Sierra Nevada Afterglow

The Election...

It's been almost a week since Trump won the election and it's time for some soul searching and some thoughts. Trump's first picks are not encouraging ... especially Bannon from Breitbart. He's pretty repugnant and his position as the gatekeeper gives one considerable pause about his potential power. He could be a big problem. But I think we all need to consider a few things before panic sets in:

1) Trump is going to pick people he knows and who have been loyal to him during this run. That's always a given for a new administration but is especially true this time as Trump has few political friends and seems to be a big loyalty kind of guy. So he'll pick the few politicians he's done business with (including Rudy and Christy ... his real estate connections) and people who stuck with him during the blizzard of hate he endured after the convention. Don't think he's too thrilled with the Republican leadership who distanced themselves from him and there are few Republican rank-and-file who endorsed his run. That may mean he has few allies in the legislature who will stand with him when it comes time to get things done. He very well might have as difficult a time there as Obama. Somehow I think Hillary would have gotten along with them better. Expect him to rule by executive order if the legislature balks too much.

2) Trump has a history of being very intolerant of games, disloyalty and incompetence. He fired 2 campaign teams because they didn't get the job done. I'm inclined to believe he'll do the same thing if someone doesn't toe the line or isn't effective. He'll start his administration with 'friends' but I expect that will quickly change as those people prove their inability to move the ball forward. Expect a lot of churn in his administration.

3) He'll test the limits of nepotism as he brings several family members into the administration. He'll be talking to his daughter, Ivanka, a lot and may be listening to his son-in-law too. Wonder if anyone will have the courage to bring up these issues with him. Doubt it very much. Expect to see his family providing a lot of support and advice.

4) I have no idea what his agenda is but we can already see major effects just based on his campaign positions. Would appear TPP is now officially dead as are the European equivalents. I'm happy about that and he hasn't even taken office yet. Not real happy about his insistence on withdrawing from the Paris environmental treaty and his potential appointment as head of EPA. But I really think Hillary wouldn't have been much better. Our political culture is very much anti-climate right now. Trump is just making it official so we have a more solid target to campaign against. He'll get an earful from the Europeans and the Japanese about this and maybe, just maybe, he can be persuaded to change his mind. He already flipped on dumping the ACA completely so there's hope on other fronts as well. Also, expect him to blow up most of ACA but keep a few of the better parts. Won't please the insurance companies which is a plus but that means the whole insurance thing in up in the air again. Don't expect to see single payer in this environment even though everyone, including Republicans, know this is what is really needed.

5) Trump has moved the conversation decidedly to the right. That means there's space on the left for a real movement for social justice. A Clinton presidency, like Obama's, would have been difficult to work against as the Democrats are very good at co opting any movements in this direction. But the party is in disarray right now and for a long time. There aren't any strong faces at the moment and, for the first time in 24 years, not a single Clinton to overshadow it all. Maybe Sanders and Warren and a few others can, if they want, grab the dragon by the throat and change the direction. I'm really hoping for a wholesale house cleaning that throws all the old garbage out. The party is really messed up and has it's priorities in the wrong place. It needs to walk away from the bankers and the billionaires who have destroyed it's heart. Sanders showed how to raise a lot of money without kissing up to the elites and that's the way it has to go in the future. One can always hope.

I think we're in for a really difficult time going forward. The world is lurching right in a very dangerous way and there's not much to stop the slide. The left is damaged badly and being threatened by the hatred of the ultra right so I have little hope of a resurgence of left ideas anytime soon. History seems to show that these cycles happen, over and over. One can only hope a major conflict isn't needed to swing the pendulum back to the left but that's what one sees in reading the tea leaves. I don't see Hitler in Trump but I do think that others are waiting in the wings for when he fails. Some of the clowns in the Republican stable are really scary. The future is very cloudy and I fear for my children and the generations to come.

Sierra Nevada Afterglow

I was at Mono Lake during this trip, hoping to get a really spectacular sunset. I was lucky last year and was counting on the late April storms to give me something really special. But it wasn't to be. The clouds rolled in mid-afternoon and by sunset there was nothing. I got some really nice images on the lake as the sun went down and then started driving back toward highway 395 for the tripsouth toward Monmouth Lake and a rest stop. It's about 7 miles from the tufa to the highway and it was well after sunset as I drove through the twilight. It was very cloudy and I could see snow falling heavily in the Sierra mountains. The sky was just amazing ... the sun was well below the horizon and, with some wonderful luck, was coming in under the snow clouds. Must have been clear skies to the west for this to happen. Anyway, the sky was ablaze in this blue light and the mountains simply glowed. I had to stop and take a picture. Fortunately, the road had a large gravel apron so I was able to pull well off the road and set up my gear. The first images I took were OK but something was missing. What I needed was a really long exposure so the clouds smeared out. So I put my 10 stop ND filter on the camera and was able to get an exposure of 178 seconds. That's exactly what I wanted and the results are amazing. This is a single exposure, adjusted in Lightroom but that's it. And I couldn't be happier with the result. Hope you enjoy it too.

