Fall Trip ’07: Alabama Hills to Mono Lake, California

As I headed north along the Eastern Sierra, I looked for reaming Fall colors to shoot with members of the Northern California Photography group, who I would be meeting later that day. The only place that seemed to still have decent brightness to the color and a fair number of trees with leaves still intact was the June Lake loop.

By the time we met in the town of Lee Vining, the sun had passed behind the mountains, so I took them to a nearby spot alongside Mono Lake where we could still catch some color on the horizon over the lake at dusk.

The next morning we met at the South Tufa access point, and I directed them to various vantage points as the sun lit the sky, the Sierras, and eventually peeked over the horizon to light the limestone tufa towers surounding us.

After I took them to some of the June Lake aspen groves that I had scouted the day before, we decided to head back towards the Sacramento area with a small detour to the ghost town of Bodie. In the end we had spent less than 24 hours together, but we managed to cover a wide variety of landscapes and lighting conditions. I’ll be looking forward to shooting with them again.