reflection photography.  Unfortunately though, this gambit did not pay off, as the area was mostly dry.  Bad light with overcast skies for the morning did not help with my spirits in this regard. On the positive side though, wildflowers are starting to emerge, at what looks to be earlier than expected, and potentially in larger numbers.

With a 184K miles on my SUV, it is getting a bit long in the tooth, and perhaps Townes Pass was a bit hard on it during the descent when downshifting to save the brakes.  After getting it towed from Furnace Creek back to Lone Pine thanks to AAA, finding a mechanic with sufficient knowlege and willingness in the Owens Valley to work on a transmission for a Mercedes ML320 ended up being more difficult than expected.  Seeing a Bishop mechanic's lot filled with over a dozen non-working or abandoned cars did not leave me with a favorable impression.  I ended up renting a U-haul truck and car carrier, and then hauling it back over the Sierras via Highway 50 to Sacramento, where I can try to fix this more on my terms.

Corridor of Cottonwood	Inyo mountains	A crack in the earth	Manzanar garden remains
Ansel's 'Winter Sunrise' revisited	Granite monolith	Golden fields	High Sierra cowboy

All content and images are property of Stephen Fischer Photography, copyright 2010-2016.  Last updated: 1/20/2016   ()