Today was moonset at sunrise. This is one of my favorite times to photograph because I love the moon setting over the mountains. We gave Gull Lake one more chance to come through, but it was not to be. It was a beautiful morning, but the sky was blanketed with high thin clouds, which prevented the sun from bathing the peaks with warm light. It also made it extremely difficult to get the correct exposure for the moon and the darker peaks. The morning was more about enjoying the time with Don and Pat and less about getting good images.
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So far, we've tried hard to force a square peg into a round hole. Conditions are simply not good for the photography we planned. It was time for a change. We decided to play tourist and drive up to Twin Lakes near Bridgeport. Neither Carol nor I had ever been there, and this was a good time to check it out. We drove along Upper Twin Lake until we reached the end of the road and the entrance to Annette's Mono Village. The gate was locked so we didn't venture in, but it looked like a very nice resort. It's right on the lake with peaks towering 3000 feet above it. The pictures on the Websites of the two resorts on Twin Lakes indicate there are a lot of serious fisherman up here in the summer.
We stopped in Bridgeport for lunch before heading back south to Mammoth. Our lunches were good, so maybe our luck in food has turned around.
Just before we dropped down into the Mono Lake basin, we stopped at an overlook to shoot panoramas of Mono Lake. The lighting wasn't great, but it was still an interesting view of the basin and surrounding mountains.
We stopped at South Tuffa on our way back to June Lake. This is the area we used to shoot in the 90's when the lake level was much lower and more of the tuffas were visible. It's not nearly as good an area to photograph now, but the lake is much healthier since the Department of Water and Power (DWP) has been forced to maintain a higher lake level. Today, the lake was a giant sheet of glass. It was absolutely still.
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