ABC Wednesday: Y is for Yellow Fall Color

The fall color in the Northeast is dominate by the red color of the red maple trees.  When we traveled in the Sierra Mountain last fall, we discovered that its fall color is dominated by the yellow leaves of aspen trees.  Here are several images that we took at Lee Vining Canyon.

When we drove through the Tioga Road from Yosemite National Park to Eastern Sierra, the road took us to Lee Vining on the shore of Mono Lake.  Under the setting sun, we could look down from the mountain into the Lee Vining Canyon that was dotted with aspen trees in its most brilliant fall Yellow color.

Later on during a brillient fall afternoon, we have the opportunity to follow the small river into the Canyon and had a closer view of the Aspen forest.

Inside the forest, I got a perfect shot of the sun star through the Yellow aspen trees.

This is one of our favorite, a small brook winding its way through the aspen forest.

Multicolor leaves in rapid flowing stream make such a beautiful image!

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Skywatch Friday, Weekend Reflection: Lundy Lake

October 23, 2009, it was the first day of our photo trip to Eastern Sierra, we woke up early to first photographed the sunrise over the Mono Lake, we were than at the ghost town of Bodie. Grace was tired and wasn't feeling too well, we thus went back to Bridgeport and had sandwich from the local butcher. In the afternoon, we joined again with the rest of the group at Lundy Lake.

Lundy Lake is formed by one of the many tributaries that originally feed into the Mono Lake. It was damed in 1911. We first went further upstream to photograph the pond formed by a beaver dam. In the first two pictures, you can see the perfect blue sky reflected from the pond filled with trees fallen by the beavers.

The main purpose for us coming to the lake is to photograph the Fall Colors. Unlike the Northeast, the Fall Colors of the Sierra Mountain is mostly yellow. This tree at the bank of the lake was showing off its Fall Color at its best.

Now we see the Lundy Lake proper and the Aspen tree turing yellow along the lake.

Here we were looking toward the west from the dam with view of the whole lake and the Sierra Mountain at the back drop. The lake is famous for trout fishing.

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ABC Wednesday: B is for Bridgeport, CA or Beef?!

Bridgeport, California is at Eastern Sierra on the Highway 395 between its junction with Rt. 108 and Rt. 120. Both routes cross the Sierra Mountain to the West Coast. Rt. 108 is also know as Sonora Pass Highway and the part of Rt. 120 that cross the Sierra Mountain alone the Yosemite National Park is also known as Tioga Road. Both roads close during the winter snow season. We were fortunate that we were able to pass both highways during our photograph tours to Yosemite National Park and Eastern Sierra last october.

The Highway 395 provides easy access to the north (Lake Tahoe-Reno), south (Death Valley, Las Vegas, Los Angles), east (Salt Lake City) and west (Yosemite, Sonora). In addition to the easy access to all directions, Bridgeport has its own attractions of trout fishing, hunting and winter sports.

In reality, the town is just houses along a segment of Highway 395, less than a mile long with several motels, one supermarket/grocery store, a butcher, several sandwich shops and restaurants. The most important structure in the town is the Bridgeport courthouse, an impressive Victorian building completed in 1881. It is featured in the first three pictures.

After our visit to Yosemite National Park, we took the Tioga road to cross the Sierra Mountain and used Bridgeport as a base to visit many surrounding attractions such as Bodie, Twin Lake, Mono Lake, South Tufa, etc.

This is the outside terrace of Bridgeport Inn, built in 1877, one of the better hotel/motel/restaurant in town. You can see Grace's reflection on the stool.

Here is the entrance of Bridgeport Inn, we went there for lunch sandwich the first day, we went for steak dinner the next and we went bak for prime-rib dinner the last day. All around Bridgeport are cattle farms. I was at the local butcher for a fresh made roast beef sandwich one lunch time, a couple of cowboys walked in. "Relatives are coming, we need some meat", they said. The steaks were 1 1/2-inch thick, the size of a large dinner plate, the pork chops were 2-inch thick. I have never seen so much meat for a dinner party before. By the way, if you bring your own deer (presumably dead one that you hunted down that morning), the butcher will skin, clean, cut for you at a cost of $100.

After all that beef, very delicious beef I must say, where are the leftover. They are high up in the air.

This one is a real long-horned cattle. The aspen tree was in perfect yellow Fall color in the background.

Well, Bridgeport is such centrally located for the travel in Eastern Sierra, of cause it has a garage. I like the symmetry of this photo.

Click here to see several of our past blogs of our photographic trip at Eastern Sierra, or here for our photos of the Eastern Sierra.

