Photos from beautiful San Francisco, California
![Purple Bliss
Bonsai Rock
Lake Tahoe, Nevada
[Update on 8/29/11] I decided to re-edit this image since it's one of my favorites. I pulled up the brightness in the rock and un-cropped the photo to get more of the reflections. Thoughts?
A bunch of months ago I saw a local photographer and one of my good Flickr friends, David Shield (http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidshield/), post a photo from "Bonsai Rock" in Lake Tahoe. Bonsai Rock is located on the north-east side of the lake, about 45 minutes from South Lake Tahoe. If you stand on the east shore you can get spectacular sunset photos with the rock in the foreground and the sunset in the background. Ever since I saw his photo this place was on my list of things I wanted to photograph!
I attempted this photo a couple weekends ago but a storm rolled in and there was no color in the sky. I didn't even bother leaving our ski cabin to go shoot. Finally this last weekend the weather looked great and I had a chance to drive up to the north-east shore and find Bonsai Rock.
I've read a lot of blogs and viewed a lot of photos of Bonsai Rock but it was 1) harder to find and 2) harder to photograph than I expected. I spent over an hour trying to find the right location to setup the tripod and take the photo. We had a gorgeous sunset (at one point the sunset over the mountains made it look like the mountains were on FIRE!) with some great color but I couldn't keep the photo simple enough to my liking -- there were just too many rocks in the photo. I didn't realize that the water level of Lake Tahoe rises and falls. This was a medium height: some of the rocks that many other photographs show (and lead the eye into Bonsai Rock) were covered up, but a lot of the rocks behind Bonsai Rock were completely uncovered and distracted from the background. Just as I was about to leave and call it a disappointing failure I thought about taking this one last, simple, composition zooming in on the rock. The sun had set about 15 minutes earlier but the color in the sky all of a sudden lit up further west than it had earlier and a long exposure (2.5 minutes) got the silky smooth water and brought out the color in the sky! I'm quite happy with how this came out!
To find Bonsai Rock park at 39.183690 , -119.927088 and then climb down the side of the hill to 39.184844, -119.927727.
More detailed directions if you're trying to find it: The parking location is about 6.7 miles north of the highway 28/highway 50 junction. There's a small turn-out on the side of the road (on the left side of the road if you're heading from S. Lake Tahoe. If you get to what looks like a highway rest stop on the right you've gone too far. If you're coming from North Lake, it's on the right, just past Sand Harbor after the rest-stop thing on your left). If you want to throw in your GPS coordinates the parking spot is pretty much exactly at 39.183690 , -119.927088. Once you park you have to hike down a steep hill slightly north of where you park. A lot of people mentioned that it was a "steep hike" but I never realized that it was about a 200 foot climb down to the water. It wasn't extremely difficult to get down, but we did have to hold onto some trees/roots/rocks to make sure we didn't slip and tumble into an injury. Getting back up after the shoot was a decent workout (note: if you're going at sunset, I recommend that you DON'T forget to bring a flashlight). Bonsai Rock itself is located at 39.184844, -119.927727. Mike Wiacek (http://www.mikewiacek.com/blog/2009/08/bonsai-rock-formation-lake-tahoe/) has been so kind as to create a custom Google Maps for Bonsai Rock. Check it out at http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=117078272024675730991.000471c9db1839af7e9e6.
Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
35mm, f/11, 2.5 minutes, ISO 100, Tripod
Lee Foundation Kit Filter Holder
B+W F-Pro Circular Polarizer, HiTech 0.9 Graduated ND, Hitech 0.9 ND Soft, and 0.6 ND Soft.
No HDR!](http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Places/WestCoast/SF/i-NqZ7Sgr/0/Ti/DSC_7853-Edit-Ti.jpg "Purple Bliss
Bonsai Rock
Lake Tahoe, Nevada
[Update on 8/29/11] I decided to re-edit this image since it's one of my favorites. I pulled up the brightness in the rock and un-cropped the photo to get more of the reflections. Thoughts?
A bunch of months ago I saw a local photographer and one of my good Flickr friends, David Shield (http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidshield/), post a photo from \"Bonsai Rock\" in Lake Tahoe. Bonsai Rock is located on the north-east side of the lake, about 45 minutes from South Lake Tahoe. If you stand on the east shore you can get spectacular sunset photos with the rock in the foreground and the sunset in the background. Ever since I saw his photo this place was on my list of things I wanted to photograph!
