Painted Sky Above Mono Lake

Artist: Edward Mendes;
Exposure Date: 2011:10:09 18:30:25;
ImageDescription: Mono lake is one of the most unique places in the Eastern Sierras of California and has been a magnet for photographers for decades because of the other worldly tufa formations that can only be found there. It was the last evening of my annual Fall Colors in the Eastern Sierras workshop and I decided to set up and make an image of my own, a rare occurrence during my workshops. The previous year had been a particularly wet one and I noticed the lake had rose about two feet from the previous year. Because of this rise in the lake's water level many areas I've made images from in the past were now underwater as were the trails leading to many of the more photographed tufas, time to get creative and find some new favorite spots I thought to myself.I made my way to the south end of the area known as South Tufa and found a formation I enjoyed with an incredible display of clouds above it and an equally impressive reflection below. I quickly setup my tripod and composed a number of images at different focal lengths increasing and decreasing the amount of sky and reflection in the images with more than one variation working very nicely.This is one of my favorite images from the evening, the bright painterly sky and intense reflection is something special about the Mono Basin where Mono lake lives as very few places in the world has the dramatic skies as is routinely seen there.Nikon D7000Nikon 18-200 VRII LensPolarizing FilterNo HDR;
Copyright: Copyright 2011 Edward Mendes / Edward Mendes PhotographyThis image may not be used for any purpose without the written consent of Edward Mendes;
Make: NIKON CORPORATION;
Model: NIKON D7000;
ExposureTime: 1/1 s;
FNumber: f/11;
ISOSpeedRatings: 100;
ExposureProgram: Manual;
ExposureBiasValue: 0/6;
MeteringMode: Pattern;
Flash: Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode;
FocalLength: 36 mm;
FocalLengthIn35mmFilm: 54 mm;
Software: Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows;