Photographing Carson Pass

I have been in numerous spots in the Sierra Nevada, speed hiking. Today I went with my husband on a “photography outing”. We drove all the way to Carson Pass to the trailhead of Lake Winnemucca. This took us about 2:30 hours in winding roads. The sun was already very harsh when we got there at 9:30 a.m., and by the time we reached Frog Lake, about 1 mi from the trailhead, the wind was blowing very fast.

When we arrived at Frog Lake it was almost 11:00 a.m. The scene was very peaceful, but beyond well-lit. I decided to try out my circular polarizer to cut some of the light, and to get rid of the many reflections (besides that, it makes the water more transparent, note the rock under the water, on the left hand side).

The photo below is one of the first I took. I saw the mother and the child heading out to the opposite side of the lake when I arrived. After putting the camera on a tripod, I set the aperture to f/11 and focused on the people. I wanted to have everything else in focus, and they seemed to be at the perfect distance for that to happen.

18-5- mm kit lens at 18 mm, ISO 400, f/11, 1/500

After that we went to the edge of the lake and took a picture of the view below. The camera was still on a tripod but the wind was blowing fast, making the vegetation a little blurred no matter what, and the need for a faster shutter speed in the way of a small aperture. I worked a little on the post-processing of this one also, and in the end I applied one of elements' blue filters, as I saw it fit. May be a graduated filter would have helped, but I don't own one.

18-5- mm kit lens at 20 mm, ISO 400, f/9 1/125

Finally, capturing the rocky landscape with the sun right over our heads was challenging, particularly given that the wind was blowing and there is no way the vegetation was going to be in focus if a small aperture was used. The photo below is my best, and using a tripod sure helped. 

18-5- mm kit lens at 38 mm, ISO 400, f/9, 1/160

California's Sierra Nevada has a number of cool places to photograph, but the conditions up there are often unpredictable. To those like me who live in the Central Valley it may take from one and a half to three hours to get to a good trailhead, then a few hours to hike to a spot. 

Hiking California's Sierra Nevada requires a little more preparation than going to the Golden Gate Park: one needs to make sure he/she has the necessary things in case of an emergency. The weather can change very rapidly from a sunny day to a thunderstorm. Furthermore, the rocky terrain makes some trails are difficult to follow, particularly those above the tree line, and gps sometimes do not work so well, which makes getting lost a little easier. In spite of these challenges, it is well worth it getting there!