Mono Lake/Ellery Lake - Yosemite National Park/Mono Lake (Part 4)

Yosemite National Park is a national park located in California that stretches eastern portions of Tuolumne, Mariposa and Madera counties in the central eastern portion of California and covers around 761,268 acres or 3,080.74 km² of land. Yosemite National Park is best known for its waterfalls, deep valleys, grand meadows, giant sequoias, giant wilderness area, and much more. Mono Lake, a salt lake east of Yosemite National Park that is located in Mono County, California, covers a total of 45,133 acres or 182.65 km². The lake is famous for its high salt content and its tufa formations. I have visited both of those areas and are here to show you some of the photos I took at these two places along with some other photos I have taken along the route. These photos will be divided over several blog posts. I hope you enjoy the photos! If you would like to get notifications when I do post, you can Like/Follow me on the following fan pages: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Full Resolution Photos and Prints: If you want to see full resolution photos or buy prints of any of the photos you see, they are up on my portfolio for viewing. To view my best Yosemite National Park photos from 2012, use this link. To view all of my photos from Yosemite National Park photos from 2012, use this link.

Parts: Yosemite Falls Comparison | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | HDR Compositions | Panoramas | 

Now let's introduce you to the photos for today. I will finish off my photos from Mono Lake today and get started off with my Yosemite National Park photos. As I said above and in the last post, Mono Lake is a salt lake east of Yosemite National Park that is located in Mono County, California. The small town of Lee Vining borders the lake and that is where I stayed overnight. The lake covers a total of 45,133 acres or 182.65 km². The lake is famous for its high salt content and its tufa formations. If you are visiting Mono Lake and are driving there from the SF Bay Area, may I suggest also visiting Bodie State Historic Park which is a ghost town near the area. I didn't visit that area because apparently I had no clue of its existence the time I went until a fan of mine on G+ posted some photos up. The park itself is not very far away from Mono Lake, and in fact you kind of pass it if you take the route I did. I'd say there is an extra 5 miles there and 5 miles back (the road to the park is a dead end according to Google Maps). From my fan's photos, I'd say the park is great for star trails photography at night because the buildings at the ghost town really make great foreground objects for star trails. If you are doing such photography, just make sure you pack some jackets as it will get cold. Also from the looks of the photos, some time lapse of clouds moving overhead might look good too. If I visit Mono Lake again, I will definitely go there. Enough with my amateur tourism guide. HAHA On with the photos for today.

Grass field with some tufa behind. I think the clouds adds a nice touch to the photo. Good thing the clouds started rolling in!  

More tufa formation at Mono Lake 

Close up of flowers at the park 

 I originally thought this was a horsefly (as you seen in the previous post there were many at the park) until one of my G+ fans pointed out the blurred out pattern on the abdomen of the bee. HAHA If I knew it was a bee, I would have probably not have gotten so close. I am not allergic to the stings, but I am extremely terrified of these little critters. LOL 

 Dragonflies at the park. There were many. I only picked a few to show you because my manual focus skill was not very good and I ruined a bunch of shots, and they mostly look the same. 

 2 more shots of the dragonflies. After this, I left for Yosemite National Park. (Well technically I wanted more photos, but my bladder thought differently... LOOL So afterwards, I was like, eh, let's go. ROFL) 

This was not Yosemite National Park yet. This was on the road. I thought this valley looked very cool. So I told my chauffeur (technically my dad) to pull over. I crossed the highway with my equipment and took the photo.
Update 10/14/2013: This is a photo from Tioga Pass.

 This is Ellery Lake in Yosemite National Park. Elevation is at 9,538 feet. I took a photo of the sign to help me remember. It's a great tip for these types of photography. 

 More of Ellery Lake. 

A close up of some freshly growing pine needles. This was near Ellery Lake including the next 2 photos.  

Close ups of flowers near the pine needles I took a photo of above. 

This is all the photos for today. Next post I will leave Ellery Lake and go deeper into Yosemite. I will also have some photos of squirrels in Curry Village. I will try my best to post tomorrow. :) Please don't forget to share my blog posts with your friends! If you would like to get notifications next time I post, you can "Like" me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Google+. These links can also be found on the top of the right sidebar.

