I am finally adjusting from my four-week trip to the west coast. The first 18 days were spent with my wife and great friends, and the final 10 days were spent with both old and new photo friends photographing some amazing landscapes. Most of the places that I visited were ones that I have been to before, so I thought I would post my first photo from my trip to one of the places I had never visited before.
Mono Lake and the Eastern Sierras have long been on my list to visit so when my best buddy, Jeff Clow, held a photo tour there, I was all in. The lake is located in the town of Lee Vining at the eastern entrance to Yosemite National Park. The lake is a large shallow lake that has no outlet, causing high levels of salts to accumulate which make the water alkaline. Over time, tufas (columns of limestone deposits) were formed and became visible when the lake's water levels became shallow. The tufas have become a terrific photographic subject and we were fortunate to photograph them with clouds in the sky on our second sunrise visit of the tour. As can be seen in this photograph, the tufas began to glow from the soft light of the morning sun.