Craig Stocks Arts Blog

I thought I’d post a couple more photos from our visit to the Trona Pinnacles last weekend. The photo below shows one of the ridges of tuffas about a half mile or so east of where we were waiting for sunset. I love how the orange light from the setting sun is just skimming across the tops of the tuffas. I find I’m especially drawn to scenes with strong contrasting colors, such as the orange and blue here.

The second image below was taken at sunrise the following morning. To be honest, we arrived too late. We woke up about 5 AM and decided to make the dash out to the tuffas. But sunrise was less than an hour away, and we had close to an hour drive just to get to the parking area. I took the photo below as soon as we pulled in – I grabbed the camera and tripod and set up right next to the car. It’s the very first frame I shot, and it shows the best color of the morning. By the time I walked around to the east side of the tuffas, most of the show was over.

Even worse, the sky was mostly overcast, so all I had was flat light once the sun came up. And to top it all off, the wind was blowing at least 30 MPH with gusts even higher. I had to hold on to the tripod to keep it stead for each shot, but also to keep it from blowing over! Oh well, it was still an amazing place to visit.

That’s the way it is with landscape photography. The best light of the day happens at sunrise and sunset, but there’s no guarantee. Some days are glorious, and some are dull. There are some things you can predict with certainty, such as the time of sunrise and sunset. You can also check the forecast, and “partly cloudy” is usually a good sign, but it really all depends on where the clouds are as the sun does its tricks.

I don’t remember where I read it, but I once saw the advice that if you want to build a portfolio of great landscape images, you need to go to every scenic location in every national park at least 20 times. If you do that, you’ll find at least a few winners.

Have you ever heard of the Trona Pinnacles? Well, I hadn’t either until I started researching interesting locations for a quick trip. They’re located just south of Death Valley National Park and about 20 miles east of Ridgecrest, California. The area is part of the Searles Dry Lake basin and were formed underwater between 10,000 and 100,000 years ago. At that time, the Searles Lake formed a link in an interconnected chain of lakes stretching from Mono Lake to Death Valley. The tuffas at Trona reach as high as 140 feet!

I’m always amazed at the circles of life. Last year, I posted images from Mono Lake. But, the tuffas at Trona seem huge compared to those at Mono Lake. Of course, many of the tuffas at Mono Lake are partially submerged, and I don’t know how much of the tuffa is under water. But where you can walk around them, they tend to be 10 to 20 feet high, so much smaller than those at Trona.

We did a fair amount of research before heading out. I noticed that the crescent moon would be fairly low on the western horizon at sunset, so I decided to try to get some night photos including the stars. I also packed a couple of strobes and radio controlled remote triggers so that I could add some light to the tuffas. The photo below is one of the results.

Note – to see the stars in the photo more clearly, click on the photo to see a larger version.

The photo is pretty straightforward technically. Obviously, you need a tripod and a long exposure.  The main parameter of concern is the length of time for the exposure. I was using an extreme wide angle lens, so 30 seconds is about the longest exposure you can use before the earth’s rotation turns the stars into streaks instead of points of light. In fact, if you view the larger verison of the image, you’ll see that the stars actually appear as short streaks, about four times longer than they are wide. This image ended up at ISO 640 at f/5.6 for 30 seconds. To light up the tuffas, I had two strobes positioned behind a large outcropping and aimed at the tuffas in the distance. In order to build enough exposure from the strobes, I had to fire them 10 to 12 times during the 30 second exposure.

We visited the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens last weekend, and what a place! Beautiful gardens and an amazing collection of art and historical items. I doubt if we saw everything, but we were able to visit most of the art gardens and galleries. I really enjoyed some of the historical artifacts, such as an original Gutenberg Bible and hand-written drafts of Thoreau’s “Walden Pond.” The draft of “Walden Pond” was especially meaningful since we had hiked there several times while we were in Boston a few years ago.

We were at The Huntington during the middle of a bright, sunny day, so it wasn’t particularly good conditions for scenic photography. I did a few close-ups of some of the flowers, but I ended up taking the most photos at a large fountain filled with lily pads. I like the simplicity of the composition above and the way the lily pads and flower seem to be completely isolated.