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Don Smith Photography's Blog
UPCOMING 2010 WORKSHOPS:
Arches/Canyonlands Photo Workshop - November 3-7, 2010 (Workshop Sold Out)
Winter Big Sur Photo Workshop - Magic Light and The Pfeiffer Beach Arch - January 11-14, 2011 (2 spots remaining)
Northern Arizona Photo Workshop - Grand Canyon, Upper Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe Bend and Sedona - March 16-20, 2011 (4 spots remaining)
Spring Big Sur Workshop - 4th Annual Wildflowers and Color - April 17-20, 2011 (space available)
Springtime in Lake Tahoe and the Mokelumne Wilderness Photo Workshop - May 14-17, 2011 (space available)
Northern California - 3rd Annual Redwoods and Mendocino Photo Workshop - May 23-26, 2011 (space available)
Second Annual Garden Isle and Tropical Paradise - Kauai Photo Workshop - July 8-12, 2011 (hurry - only 5 spots remaining)
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New Article on my Website: Three Ideas for Improving Your Compositions
Join me as I am now of Facebook: Don Smith Photography on Facebook
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My preferred filters: Singh-Ray Filters
Books Available for Purchase on my Website:
Refined Vision: 50 Lessons Designed to Improve Your Digital Landscape Photography (e-book and printed versions - 160 pages)
The Photographer's Guide to the Big Sur Coast (e-book version - 102 pages)
On the Edge (printed version - softcover and hardcover - 120 pages)
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Mono Lake and its calcium-carbonate tufa formations draws photographers from around the world. South tufa is the hot spot as the towers can grow in excess of 30-feet tall. But on the northwest end of the lake, the tufa formations look more like crusty rocks protruding from the saline waters.
Today's image was my first frame as we arrived on location 35 minutes prior to posted sunrise time with Gary Hart's workshop group at Black Point. A five-mile jaunt along dirt roads in the dark leads to a dead-end parking lot and a subsequent quarter-mile walk through black lava sands leads to this mystical location affording one a view to the east past Negit and Paoha Islands. The lake shore currently resides at 6,400 feet and has an average depth of 59 feet and a maximum depth of 159 feet.
The horizon was just starting to come to life with color and I knew I had a small window of opportunity to blend the brightest and darkest areas of the scene in one frame before the contrast range got outside of 6-stops of light that the sensor can handle. This was a three-minute exposure with no filtration (except for a polarizer that was not doing a thing to this image because I was shooting straight towards the approaching sun but helped me cut about 1 1/2 stops of light allowing for the longer shutter time).
My thought was to allow a bit of silkiness to the already calm lake and allow for a bit of movement in the clouds. This image required very little processing and the colors were actually this vivid in the RAW file. To those not accustomed to witnessing mountain light, the intensity of the colors can look a bit amped, but as our workshop students can attest - these colors were real - no Photoshop magic was employed!
As a side note, I would say that this sunrise was one of the best I've seen in all my years of photography. Our group photographed non-stop for a 90-minute period. Simply said, it was an incredible morning!
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www.donsmithphotography.com