As hard as it might be to believe, there was a time when I wasn’t very excited about shooting the Eastern Sierras. I think I took my first trip up the 395 about 15 years ago as I was trying to find a way to get to the Reno Jazz festival without having to take my students through the snow over Donner Summit, and as I was the one who was driving for 8 hours, all I remembered after I got back home was seemingly hundreds of miles of unbroken, desolate desert. “Bah”, I thought to myself. Next time I’ll stick with the 99 as there are more restaurants and gas stations. Not a cloud in the sky on that trip, and it was hot. Very hot. Pfft. And who are those sad people who live in Bishop or Lone Pine…on PURPOSE?
But as I got into photography a few years later, I began seeing other photographers’ shots of the Eastern Sierra, including photos by Galen Rowell, Michael Frye, Marc Adamus, and more. I hadn’t seen anything like what was shown in these photos on that trip and it began to occur to me that I was missing out on something spectacular and that this spectacular something was only 5 hours from my house.
For the past two weekends in a row I’ve witnessed some of the most spectacular light I have ever seen in my life. How did I come to be standing on the bank of the Owens River when the sky erupted last Saturday?
For a few weeks out of the year, a certain phenomenon occurs on an obscure stretch of coastline on the outskirts of Big Sur. From late November through the month of January, the setting sun bursts through a natural archway in Pfeiffer Rock creating a veritable tunnel of light. Photographers from all over the world have traveled to this hidden beach with hopes of ideal conditions each year. The rarity of the perfect shot is due to the fact that you need a clear sky out to the horizon at sunset, a high tide, and the fact that the best light is only available mid December through mid January.
The snowfall this Winter is already off to a much better start in Yosemite National Park. Last year, it barely snowed at all and when it did, only a couple of inches fell in the valley. This year, the fourth snowfall in the valley is due to arrive this afternoon giving the park it’s first White Christmas in several years.
