national forest

An ancient bristlecone pine reflects the last rays of daylight, White Mountains, CA

On my recent trip to the eastern Sierra to photograph the fall colors, I visited the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains, part of the Inyo National Forest. I had done some reading about the area from books such as David Muench’s classic Timberline Ancients (out of print), and several of Galen Rowell’s insightful essays from Vision and Inner Game of Outdoor Photography. But actually being there and walking among these trees was a spiritual experience, and one I will not soon forget.

We were blessed with a recent snow storm that blanketed the crest of the White Mountains – not enough to close the road, and just enough to provide a clean contrast to the rough, twisted texture of the bristlecone. We were working an exposed western-facing slope, and after taking a few establishing shots, I climbed to the top of the hill. I quickly remembered that I was at 11,500 feet in elevation, as I was out of breath after only a few steps! My goal in the photo above was to capture the vibrant colors of sunset reflected in the wood of the bristlecone, while also getting the colors in the opposite horizon, as well as the earth shadow as it crept across the eastern foothills and Nevada desert beyond. The warm pastels in the wood are continued in the sunset colors of the sky above.

All lengths of lens work here, depending on your personal style and vision – whether it is to shoot a distant mountain top grove with a telephoto, or to crawl up inside the gnarled spiral of a branch with a fish-eye. The challenge in shooting these trees is to try to decide what to include and what to leave out of the frame. One question I kept coming back to that helped me to focus was, “What is the main point of this photo?” If my answer was “the texture of this branch,” then why include the roots of the tree? If my answer was “to show the desolate environment in which these trees live,” then I knew to shoot wide and and treat an entire group of trees as the main subject.

Below are a few more photos I took while exploring the bristlecone forest.

A bristlecone log frames an upright tree, both of which have lived for thousands of years, White Mountains, CA

A bristlecone pine grows from a desolate, snowy mountainside, White Mountains, CA

Fresh snows blankets the slopes of the White Mountains, framing the ancient bristlecone pines that live there

As the sun sets, it casts one final beam across wild lupine and granite boulders, Sierra National Forest, CA

This week’s photo is all about light. If you take away the dramatic lighting effects from this photo, you are left with something pretty mundane – a forest and some rocks. But with the sun filtering through the trees as a star burst, lighting the granite boulders and contrasting them with the darker forest, an interesting image is born.

Before this composition found me, I was pointing my camera in the opposite direction and quickly becoming uninspired. Sure, I was shooting from the edge of a cliff and had a large, open, forested valley below me, but no specific feature stood out and grabbed my attention. I turned around and saw that the sun was setting behind the trees, and knew then that I would use sunlight as my subject.

It didn’t take much hunting around to find this line of granite boulders illuminated by the setting sun. Now I had a decision to make – include the sun in the image or not? Since I was shooting at f/16 (as I often do with landscapes), I knew I’d get a nice, tight star burst effect from the sun. I ultimately decided to include it in the image because I wanted to balance the lower right of the image which included a lot of light, with the light of the sun in the upper left.

Another thing to worry about when shooting into the sun is that the camera’s meter ~~can~~ will be thrown off. If I shot this at the camera’s recommended shutter speed (I was in aperture priority), the forest would have been rendered brighter and the granite would have been completely blown out. I dropped the exposure compensation by two stops, which gave me a photo much closer to what I was seeing with my eyes.

I am pretty happy with the result. It is not the typical grandiose landscape typical of Sierra photography, but a more intimate scene. Hopefully it conveys more than just the visual aspect, but a real sense of place – the distant echos of forest birds, the sharp smell of pine needles, the thumping of the heart at high elevations. Ultimately for me, it was my latest reminder that when in doubt, I should always follow the light.

Tag: national forest

Bristlecone At Sunset (Photo of the week)

Lightplay On Granite (Photo of the week)