Central California

Eagle Ray

Eagle Ray
Sunrise at Eagle Falls Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, CA After Willie and I watched a beautiful sunrise over Emerald Bay we decided to see how easy it would be to find Eagle Falls. We knew the general location but we weren't sure if the falls was right off the trail, if we had to hike down to the lake, or what. Turns out it's a LOT easier to find than we thought. And by a lot easier I mean it's literally right off the road (you can see it from the road). It took a little bit of log walking, tree branch hangin' on, and some skippin' over rocks to get over here to get the composition we wanted. By this time the clouds were rollin' in pretty heavily and although we knew the color was gone we thought we'd have some fun taking some test shots anyways. I wanted to use the branches to add some interest to the foreground as well as frame the shot. I figured the tree could help frame this as well. The sunrise managed to squeak through the clouds and made a couple light-rays which I thought were neat. Without any color I thought I'd turn this into a black and white and see how it turned out. I used Nik's Silver Efex Pro to convert this and pull out some contrast and structure in the photo. Did I over process this? After the conversion I tried to pull the contrast back even more but I think a lot of that motion was in the RAW file from the long exposure. Thoughts? Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/9, 0.5 sec, ISO 100 B+W Circular Polarizer + HiTech 0.6 Soft Grad ND

2012aaron meyers photographybaycaliforniad700lake tahoelake tahoe photographylandscapenaturenikonnikon d700photographysilicon valley photographysunrisetahoewatercoloremeraldemerald bayfilterlakescenicshoresierras