Leon Turnbull Photography

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.

It is difficult to plan in advance a get-away weekend to the Eastern Sierra in the Fall because you don’t really know when the Fall colors will peak. Especially if you are coming from Australia.

Such was the case for us this year. My friend Neal from Aussieland was making his annual trip to California this fall, and we were joined by his friend Luke, and my family as well. Neal was really wanting to see some great Fall colors in the Eastern Sierra this year. but it has not been a good year for Fall Colors in the west (not just California, all over the western U.S. has been bad this year). The Aspen trees have been very slow to turn this year, and some just did not turn from green at all. Perhaps it is due to the drought we’ve had the last 2 years? or the very hot September we had? or an early freeze? or all of the above? I don’t know the reason, but I do know it is a sub-par year for Fall Color in California.

Of course we didn’t know that when we made plans in September to spend an October weekend in Lee Vining. Another thing we didn’t know (of course) is what the weather would be like. And unfortunately, the weather did not co-operate fully.

We did not even bother going to photograph Mono Lake. There were no clouds in the sky pretty much all weekend. Though I do not have a good photo of Mono Lake, and I do indeed want one in my portfolio, but there needs to be good cloud and light, or it is just not worth it to me. (especially when Mono Lake would be jam packed with photographers at sunrise and sunset all weekend).

Neal felt the same way about Mono Lake, so we avoided it like the plague all weekend. Instead, we went to other spots to photograph Fall Colors, and in fact, I think we came away with quite a few dandy photographs. I was pleased overall with the amount of good shots I obtained, and we were able to avoid crowds for most of the weekend.

The first stop that Neal wanted to make was Lee Vining Creek and the cascades that are on this creek. There are a couple small waterfalls on Lee Vining Creek, and I was very surprised at how well they were flowing this late in the year. The canyon gets no sun late in the afternoon either, so the shade made for some good photograph possibilities for the waterfalls.

This is the first waterfall we went to, called Aspen Falls. In order to make this photo, I climbed out on a big log in the middle of the creek, then tried to set up my tripod in a sturdy position to take the photo. I’m not sure what Neal and Luke were thinking about my crazy antics, but I think my family was wondering if I’d be falling off that log into the creek. As it turned out over the course of the weekend, I realized Luke was probably more insane than myself; Neal was probably the only sane person out of the three of us.

Here’s another shot from my beautiful evening at Wrigh’s Lake. Same composition, but this was taken about 30 minutes or so before my previous image. The only thing that would make this better would be if those trees around the lake were brightly colored Aspen trees instead. Oh well.

Speaking of Aspen trees, we spent this past weekend searching for Fall colors at Lee Vining in the Eastern Sierra, and I came away with a number of good images from the trip. I was quite pleased even though the Fall colors this year have been hugely below par for California standards. I’ll have plenty of posts to share in the coming days. Stay tuned.

With my family still out of town on their annual pilgrimage to the coast, leaving me home alone by myself all week, I (of course) wanted to get out and do some photography while they were away. After work on Monday, I decided to head up into the hills, to Wrights Lake. When I was here last year, I thought it might be a good place to come for sunset when there is snow on the mountains. We had our first snow fall of the year on Sunday, and I was hoping fresh snow along with some pretty clouds would make for a fabulous sunset. It was really just a light dusting of snow, however, and I was hoping for a bit more. As for the clouds, there were quite a few, and I thought when I first arrived that there were too many, and sunset would be a dud. But as sunset time approached, some of the clouds dissipated and it turned out to be an incredibly sweet sunset. The mountains turned incredibly bright red in color, and I had this amazing scene all to myself.

Well not quite all to myself, actually. I shared it with a friendly little visitor, named Daisy … Daisy Duck, that is. As I was waiting around for sunset, a little duck splashed right up beside me by the dock at Wrights Lake, and it swam around near to me without a care in the world that I was there. I changed lenses and took some shots, one of which is below. She was quite the funny little duck. As sunset approached, just before I took the above shot, the duck started to swim out into the middle of the lake, and was ruining the nice reflection. I called the duck back, just like one would call a dog or cat. Here ducky ducky. Here Daisy. Come here girl. It worked. The duck came back to me, swimming right up to me within 2 feet of me. This happened 2 or 3 times. This is a popular lake in the summer, and I guess the duck is very used to seeing people. Still though, it was definitely an extremely friendly little thing. Finally, as the color from the sunset faded, the duck swam off into the middle of the lake, I said goodbye to my little friend, and turned to go back to my home. It was a glorious evening.

My little friend: