The Bristlecones

Well, I was supposed to be visiting the Southern Sierra, White Mountains and Deserts for 2-3 weeks, but it somehow turned into 34 days. I was stunned by the beauty of the area and had tremendous amounts of great light at all times, more so than I have ever seen sustained over such a long trip. It's called "range of light" for good reason! I'm working through over ten thousand images and will be for quite a while, but I'll try to post some for critique here and there as time allows.

I'm probably not going to post what I feel are my strongest images, but rather seek critique on some of those on-the-fence shots.

The fourth week of my trip was spent in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine forest of the White Mountains. Of course, the road to 11,500 feet is closed this time of year, so I accessed the area via a 40-mile backpacking/snowshoeing trip with a 70-pound pack, and endured lots of cold, windy weather to get my shots. I could have been worse though, as this has been a severe drought year for the SW, and most of the snow blows right off the White Mountain range anyway.

Compositionally, I'd like your opinion on this image here. This image is over 100 megapixels in size, and combined is a portion of 16 exposures. It was taken in the Patriarch Grove of Bristlecones. Each large tree you see here is between two and five thousand years of age!

I feel it lacks a strong foreground element, but I still like it a lot. The B&W conversion is really good though.
Having been in CA for just 8 months I still havent made it over the the eastern side of the Sierras (Yosemite and Joshua Tree are as far as I got) but from waht I have heard and seen on the western side, you are right, it must be an amazing area.

Don't like it actually. I feel the dark, mass of a tree on the right side is too far on the edge, and it pulls my eye away from everything else. When I move back to the center, the tree on the left edge pulls me there. So it just pulls to either side without a balancing point in the middle for me...

However, the black and white dynamic range and the sky is stunning! Wow, what a sky...

you should do that temporary gallery thing again on smugmug pweeeeese!

The only tiny nit I might have is that it seems a little tight on the right to me. The mood with the sky, patchy sonw, and the bristlecones is awesome. Print it big!

The reason for taking this image was pretty simple - print it about 6-feet wide. The Bristlecones are among my favorite places on Earth, and I needed a giant poster for my office room. Unlike a single frame, where I would try to draw the viewer in strongly, here I wanted the viewer to linger around without central focus to admire the details - something lost in web posting.

Yeah, the sky gets quite a bit darker at over 11,000 feet.

The temporary gallery will be up a couple days.

I think for your intended use, Marc, it'll be wonderful. As a stand alone shot, it's nice but it's not hanging together for me.

a 40-mile backpacking/snowshoeing trip with a 70-pound pack, and endured lots of cold, windy weather to get my shots. I could have been worse though

Oh yeah? worse? I can't imagine?

Perfect for your intended use - large. But I have to agree about the right side being tight. However, that may not be true on a large print.

Welcome back. Looking forward to your future posts.

This wouldn't have quite the impact if it weren't for the bare patches of ground.(IMHO) Oh yea and there's the sky, AWESOME!. Yea, like everyone say's, the right is a little tight but I don't think it's a huge issue.

It works a little more for me if the far Right was cropped in tighter to the bottom of that Right trees tree trunk. That way it looks like the crop is intended and gives you the trunk as part of the frame supporting the rest of the image. Having that dark line from that tree and then additional space to the right doesn't work for me.... unless you have 1200 more pixels to the Right to put a little space to the branches of that tree.

Conversion, image stitching and everything else look amazing.

Stitching took me about 2 hours. There's a reason I don't do many 16-image composites! But it's flawless at 100%. I have a much stronger 12-image composite from the Sierra also, that I will post soon. I do actually have more room to right and left, but unfortunately there was another large tree just out of the frame to the right.

Very dramatic and I can see it printed huge just beautifully.....I would like to see just a bit more on the right side of the far tree....to give it a sense of space....other then that....its perfect and well converted!!!

Well, I hope you don't mind a guy from calif. commenting on this. Hey, Marc, glad to hear you made it back okay, and with plenty of images to wade through!! I thought you said you didn't do composite images? About this image, the first thought that ran across my mind was, "I don't think I've seen one of the Bristles like this before" Meaning, very original take, and not what I was expecting to see from your recent trip. I like it! I think this works rather well as presented, thought playing around with alternative crops, I liked croping the one off completely from the right, leaving only four, which recede, and only one pine(fg)

Looks like your timing to come out this way was perfect for this winter. It has warmed up quite abit in the last two weeks. Spring is in the air and greenery in the trees. It was great to meet you and next time dinner is on me! Hope to see you again in the fall and lookin forward to seeing more of your trip images.

Yeah, I truthfully had never done any big composites before this trip. I did two, one of the Bristlcones and one of the South Sierra range - that one turned out better. I maintain that there's lots of good reasons not to get hooked on doing them, and that they are not practical in most situations.

Very nice meeting you too, and I wish we had gotten to meet up for some better shooting conditions as well. I am very envious of your view down there! Speaking of which, I've got a pretty good Mount Tom shot showing up on ESS today.

Looking forward to seeing it, Mt. Tom, on ESS. Got some nice pink color on the 'range' this morning. Unfortunately most of the snow is gone. Hopefully a normal winter next year.