Happy New Year 2018
3 Comments
Today the winter sun rises on the first page of a 365-page blank book.
Make it the best you can!
After a night in my car, I showed up for sunrise in Lassen Volcanic National Park…. brrr! Lassen Peak has the highest snow accumulation in California, and snow closed the park road, leaving only Manzanita Lake with easy access. I was hoping for clouds, but the sky remained crystal clear. The view towards Lassen Peak from Manzanita Lake was backlit. Frozen solid and covered by snow, the surface of the lake presented nothing but featureless white. What to do with that blank page? I walked onto the lake and in the penumbra of a tree trunk, and with a wide-angle lens, the shadows created shapes and lines that made the picture. In a large print, the bright sparkle of the snow is also quite lively.
I wish everyone a year 2018 full of happiness, health, creativity, and success. My sincere thanks for your continuing readership and interest in my photography.
The ice crystals reflecting into the lens are just lovely. How did you find the time to expose the scene so well in the short interval of the sunrise?
It was not exactly sunrise, rather low sun cresting the distant Lassen Peak ridge, so the sun wasn’t moving that fast. Like for many snow scenes, I spot-metered the brightest area where I wished to retain texture and used that reading with something like +2.3EV (don’t remember which film was used).
Thank you. I am just now learning the Zone System. I am about half way into Book 2. I have been shooting with a Pentax Digital Spotmeter on 6×6 film.