Bishop Skyline

I posted this last week in ESS and thought I'd share it here as well. We had a couple low pressure systems come in that really cooled the temps down and made it feel like fall or early winter. With that came some impressive wind!! My wife and I had gone for a walk in the evening with no wind blowing and just like that we had 45+mph wind blasing us from the north. Bishop was looked like a dust bowl. Shortly after we got home this started materializing and so I grabbed the camera to try and capture these scene. The sunrays were obviously attractive, but what i really liked was the swirling dust on Tom and Basin and both peaks were visible and not obscured by the clouds, which did occur moments later in a different shot.

Another little tid bit on this image. Lately, in some of my shots, I have been trying to convey a particular theme. I've been trying to show the lighter side and darker side of the sierra. For instance in this image, the sunrays are usually associated with happiness and have an upbeat meaning to them. Yet in this image I chose to include all those clouds above the rays to make the image feel a bit heavy and ominous to counter the "good" feelings of the rays. I hope this makes since. Anyways, I'm trying to portray a feeling of respect for the sierra. Yeah it's a place of grand vistas and beauty, but it has a dark side to it as well. If you turn your back on it, it'll bite you and can be quite unmerciful.

Well, enough of that. I hope you enjoy.

i don't remember if I commented or not on this but the light is cool though I wish it wasn't quite so blown out. I do see some haloing going on on the edges, probably oversharpened. How is the temperature like in Bishop these days?

Very dramatic.

I am not bothered by the blown-out part.

If there is a possibility, I'd say crank-up the saturation on the bushes to make it stand out more, and make it immediatly obvious to the viewer it's not B&W.

If you go with 16x9 or any landscape format, you can use the top sky as buffer that can be cut off without changing the overall composition IMHO.

Very nice Cory ....
I like the fact that the image appears mostly B&W with just a touch of color...
That to me shows the "mood" of the moment.....
BTW, your comment RE: the Sierras...applies to anything in Nature
Looking forward to getting back to the better side of the Sierras...
Thanks for capturing and sharing your moment
and I think you suceeded...

In gratitude,
Nelcha

Thanks for commenting!
RW: It's starting to get warm here, it's supposed to be 100 today and the next couple days. Although it's not nearly as bad as I thought it might be. At least I keep telling myself that!

Dan: thanks for the alternative suggestions. I think I'll keep the saturation as presented as I don't want to put more emphasis there(fg). I can see your crop working technically, but I haven't bouth it to that idea yet.
Nelcha: very true.

oh man. yeah I think it's almost 100 here too. i suppose if I camped in Bishop Creek somewhere it wouldn't be so bad. it was like 95 in Bishop and 45 at Lake Sabrina the first time I went there a few years ago. weird.

Hi Cory,

This is a really attractive photograph and immediately gets (and holds) my attention. I love the low placement of the horizon, which works well to enhance the stormy sky. Lots of drama...