Intuition

Obviously there is a substantial amount of engineering and technical knowledge needed to create affective photos. However, once one gets that down, it comes down more to intuition than technical knowledge. Commonly feeling trumps fact... This is especially true in situations where one is shooting on location, as opposed to the studio where you can light something five different ways, live with the results for a few days and then make up your mind. On location you are far more tethered to chaotic rhythms of the world. Specific to this blogpost, I am far less concerned with specific creative decisions, but more a sense of feeling out where a place is going before the fact. This idea was strongly driven home to me a few weeks ago when I was driving up the east slope of the Sierra Nevada from Southern California.

Last spring, as I was driving through this same area I, came upon a scenic overlook at the West Portal, southwest of Mono Lake directly east of Yosemite National Park. Three forest fires were burning in the area, the visibility was terrible and it was just perfect for the EXTREME WETHER project I had been working on. The photo above illustrates the conditions in this area last June. While there, it was immediately apparent, though it was difficult to see much beyond a quarter mile, that the specific location of this overlook was far superior to any other places I had noted in the area before due to its relative height, and how the Great Basin vegetation framed the east faces of the Sierra Nevada, and the nearby Mono Craters to the east.

As I was driving through this area a few weeks ago, I was on my way back from shooting transects in the desert, not really thinking much about shooting until I stopped at Convict Lake south of Mammoth for a break. It was later in the afternoon, the lake was an odd coppery tone, winds were gusting well above 50 mph and the air was clear and crystalline. A storm that did not cross the Sierras had been hung up on the crest for days, and it had scrubbed the air clean. I casually took a few photos there, and headed north towards Lee Vining. As I passed the West Portal, I casually thought maybe I should check it out for a minute or two before going to get dinner.

Once there, it was apparent that with these extremely clear windy conditions, this was a perfect dawn vantage point for shooting the Sierras from the desert. I taped off three vantage points, left for the evening and returned at 4:30AM to set up for real. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, the winds had disappeared overnight and it was so clear it felt like you could touch the Sierras though they were five miles to the west. After that I waited until 5:30AM, and began shooting all three photos every five minutes until sunrise. The two opening photos above are my favorites from that morning. While I had initially figured on sleeping in that morning and getting a big breakfast, my intuition said, "No!" And I always trust my intuition.