Three Birds
I spent a great day in the Alabama Hills during a recent trip to Vegas. Absolutely fell in love with this area. Can't believe I've not been here before. The arrangement of crazy Alabama Hills rock formations against the backdrop of the incredible Eastern Sierra mountains is just total eye candy for me. I never realized how close it was to Vegas and/or LA.
After a bit of sunrise shooting followed by a fantastic breakfast at the Mount Whitney restaurant (best home fries ever!), I went for a drive around the hills to familiarize myself better with the area. There were some clouds starting to decend over the Sierras so I pulled over and stuck the 70-200mm on my camera to do some handheld closeups of the cloud covered mountains.
As I was shooting I heard the unmistakable roar of jet fighters and spotted a pair of them streaking across the valley towards the mountains. Managed to catch one as it was ascending over the mountain range. I also happened to catch a pair of birds startled by the noise flying through the frame. I'll confess here that I didn't actually catch these together in the same frame at the same time, so this is in fact a composite but it was a pretty simple job to merge the two pictures. Not something I do very often but since both shots were real and taken within seconds on the same spot I didn't feel too guilty for blending them together. As to the jet I'm not an expert but I'm guessing an F/18 from nearby Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake.
Now I'm super excited to go back and visit this area again and take more time exploring. Not sure when that might be in these troubled times.
Three Birds
I spent a great day in the Alabama Hills during a recent trip to Vegas. Absolutely fell in love with this area. Can't believe I've not been here before. The arrangement of crazy Alabama Hills rock formations against the backdrop of the incredible Eastern Sierra mountains is just total eye candy for me. I never realized how close it was to Vegas and/or LA.
After a bit of sunrise shooting followed by a fantastic breakfast at the Mount Whitney restaurant (best home fries ever!), I went for a drive around the hills to familiarize myself better with the area. There were some clouds starting to decend over the Sierras so I pulled over and stuck the 70-200mm on my camera to do some handheld closeups of the cloud covered mountains.
As I was shooting I heard the unmistakable roar of jet fighters and spotted a pair of them streaking across the valley towards the mountains. Managed to catch one as it was ascending over the mountain range. I also happened to catch a pair of birds startled by the noise flying through the frame. I'll confess here that I didn't actually catch these together in the same frame at the same time, so this is in fact a composite but it was a pretty simple job to merge the two pictures. Not something I do very often but since both shots were real and taken within seconds on the same spot I didn't feel too guilty for blending them together. As to the jet I'm not an expert but I'm guessing an F/18 from nearby Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake.
Now I'm super excited to go back and visit this area again and take more time exploring. Not sure when that might be in these troubled times.