Sierra Nevada Afterglow - 14mm, f/11,178 sec,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Mono Lake Tufa

Update

It's been almost 3 months since I came back to Crimea and a few things are becoming clear. The love affair between the folks here and the Russian government is ... let's be blunt ... on the rocks. Prices have gone through the roof so bad that people from Moscow and St. Petersburg are complaining about how much it costs to vacation here. Food prices are obscene and the government keeps raising the costs of utilities and other fees to the point where it's not even funny. People can't afford these prices and so many of our friends are struggling right now. It is now obvious that the crooks are in control of the economy and much of the life here. We have an election coming up in September but no one expects anything to change as the ruling party ... Russian Unity ... will not allow anyone else to gain power. I'm not sure where this goes but it has to improve or some serious conflicts are almost a given.

Adding to this irritation is the ever worsening asthma. Despite using a very strong steroid inhaler I'm still chronically short of breath. This leads to fatigue and a lack of desire to really do anything. Anyone who has asthma knows what I mean. I'm sleeping 10 hours a night and exhausted by early afternoon after only a few hours of exertion. Not sure what I can do ... can't afford the obscene prices the vulture drug companies are charging for some of their more exotic inhalers ... even here in Russia where the government controls prices to some extent. I'm really concerned about what happens once the summer is over and the fall allergens start popping up. Last year my problems started in the fall and got progressively worse into the winter but this year I'm already beyond where I was last year. Contemplating an early exit from Crimea (maybe as early as October) and not returning until late in the spring next year (if ever but that's another story for another time).

Mono Lake Tufa

Mono Lake is such an interesting place. I've written about it before so I won't rehash all that. This year it was very stormy around the Sierra Nevada Mountains so I got a very different look. I once again visited the south tufa field and spent a whole day wandering around the various structures looking for some new and interesting compositions. Much of the day was clear but in the afternoon storm clouds came rolling over the mountains to the west and it really looked like we might get some serious rain or even snow. I'd hoped to do some astro photography that night using the tufa as my foreground element but it soon became clear that wasn't in the cards. Hard to see the Milky Way when the sky is full of clouds. But I didn't want to go empty-handed. So I set up the camera and took some interesting pictures of the tufa and the storm clouds. Didn't have any big expectations for the shoot but I've come to understand that sometimes the camera sees things that your eyes don't. This is one of those cases. The colors and shading in the clouds are a perfect complement to the green waters of the lake and the snow covered mountains in the background. And if you look very carefully you'll see the sunset far in the distance ... a subtle hint of red on the clouds. That was the extent of the sunset but still, isn't the sky amazing? Taken with the Sanyang 14mm f/2.8 lens I bought this year. Takes very reasonable picture on the whole, don't you think?

Mono Lake Tufa - 14mm,f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Mono Lake Tufa

Some Semblance of Normalcy...

After a week of mostly darkness we finally seem to have turned the corner. 2 days ago they turned the lights on at 8:30 and left them on. We still are lacking elevators which is a severe hardship but at least we don't need to sit in the dark and can watch some TV when we want (and when the cable is working which is sometimes). We also have heat at least part of the day (it's getting cold now with temperatures just above freezing and raw winds blowing from the north and west) but almost no hot water so our electric backup boiler is getting a good workout. We've almost returned to what qualifies as 'normal' around here. Of course, the whole thing is held together with spit, tape and bailing wire and could fall apart at any time but it's a step in the right direction. Amazing how being deprived of something for a while makes one grateful for even the smallest of favors.

Mono Lake Tufa

This is another shot of the famous tufa at Mono Lake. I've already talked about them so I'll just add one additional fact ... if the lake returns to the level mandated by the court settlement between the lake and LA water district these will mostly disappear under the water. With the ongoing drought in CA that may never happen but that's the plan. So enjoy the picture while you can.

These formations lie to the west of the main grouping and I had to use my telephoto to take this image. It's a composition of a large number (110) of portrait HDR shots stitched together with Photomatix and Photoshop. Final adjustments were made in Lightroom. Amazing formations which, unfortunately, are disintegrating as the engine that made them has been cut off by the drought and the falling lake level.

Mono lake Tufa - 200mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100, license CC BY-NC 4.0

Mono Lake Sunset

Cycle is finished...

I'm back in Crimea. Simple statement but with significant implications. The first cycle of my wandering is over. I ran out of gas ... figuratively ... and decided I needed some time back in a familiar environment where I could recover and clean up the amazing number of images I collected over the last 3 months. Haven't added up the total but it's well over 10,000. Not bad for 3 months work. There's lots of good stuff in there but it needs to be culled and sorted and analyzed. I know there's lots of mistakes in the Lightroom database ... keywords aren't right and some images are in the wrong place. And I need to fix a lot of bad stuff in those pictures. For example ... many of my images have jet contrails in them. Really out of place when the subject is nature and her beauty. So I'll be learning all about healing brushes in both Photoshop and Lightroom in the coming days. I've also got issues with how Photomatix treats noise. Seems that several noisy images creates a real mess in Photomatix. I get popcorn sized kernels in the sky for some reason. The best solution I have right now involves running Noiseware on all the images and aggressively knocking back the luminescence noise both before and after Photomatix. That works but there's a price ... I lose some resolution and I hate to give even a little up after so much effort to capture it. But because the final image is almost noise free I can aggressively sharpen and not see any additional sky noise. That helps ... some. But I need to get on the Internet and see what can be done about this problem.

Some statistics for you:

Miles traveled almost 10K. Number of major places visited is 32+. Number of days on the road tops out at about 75 give or take. I'm now an expert on rest areas in 5 states. I've seen more McDonalds than I care to remember (for the free WiFi) and have buckets full of memories ... both good and bad. I'll be talking about much of this in the coming days and weeks so stop by regularly. I promise to be more diligent in my postings ... it turns out to be very hard to find accessible Internet connections that don't have lots of 'issues' and I needed electricity too as my laptop battery went south early in the trip. It's a problem I need to resolve before the next cycle begins.

Image issues...

Most of the images I've put on this blog have been OK but almost every one has issues. I mentioned the contrails and noise already but there's a whole host of things that aren't really right. I plead my situation as the cause ... it's almost impossible to find a good place to edit photos on the road. I often had to set the computer on my truck's tailgate and edit under a tree. Reflections were a constant problem and, as any editor can tell you, background light can make a mess of your colors and everything else. I did all I could but I was often rushed. It was more important to get the images ... to spend time scouting out locations during the day and photograph during the golden hours. Working at night was often prohibited as national parks impose a strict generator rule (no later than 8 pm in most cases ... just as the sun was setting). Everything conspires to make editing a major problem. So, I'll probably be posting some of these images again after they've been given the respect they deserve. Hope you don't mind.

Mono Lake Sunset

Mono Lake is one of those really unusual places in the world. Because it's trapped with no drainage, over time it has become very salty and alkaline. Something like 3.5 times the salinity of the oceans and 100 time more alkaline. When the wind blows, even a little, foam forms on the shore. But, contrary to the opinion of one Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), the lake is not dead. It's brimming with life ... brine shrimp and small flies thrive there in the spring and summer. And birds ... huge flocks of birds come. I was amazed that it's the nesting ground for 80% of all seagulls in California. And it's a major flyway stopover for birds migrating north and south. It's anything but dead. But it's at risk ... big time. The LA water authority, in the 20s, confiscated the fresh water sources for the lake and sent the water west to feed the growing metropolis. Mono Lake started to dry up and that created a major disaster. Only through a long and costly legal battle has the lake been able to partially recover. Of course, just when there's a light at the tunnel's end, the drought really took hold of the west and the recovery plan is in danger again. There's no water, almost no snow pack, and that's spells disaster. They need water and there's none to be found.

Anyway, I was in Yosemite and it was just too tempting to take rt. 120 over the Sierra Nevada and drop down on rt. 395 for a one day visit. I arrived early and went to the visitor's center. It was obvious that the big draw was the tufa ... the calcium carbonate tubes that grow in the alkaline environment of the lake. They form when fresh water, brimming with calcium leached from volcanic mountains to the south, interacts with the alkaline salt water of the lake to form crystals of calcium carbonate. You can actually watch this happen when the conditions are just right. So, in the really oppressive heat of the afternoon, I drove to the south end of the lake and wandered out to the huge formations on the shore. They're not really all that pretty up close but, as a backdrop to a spectacular sunset, they are perfect. It was one of those moments a photographer dreams about and now it's here for you to enjoy.

Mono Lake Sunset - 35mm(1.6 crop),f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0

Not much here technically. I bracketed the shot as the dynamic range was way too much for my sensor. Then into Photomatix to get the tone mapped image followed by some final added touches in Lightroom.