Mt Whitney Payoff
Every photographer has a couple of photos in their mind that they really want to get but that continue to allude them. This is one of those photos for me. The full moon behind Mt Whitney in the Eastern Sierras. I drive by this mountain every year on my way up to snowboard in Mammoth and I have climbed it twice, so it has some personal connection with me. On a technical standpoint, the full moon usually only lines up with Mt Whitney about twice a year. I have tried to shoot it several times before only to vexed with bad weather or insurmountable events ( like the beginning of Covid back in March). I planned this shot since march ( 6-7 months before hand). I took the time off to head up to this spot for a couple of days but the closer I got to the time the more I started to worry.
The weather forecast looked extremely promising and turned out to be perfect, but the amount of smoke in the area was worrisome. A couple of days before hand you could not even see the mountains because of the amount of smoke from fires in the sierras, and as I write this the conditions are even worse. So i felt very lucky when I got up to Lone Pine to shot this and the conditions looked so promising. I decided to spend part of the day I arrived looking for a couple of different spots to shoot this in case the conditions did not look well in the morning when I was shooting. I decided to go with a closer vantage point when shooting ( which produces a smaller moon compared to the mountain ) because of the smoke in the atmosphere I saw the night before and the fact that as I drove out that morning I could not see the mountains as well.
I'm happy with how this turned out but I do want to try again and get a bigger image of the moon compared to the mountain.
Mt Whitney Payoff
Every photographer has a couple of photos in their mind that they really want to get but that continue to allude them. This is one of those photos for me. The full moon behind Mt Whitney in the Eastern Sierras. I drive by this mountain every year on my way up to snowboard in Mammoth and I have climbed it twice, so it has some personal connection with me. On a technical standpoint, the full moon usually only lines up with Mt Whitney about twice a year. I have tried to shoot it several times before only to vexed with bad weather or insurmountable events ( like the beginning of Covid back in March). I planned this shot since march ( 6-7 months before hand). I took the time off to head up to this spot for a couple of days but the closer I got to the time the more I started to worry.
The weather forecast looked extremely promising and turned out to be perfect, but the amount of smoke in the area was worrisome. A couple of days before hand you could not even see the mountains because of the amount of smoke from fires in the sierras, and as I write this the conditions are even worse. So i felt very lucky when I got up to Lone Pine to shot this and the conditions looked so promising. I decided to spend part of the day I arrived looking for a couple of different spots to shoot this in case the conditions did not look well in the morning when I was shooting. I decided to go with a closer vantage point when shooting ( which produces a smaller moon compared to the mountain ) because of the smoke in the atmosphere I saw the night before and the fact that as I drove out that morning I could not see the mountains as well.
I'm happy with how this turned out but I do want to try again and get a bigger image of the moon compared to the mountain.