I attempted this photo a couple weekends ago but a storm rolled in and there was no color in the sky. I didn't even bother leaving our ski cabin to go shoot. Finally this last weekend the weather looked great and I had a chance to drive up to the north-east shore and find Bonsai Rock.
I've read a lot of blogs and viewed a lot of photos of Bonsai Rock but it was 1) harder to find and 2) harder to photograph than I expected. I spent over an hour trying to find the right location to setup the tripod and take the photo. We had a gorgeous sunset (at one point the sunset over the mountains made it look like the mountains were on FIRE!) with some great color but I couldn't keep the photo simple enough to my liking -- there were just too many rocks in the photo. I didn't realize that the water level of Lake Tahoe rises and falls. This was a medium height: some of the rocks that many other photographs show (and lead the eye into Bonsai Rock) were covered up, but a lot of the rocks behind Bonsai Rock were completely uncovered and distracted from the background. Just as I was about to leave and call it a disappointing failure I thought about taking this one last, simple, composition zooming in on the rock. The sun had set about 15 minutes earlier but the color in the sky all of a sudden lit up further west than it had earlier and a long exposure (2.5 minutes) got the silky smooth water and brought out the color in the sky! I'm quite happy with how this came out!
To find Bonsai Rock park at 39.183690 , -119.927088 and then climb down the side of the hill to 39.184844, -119.927727.
More detailed directions if you're trying to find it: The parking location is about 6.7 miles north of the highway 28/highway 50 junction. There's a small turn-out on the side of the road (on the left side of the road if you're heading from S. Lake Tahoe. If you get to what looks like a highway rest stop on the right you've gone too far. If you're coming from North Lake, it's on the right, just past Sand Harbor after the rest-stop thing on your left). If you want to throw in your GPS coordinates the parking spot is pretty much exactly at 39.183690 , -119.927088. Once you park you have to hike down a steep hill slightly north of where you park. A lot of people mentioned that it was a \"steep hike\" but I never realized that it was about a 200 foot climb down to the water. It wasn't extremely difficult to get down, but we did have to hold onto some trees/roots/rocks to make sure we didn't slip and tumble into an injury. Getting back up after the shoot was a decent workout (note: if you're going at sunset, I recommend that you DON'T forget to bring a flashlight). Bonsai Rock itself is located at 39.184844, -119.927727. Mike Wiacek (http://www.mikewiacek.com/blog/2009/08/bonsai-rock-formation-lake-tahoe/) has been so kind as to create a custom Google Maps for Bonsai Rock. Check it out at http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=117078272024675730991.000471c9db1839af7e9e6.
Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
35mm, f/11, 2.5 minutes, ISO 100, Tripod
Lee Foundation Kit Filter Holder
B+W F-Pro Circular Polarizer, HiTech 0.9 Graduated ND, Hitech 0.9 ND Soft, and 0.6 ND Soft.
No HDR!")
Silver Haired Ancestor
Startrails and Ancient Petrogylphs
California
After poor planning cancelled a trip to Utah, Willie and I decided to head down to Death Valley instead. We brought along my friend Zack and were pretty excited to explore and get some great photos. Unfortunately, one of us must have really upset Mamma Nature because we got skunked for pretty much every photo we tried to take.
We left DV on Saturday morning and were off to find some ancient petroglyph formations that faced snow covered mountains. After finding the parking spot, going on a nasty little hike, and doing some bouldering we finally arrived at the petroglyphs. We weren't quite sure we'd be able to find it so we arrived *reallllllly* early (like at 1pm for a 5:45pm sunset). Sure enough, we found it almost immediately! What an amazing site! These petroglphys, which are about 5,000 years old and one of the only ones that face the sky, sit on top of a block of volcanic rock and dozens of petroglyphs are carved into the rock, perhaps by ancestors of the Paiute (or Shoshone-Paiute) people. It's about 15 or 20 feet tall, somewhat bowl shaped, and slightly steep, perhaps about a 40 degree slope (which made standing for photos difficult).
We thought we'd be the only ones there but were quite wrong (that seemed to be the theme of the trip … just wrong about everything!). A group of locals joined us for a couple minutes and then left as another large family joined us and eventually left. For a while we had the place to ourselves and used the time to get our compositions perfect. Surprisingly, around 3pm another set of (professional) photographers showed up and we had to squeeze in so that all 5 of us could get photos. It was pretty amusing, with one guy pretty much dangling off the rock! With our tripods setup we waited for sunset.
