Spring is in full swing in southern California; on our walk tonight, I enjoyed the Brittlebush in full bloom, and noticed several migrant and summer-resident bird species who have arrived in large numbers: black-chinned sparrows, wrentits, indigo buntings, tanagers, etc. With all of these changes happening, its almost impossible for me not to have “senioritis” of sorts. By this point in the school year, seniors in high school and college have already mentally checked out, looking forward to their upcoming freedom, thus suffering from senioritis. In the same way, I’m looking forward to long hikes in the mountains, lazy summer evenings at Mono Lake, and early mornings in the sagebrush of the eastern Sierra.
One of those summer evenings is the inspiration behind May’s photo of the month. Last summer, on an early August trip to Yosemite and Mono Lake, we enjoyed a fantastic dinner at The Mobil Mart (Whoa Nellie Deli) in Lee Vining, then headed up to Yosemite to follow the sunset out of the park. I started at Olmsted Point, worked my way east to Tuolumne Meadows, and finally photographed the last light of the day on Mt. Gibbs, the second highest peak in the park (12773′), with the Tuolumne River as a foreground.
This is a 3-image HDR shot I processed in Photomatix. The river and forest were already in the shade, with the beautiful pink glow left on the peak. I wanted to preserve as much detail as possible, so I chose to process this as a high dynamic range image.
Mt. Gibbs and Tuolumne River, August 2009
Here’s to your senioritis. What are you looking forward to this summer? What great summer memories do you have?
Very nicely done. Great work. As far as your question about great summer memories goes, I have far too many to begin to list here. I’d probably use up all of your bandwidth.
On that note, I do believe I’ll add you to my blogroll. I truly like what I see here. Thanks.
PJ, thanks for the comments and the kind words! I checked out your site…very nice work!