Leon Turnbull Photography

Back to our Lee Vining trip a couple weeks ago. We spent most of the afternoon on Saturday in Bodie ghost town along with tons of other people. It was probably one of the busiest days there of the year. It is definitely an incredibly interesting ghost town, and there are tons of things to see and photograph there. But personally, I have a very hard time photographing Bodie. Mostly, I think because it is not where my main interests lie, photographically speaking. I prefer natural (not man-made) landscapes. Plus, the light was very harsh, and there were too many other people around. So for these reasons, I find Bodie very challenging to photograph. I do want to do better here though, and return when conditions are more favourable.

The first place we went is the cemetary, because we missed it when we were here last time. The cemetary is out of the way from the main section of Bodie, and not as many people venture out to it. I found this angel rather interesting. It is on the grave of a 3 year old girl that was killed accidentally from a miner’s ax.

After the sun had set and I made my (wet) way back up the beach towards the Sutro Baths ruins, I found that there was still a beautiful glow in the sky. Most everyone had left, so I was alone and decided to take a night exposure of the ruins. This was the composition I was originally planning to do for sunset, but there were too many people around. After sunset, no one. This is a 60 second exposure.

This past weekend my sister flew down from Canada to San Francisco to run in the Nike Women’s Marathon (she did the half marathon). On Saturday, I drove down to the big city to meet up with her and spend the afternoon with her.

She wanted to go to the King Tutankhamun exhibit at the De Young Museum, so that is what we did. It was crazy busy there, and they herded us through the exhibit like cows. I also was carrying my big heavy camera bag with me (I brought it in hopes of catching a sunset later), and they made me carry it in my hands down below my waist. Crikey, that was tiring walking through the exhibit like that. All in all, the exhibit was fairly interesting, but we were both quite disappointed that they did not have any of the major burial items from his tomb; mostly, it was just small items that were found in the tomb.

Afterwards, we drove over to the Sutro Baths ruins, which were nearby. These are the ruins of an old bath house along the ocean front. We saw a great blue heron fishing along the water. My sister thought it was dead (or stuffed) because it did not move a muscle for five minutes or more. Even when I went down close to it with my camera, it did not budge an inch (usually, those things fly away if you get too close to them). Finally, it did move and she believed me that it was alive (I was wondering myself for awhile there).

It was still early, but Tania wanted to get back to the hotel for an early dinner and rest for the big race the next day. So I dropped her back at the hotel, then drove back to the Sutro Baths for sunset. There were plenty of people around the ruins so I could not find a good place to set up my camera. I walked down the beach, up on some rocks, and found a place all to myself where I could enjoy the view. And it was a glorious sunset, probably the most incredible sunset I have ever seen at the coast (and I thought I had used up all my sunset quota for the year with that Bonsai Rock sunset a couple months ago – I guess not, thanks God!). The reds were amazingly intense, this shot is not enhanced in any way. I just wish I had used my wider lens for this shot, which I didn’t think about until afterwards. Argh. Anyway, after enjoying the show, I climbed down off the slippery rocks, then got completely drenched by a big wave. Fortunately, I had a change of clothes in the car for the long drive back to Folsom.

From our weekend trip to Lee Vining … on Saturday morning, Neal, Luke, and I got up at the crack of dawn to go photograph Silver Lake at sunrise. Tara and the kids slept in of course. I had seen nice images of this lake at sunrise, and it was high on my list of places in the area to photograph. I was hoping for some nice clouds and even snow on the mountains. No clouds of course. There was a hint of snow left over from the first storm of the season, but not really enough.

As for Fall Colors, well Silver Lake probably had the most color out of all the places we visited over the weekend. Still it was mostly greenish-yellow on the Aspens, but there was some nice yellow trees as well.

Here’s another view:

Still on Lee Vining Creek, after Aspen Falls we scooted up the road to Big Bend Falls. This one is a little harder to get down to see. My wife and Nekoda stayed in the car (while Nekoda finished her dinner), and I took Jadon and scrambled down to the creek (Neal and Luke also went down of course). Big Bend Falls is a somewhat difficult waterfall to photograph. Although I didn’t get wet at Aspen Falls, I did get wet for this one, taking off my boots and getting right into the middle of the creek to take this photo. It was cold! I didn’t bring my water shoes unfortunately, or I might have gotten even deeper. It was just me and my bare feet. And Jadon laughing at his old man.