Mamma Nature had not been nice to us during the trip but the 2 other photographers had been lucky all week, getting great skies the entire time, and we hoped their luck would turn our fortunes. Unfortunately, Mamma hated us more than ever and brought in some awful big clouds that blocked the sky from lighting up and we went home empty handed. So much for sunset!
After eating dinner we looked back at the skies and saw it had cleared up and thought "hey, lets go back and do star trails!" So off we go, with a whole lot of extra clothing, back up the nasty little hike and to the petroglphys. Willie brought some yellow tissue paper to diffuse a LED flashlight and we light painted the rock and then took a 30 minute exposure for the startrails. Willie manned the flashlight while I clicked off our shutters and tried to block the wind from shaking our cameras. It took a couple tries but we finally got the light painting thing down and then were able to move on to our 30 minute startrails. Yet again, Mamma Nature tried to stop us and rolled in a bunch of clouds just as we started the 30 minute exposure! It ended up creating a neat little effect, with the startrails being intermixed with clouds. I thought it made the startrails look like little silvery strands of hair!
After the shot, we packed up and finally got to bed at about 12:30am. Being as crazy as we are, we woke up again at 5am, hiked back to petroglyphs for a 3rd time and tried for a nice sunrise (again, a failure). At least we got this shot and we had an amazing trip regardless!
Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
17mm, f/7.1, 30 min, ISO 200
Startrails and Ancient Petrogylphs
California
After poor planning cancelled a trip to Utah, Willie and I decided to head down to Death Valley instead. We brought along my friend Zack and were pretty excited to explore and get some great photos. Unfortunately, one of us must have really upset Mamma Nature because we got skunked for pretty much every photo we tried to take.
We left DV on Saturday morning and were off to find some ancient petroglyph formations that faced snow covered mountains. After finding the parking spot, going on a nasty little hike, and doing some bouldering we finally arrived at the petroglyphs. We weren't quite sure we'd be able to find it so we arrived *reallllllly* early (like at 1pm for a 5:45pm sunset). Sure enough, we found it almost immediately! What an amazing site! These petroglphys, which are about 5,000 years old and one of the only ones that face the sky, sit on top of a block of volcanic rock and dozens of petroglyphs are carved into the rock, perhaps by ancestors of the Paiute (or Shoshone-Paiute) people. It's about 15 or 20 feet tall, somewhat bowl shaped, and slightly steep, perhaps about a 40 degree slope (which made standing for photos difficult).
We thought we'd be the only ones there but were quite wrong (that seemed to be the theme of the trip … just wrong about everything!). A group of locals joined us for a couple minutes and then left as another large family joined us and eventually left. For a while we had the place to ourselves and used the time to get our compositions perfect. Surprisingly, around 3pm another set of (professional) photographers showed up and we had to squeeze in so that all 5 of us could get photos. It was pretty amusing, with one guy pretty much dangling off the rock! With our tripods setup we waited for sunset.
Mamma Nature had not been nice to us during the trip but the 2 other photographers had been lucky all week, getting great skies the entire time, and we hoped their luck would turn our fortunes. Unfortunately, Mamma hated us more than ever and brought in some awful big clouds that blocked the sky from lighting up and we went home empty handed. So much for sunset!
After eating dinner we looked back at the skies and saw it had cleared up and thought "hey, lets go back and do star trails!" So off we go, with a whole lot of extra clothing, back up the nasty little hike and to the petroglphys. Willie brought some yellow tissue paper to diffuse a LED flashlight and we light painted the rock and then took a 30 minute exposure for the startrails. Willie manned the flashlight while I clicked off our shutters and tried to block the wind from shaking our cameras. It took a couple tries but we finally got the light painting thing down and then were able to move on to our 30 minute startrails. Yet again, Mamma Nature tried to stop us and rolled in a bunch of clouds just as we started the 30 minute exposure! It ended up creating a neat little effect, with the startrails being intermixed with clouds. I thought it made the startrails look like little silvery strands of hair!
After the shot, we packed up and finally got to bed at about 12:30am. Being as crazy as we are, we woke up again at 5am, hiked back to petroglyphs for a 3rd time and tried for a nice sunrise (again, a failure). At least we got this shot and we had an amazing trip regardless!
Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
17mm, f/7.1, 30 min, ISO 200
Silver Haired Ancestor
Startrails and Ancient Petrogylphs
California
After poor planning cancelled a trip to Utah, Willie and I decided to head down to Death Valley instead. We brought along my friend Zack and were pretty excited to explore and get some great photos. Unfortunately, one of us must have really upset Mamma Nature because we got skunked for pretty much every photo we tried to take.