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Weekend Reflection: Bodie

Bodie is a ghost town located at Mono County, California, east of the Sierra Nevada Mountain. It is the best preserved original gold mining town. No one has lived in the town for many years. It was designated as a National Historical Landmark and administrated by the California State Park. With the financial crises, the park was scheduled to be closed by the California State Government. Eventually a compromise was reached and Bodie still open for the 2009-2010 season. When we were there, it was guarded by one lone State Park ranger with much shorter opening time.

Bodie started as a mining camp when gold was discovered in 1859. At the peak of its boom in 1879, it has a population of 5000-7000 people with over 2000 buildings. Now less than 10% of the buildings still stand. It is a photographers' paradise, the old buildings gave very rich and saturated color.

Here you can see Grace's reflection from the old shop windows.

The field is littered with various mining equipments and wagons.

Some of the interior of the buildings are still preserved, make us felt some ghosts were still hung around the room and having a drink with their mining buddies.

One of the building of Bodie was moved to the near by town of Bridgeport and has been used as a small motel. Apparently it is in a better conditions than those left behind. Here you can see the reflection of Bridgeport courthouse from its very elegant window.

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ABC Wednesday: U for Un.....

The last day of our trip to Eastern Sierra, our group leader Dave Wyman woke us up at 6 in the morning to go to the Twin Lake. It is one of the many lakes formed by damming the tributaries feeding into the Mono Lake. It was very cold, very dark and very early. For us, the Unforeseeable and Unexpected was when the sun finally came up, we were greeted with an Unbelievable and Unforgettable scenery.

As you can see from the photograph, the sun bathed the mountains closer to the lake in a golden light, further away, the snow-capped mountain also lighted up, both of them reflected in the calm lake surface. The water was so clear that you could see the pebbles underneath, and in the distance, a multicolor shimmering just appeared.

Here Dave Wyman was talking to two other group members. It is a reflection from the lake and I inverted it a 180-degree.

Now the sun came up more and we can see the opposite side of the lake, and the shimmering turned to golden color. Unquestionably, it is one of the most amazing scenery we have seen during the trip.

This is the way how to use a vintage Leica. Our other leader Ken Rockwell was shown here photographing the snow-capped mountain on the other side of the lake. He hung his backpack on the tripod in order to further stabilized it and pointed his hand-held light meter toward the scene. For me, it is Unbelievably difficult but I bet he would have Unsurpassed quality of the image on film.

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ABC Wednesday & Skywatch Friday: T for Tufa

As we showed in our last post of Sunset of South Tufa at Mono Lake of Eastern Sierra, we have to catch the light in order to make the tufa more dramatic. We went back the next morning and tried to photograph them under the morning sun. Here, the sun just came up and bathed the tufa and the sky in glorious red color.

Very quickly, the light changed. Here we have the tufa in front of the snow capped Sierra Mountain, both reflected on the very calm blue lake surface.

Here is the same tufa as we shown in our last blog under the sunset, it was now under the morning sun and perfect blue sky, a very different image.

Our blogging friend J commented that she would love to go out on the Mono Lake on a boat. That was exactly what we did, went out on the lake in a canoe. It just happened that day, October 24, was International Day of Climate Change organized by 350.org. Over 5200 events at 181 countries came together. In each event, people tried to use their own means to form the number "350". The means of Mono Lake Committee was to have 18 boats assembling the number "350" on the lake. You can see the photo here. Well, we were part of the group in the picture. It has made our trip more meaningful and also allowed us to have a chance to view the tufa out on the lake. Grace was sitting so low in the canoe, she really had a view of the tufa at water level.

To bring the climate change impact more at home, as we were assembling the canoe for the "350", a forest fire was raging at a distant Sierra Mountain top.

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ABC Wednesday & Skywatch Friday: S for Sunset at South Tufa

During our trip to Eastern Sierra in late October, one of the highlight was to visit the tufa at Mono Lake. Tufa is a strange geological phenomenon. It is similar to the stalactite and stalagmite in the cave. It is formed by the calcium carbonate deposit. But rather than formed by the water droplets from the cave ceiling, it is formed by the water forced out from the bottom of the lake. When the water sources of Mono Lake was diverted to feed Los Angeles, the water level of the lake dropped. The tufa was exposed for us to see. The best place to view the tufa at Mono Lake is at South Tufa.

The pale gray limestone columns are best viewed during the sunset or sunrise. We arrived at South Tufa just at the sunset, we were a little bit worried that we missed the timing. But actually the most dramatic view was after the sunset when the sky changed to brilliant red.

We have only a few minutes to catch the color before all changed to dark.

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