Edit: 6″ of snow on the ground here at the house by 8am!

Front Yard Snow

First Snow of The Season Bishop, CA

Brooks is the master printer/publisher of Lenswork Magazine as well as a prolific podcast creator.

I have been a Lenswork Magazine subscriber for only two years but find it a wealth of inspiration and a good reference for what good printing looks like; he prints Lenswork with a warm toned duotone ink set.

I just signed up to Lenswork online and find it is a great bargain and a wealth of information.  I highly recommend it!

I left about 6am figuring sunrise would be around 620 or so.  A relatively weak storm had just dusted the sierra and the clouds were starting to break up a bit.

For the next few hours I shot several images.  I was rather amazed at how easily things came.  Sometimes it feels like a struggle to come away with anything I might like.  I’ve put together four images in a web gallery of thumbnails which lead to larger images.  Click on the link below to view.

A Morning Walk November 6, 2011

Clouds Over Wheeler Crest I

Clouds Over Wheeler Crest II

One of two storms moved in over the sierra crest yesterday bringing cold weather down here and snow to the high country.

Cottonwood Trees in Bishop, CA

I worked this up in Lightroom last night to see how it would do with spit toning.  Most of this image was done there, in LR.  I did take it into PS to do some additional touch-ups.  Pretty impressed with LR.  Still feels a bit awkward compared to my normal workflow, kinda like putting on a new pair of shoes, just takes a little getting used to.

These cottonwood trees were just up the road from where I took the shot posted in the previous entry.  I’m a sucker for a good back lit scene!

Cottonwoods & White Mountain Peak

The cottonwood trees in Bishop are really looking good with their fall color display.  I have been watching these in the image for the last couple weeks hoping they would turn yellow.  Sometimes in the past they have just turned to a dull brown; not this year though thankfully.  So yesterday morning I went out and shot some of the cottonwoods and finished up with these here.

Since moving to Bishop five years ago I’ve wanted to get an image of fall color and White Mtn.  I’ve got a few but they fell short in some way.  Yesterday though I knew I had the image I’ve been trying to make.  I really liked the early morning light on the trees with the mostly shadowed White Mountain in the background.

This is the first image I’ve edited on my new MBP and using Lightroom.  I’m trying LR and it’s a different workflow than what I’ve been doing.  Needless to say I’m a bit out of sorts but will hopefully get the hang of it soon.

Supposed to get windy tomorrow with an approaching cold front.  The forecast for thurs is snow down to 4600′!  Coming from today’s 70 degree weather it will be a bit of a shock!  But I don’t live in Bishop for the mundane weather!

Happy Halloween!

So over the summer and the last couple months I’ve been bouncing back and forth between getting a desktop or a laptop.  I had my eyes on Apple’s hex core desktop which was a smoking machine, in price and performance.  Unfortunately it hadn’t had a refresh since summer of 2010 and no one really knew when it would be.  Apple’s new macbook pro update last Feb with quad-core i7 chips with thunderbolt tech was interesting but really hadn’t seriously considered the laptop until a couple weeks ago.  I was reviewing some performance benchmarks at barefeats.com and macperformance.com which compared the new macbookpros with the mac pros and iMacs with the i7 chipset.  The new macbook pros really held their own and weren’t much slower in photoshop processing compared to the mac pro hex core.

After going through those benchmarks it dawned on me that these were really just as strong as the mac pro desktops.  Albeit with more of a ram limit and internal storage.  But more importantly I had realized that I have been processing more images on our older macbook pro than on my desktop, at least for quick edits.  After working all day sitting at a computer the last thing I wanted to do is trudge upstairs and sit at a desk again.  So I decided last weekend it would be a laptop.  I can do reasonable edits using the laptop screen then hook up to my cinema display and make final adjustments.

So what did I get?  The 2011 15″ macbook pro with the highres matte display, 8GB ram, 2.3 intel i7 chip and the 500GB 7200rpm HD.  This thing is fast and blows the doors of our 2008 15″ macbook pro dual core machine.  Photoshop opens in less than 5 seconds.  On my old powermac I could read all the names on the opening screen two or three times, maybe more even, before PS would fully open!

Anyways, I’m a happy camper now.  Just have to figure out a new storage plan!

To avoid the crowds at South Tuffa, especially during the fall, I headed to my go to spot and favorite location just east of Navy Beach.  Judging by the number of headlights leaving that evening after sunset the shores along South Tuffa were jammed packed!  As usually it didn’t disappoint.  There was a sierra wave looming just east of the crest but even better there were alto cumulous clouds, I think that’s what they’re called, behind them and to the east all the way towards Neveda.  I was able to shoot some nice late afternoon lighting on the tuffas as the sun came and went from behind the clouds.

As it got closer to dusk I was expecting a good sunset but was quite surprised at the lack of color where I expected it to occur.  Then when I thought that it might be over the skies to the south east started turning pink.  Foutunately I was in a place that allowed me to accomodate that into my composition!

Tuffas And Clouds Mono Lake

Autumn Skies Mono Lake

Autumn Sunset Mono Lake