We left DV on Saturday morning and were off to find some ancient petroglyph formations that faced snow covered mountains. After finding the parking spot, going on a nasty little hike, and doing some bouldering we finally arrived at the petroglyphs. We weren't quite sure we'd be able to find it so we arrived *reallllllly* early (like at 1pm for a 5:45pm sunset). Sure enough, we found it almost immediately! What an amazing site! These petroglphys, which are about 5,000 years old and one of the only ones that face the sky, sit on top of a block of volcanic rock and dozens of petroglyphs are carved into the rock, perhaps by ancestors of the Paiute (or Shoshone-Paiute) people. It's about 15 or 20 feet tall, somewhat bowl shaped, and slightly steep, perhaps about a 40 degree slope (which made standing for photos difficult).
We thought we'd be the only ones there but were quite wrong (that seemed to be the theme of the trip … just wrong about everything!). A group of locals joined us for a couple minutes and then left as another large family joined us and eventually left. For a while we had the place to ourselves and used the time to get our compositions perfect. Surprisingly, around 3pm another set of (professional) photographers showed up and we had to squeeze in so that all 5 of us could get photos. It was pretty amusing, with one guy pretty much dangling off the rock! With our tripods setup we waited for sunset.
Mamma Nature had not been nice to us during the trip but the 2 other photographers had been lucky all week, getting great skies the entire time, and we hoped their luck would turn our fortunes. Unfortunately, Mamma hated us more than ever and brought in some awful big clouds that blocked the sky from lighting up and we went home empty handed. So much for sunset!
After eating dinner we looked back at the skies and saw it had cleared up and thought "hey, lets go back and do star trails!" So off we go, with a whole lot of extra clothing, back up the nasty little hike and to the petroglphys. Willie brought some yellow tissue paper to diffuse a LED flashlight and we light painted the rock and then took a 30 minute exposure for the startrails. Willie manned the flashlight while I clicked off our shutters and tried to block the wind from shaking our cameras. It took a couple tries but we finally got the light painting thing down and then were able to move on to our 30 minute startrails. Yet again, Mamma Nature tried to stop us and rolled in a bunch of clouds just as we started the 30 minute exposure! It ended up creating a neat little effect, with the startrails being intermixed with clouds. I thought it made the startrails look like little silvery strands of hair!
After the shot, we packed up and finally got to bed at about 12:30am. Being as crazy as we are, we woke up again at 5am, hiked back to petroglyphs for a 3rd time and tried for a nice sunrise (again, a failure). At least we got this shot and we had an amazing trip regardless!
Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
17mm, f/7.1, 30 min, ISO 200" href="javascript:openLB(1709478471,'',XLarge,'',1024,682);">
Silver Haired Ancestor
Startrails and Ancient Petrogylphs
California
After poor planning cancelled a trip to Utah, Willie and I decided to head down to Death Valley instead. We brought along my friend Zack and were pretty excited to explore and get some great photos. Unfortunately, one of us must have really upset Mamma Nature because we got skunked for pretty much every photo we tried to take.
We left DV on Saturday morning and were off to find some ancient petroglyph formations that faced snow covered mountains. After finding the parking spot, going on a nasty little hike, and doing some bouldering we finally arrived at the petroglyphs. We weren't quite sure we'd be able to find it so we arrived *reallllllly* early (like at 1pm for a 5:45pm sunset). Sure enough, we found it almost immediately! What an amazing site! These petroglphys, which are about 5,000 years old and one of the only ones that face the sky, sit on top of a block of volcanic rock and dozens of petroglyphs are carved into the rock, perhaps by ancestors of the Paiute (or Shoshone-Paiute) people. It's about 15 or 20 feet tall, somewhat bowl shaped, and slightly steep, perhaps about a 40 degree slope (which made standing for photos difficult).
We thought we'd be the only ones there but were quite wrong (that seemed to be the theme of the trip … just wrong about everything!). A group of locals joined us for a couple minutes and then left as another large family joined us and eventually left. For a while we had the place to ourselves and used the time to get our compositions perfect. Surprisingly, around 3pm another set of (professional) photographers showed up and we had to squeeze in so that all 5 of us could get photos. It was pretty amusing, with one guy pretty much dangling off the rock! With our tripods setup we waited for sunset.
Mamma Nature had not been nice to us during the trip but the 2 other photographers had been lucky all week, getting great skies the entire time, and we hoped their luck would turn our fortunes. Unfortunately, Mamma hated us more than ever and brought in some awful big clouds that blocked the sky from lighting up and we went home empty handed. So much for sunset!
After eating dinner we looked back at the skies and saw it had cleared up and thought "hey, lets go back and do star trails!" So off we go, with a whole lot of extra clothing, back up the nasty little hike and to the petroglphys. Willie brought some yellow tissue paper to diffuse a LED flashlight and we light painted the rock and then took a 30 minute exposure for the startrails. Willie manned the flashlight while I clicked off our shutters and tried to block the wind from shaking our cameras. It took a couple tries but we finally got the light painting thing down and then were able to move on to our 30 minute startrails. Yet again, Mamma Nature tried to stop us and rolled in a bunch of clouds just as we started the 30 minute exposure! It ended up creating a neat little effect, with the startrails being intermixed with clouds. I thought it made the startrails look like little silvery strands of hair!
After the shot, we packed up and finally got to bed at about 12:30am. Being as crazy as we are, we woke up again at 5am, hiked back to petroglyphs for a 3rd time and tried for a nice sunrise (again, a failure). At least we got this shot and we had an amazing trip regardless!
Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
17mm, f/7.1, 30 min, ISO 200
Startrails and Ancient Petrogylphs
California
After poor planning cancelled a trip to Utah, Willie and I decided to head down to Death Valley instead. We brought along my friend Zack and were pretty excited to explore and get some great photos. Unfortunately, one of us must have really upset Mamma Nature because we got skunked for pretty much every photo we tried to take.
We left DV on Saturday morning and were off to find some ancient petroglyph formations that faced snow covered mountains. After finding the parking spot, going on a nasty little hike, and doing some bouldering we finally arrived at the petroglyphs. We weren't quite sure we'd be able to find it so we arrived *reallllllly* early (like at 1pm for a 5:45pm sunset). Sure enough, we found it almost immediately! What an amazing site! These petroglphys, which are about 5,000 years old and one of the only ones that face the sky, sit on top of a block of volcanic rock and dozens of petroglyphs are carved into the rock, perhaps by ancestors of the Paiute (or Shoshone-Paiute) people. It's about 15 or 20 feet tall, somewhat bowl shaped, and slightly steep, perhaps about a 40 degree slope (which made standing for photos difficult).
We thought we'd be the only ones there but were quite wrong (that seemed to be the theme of the trip … just wrong about everything!). A group of locals joined us for a couple minutes and then left as another large family joined us and eventually left. For a while we had the place to ourselves and used the time to get our compositions perfect. Surprisingly, around 3pm another set of (professional) photographers showed up and we had to squeeze in so that all 5 of us could get photos. It was pretty amusing, with one guy pretty much dangling off the rock! With our tripods setup we waited for sunset.
Mamma Nature had not been nice to us during the trip but the 2 other photographers had been lucky all week, getting great skies the entire time, and we hoped their luck would turn our fortunes. Unfortunately, Mamma hated us more than ever and brought in some awful big clouds that blocked the sky from lighting up and we went home empty handed. So much for sunset!
After eating dinner we looked back at the skies and saw it had cleared up and thought "hey, lets go back and do star trails!" So off we go, with a whole lot of extra clothing, back up the nasty little hike and to the petroglphys. Willie brought some yellow tissue paper to diffuse a LED flashlight and we light painted the rock and then took a 30 minute exposure for the startrails. Willie manned the flashlight while I clicked off our shutters and tried to block the wind from shaking our cameras. It took a couple tries but we finally got the light painting thing down and then were able to move on to our 30 minute startrails. Yet again, Mamma Nature tried to stop us and rolled in a bunch of clouds just as we started the 30 minute exposure! It ended up creating a neat little effect, with the startrails being intermixed with clouds. I thought it made the startrails look like little silvery strands of hair!
After the shot, we packed up and finally got to bed at about 12:30am. Being as crazy as we are, we woke up again at 5am, hiked back to petroglyphs for a 3rd time and tried for a nice sunrise (again, a failure). At least we got this shot and we had an amazing trip regardless!
Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
17mm, f/7.1, 30 min, ISO 200
Nikon D700 |
More details: exif |
Original size: 4256x2832 |
Current: 800x533 |
Keywords: art indian landscape desert sierra california clouds carvings dry mountains nature adventure photography ancient native ancestors indians nikon petroglyph long exposure eastern sierras native american glyph north america sierra mountains 2012 d700 nikon d700 aaron meyers photography sky rock