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Mono Lake/Wildlife - Yosemite National Park/Mono Lake (Part 3)

Yosemite National Park is a national park located in California that stretches eastern portions of Tuolumne, Mariposa and Madera counties in the central eastern portion of California and covers around 761,268 acres or 3,080.74 km² of land. Yosemite National Park is best known for its waterfalls, deep valleys, grand meadows, giant sequoias, giant wilderness area, and much more. Mono Lake, a salt lake east of Yosemite National Park that is located in Mono County, California, covers a total of 45,133 acres or 182.65 km². The lake is famous for its high salt content and its tufa formations. I have visited both of those areas and are here to show you some of the photos I took at these two places along with some other photos I have taken along the route. These photos will be divided over several blog posts. I hope you enjoy the photos! If you would like to get notifications when I do post, you can Like/Follow me on the following fan pages: Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Full Resolution Photos and Prints: If you want to see full resolution photos or buy prints of any of the photos you see, they are up on my portfolio for viewing. To view my best Yosemite National Park photos from 2012, use this link. To view my best wildlife photos, use this link. To view all of my photos from Yosemite National Park photos from 2012, use this link.

Parts: Yosemite Falls Comparison | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | HDR Compositions | Panoramas | 

Now let's introduce you to the photos for today. I will begin the photos I took at Mono Lake today, finishing them off in the next post. As I said above, Mono Lake is a salt lake east of Yosemite National Park that is located in Mono County, California. The small town of Lee Vining borders the lake and that is where I stayed overnight. The lake covers a total of 45,133 acres or 182.65 km². The lake is famous for its high salt content and its tufa formations. If you are visiting Mono Lake and are driving there from the SF Bay Area, may I suggest also visiting Bodie State Historic Park which is a ghost town near the area. I didn't visit that area because apparently I had no clue of its existence the time I went until a fan of mine on G+ posted some photos up. The park itself is not very far away from Mono Lake, and in fact you kind of pass it if you take the route I did. I'd say there is an extra 5 miles there and 5 miles back (the road to the park is a dead end according to Google Maps). From my fan's photos, I'd say the park is great for star trails photography at night because the buildings at the ghost town really make great foreground objects for star trails. If you are doing such photography, just make sure you pack some jackets as it will get cold. Also from the looks of the photos, some time lapse of clouds moving overhead might look good too. If I visit Mono Lake again, I will definitely go there. Enough with my amateur tourism guide. HAHA On with the photos for today.

Here is a trail leading into to the beach at the lake. Mountains off in the distance and those rock formations are the tufa. 

Photography Tip: Generally it helps with some landscape shots to have some lead-in lines like the one above (with the trail). It will help make the photo more pleasing to the eye. It would also help if the line fell on one of the lines in the Rule of Thirds. This is where you imagine dividing the shot up in 1/3 pieces both horizontally and vertically as if there is a grid over your camera. In certain cameras, you can actually enable the Rule of Thirds grid. How you do that is different in every camera. As with camera specific controls, the best way to figure it out is to read your instruction manual or contact the customer support of the company that made the camera. 

Here are some tufa up close with some background. As with my rule of thirds tip above, see how there is no lead-in lines in this shot, but see how the foreground covers roughly 2/3 of the image and the sky roughly takes 1/3 of the image? That is the horizontal rule of thirds I was talking about. 

I got closer to the tufa and did a vertical shot of a tall tufa. Wish there was some clouds in the sky, but there wasn't. Would have probably spiced up the shot a bit. 

Again with the lead-in lines tip from above. As you can see in this shot, the rule of thirds was not used and I used the boardwalk as a lead-in line in the center. As always, rules are meant to be broken, at least in photography. 

Some clouds starting to float into the area. YAY! See how much better the shot looks than just having a blue sky? 

Here is the lake it self with tufa in the middle of the lake. Those dots you see on the lake are horseflies. (I'll have a closer look later in this post) Those things hurt when they bite. I got bit when I was there. Not poisonous, just hurts like heck and make you bleed. If you get bitten, just shoo it off. 

Here is a closeup shot of a dragonfly. There were many dragonflies flying around there. I will have more photos of these in the next blog post. 

There are many seagulls there at the lake. It is a salt water lake right. 

I think this is a finch of some sort and I also think its a female due to its brown color and lack of detail. Because a lot of female birds look a like without some sort of feature to distinguish them from one another (at least to regular human eyes), I'm going to leave this bird nameless unless someone can give me a hint below in the comments. 

Like I said above, I have closer shots of the horseflies on the lake. I was aiming for the birds, but when I zoomed in on my computer, I can see the flies too. :/ Looks disgusting. 

These are all the photos for today. I hope you have enjoyed these photos. Next time I post, I will finish off Mono Lake photos (including some landscapes and close ups) and I will begin my Yosemite National Park photos. Please don't forget to share my blog posts with your friends! If you would like to get notifications next time I post, you can "Like" me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Google+. These links can also be found on the top of the right sidebar.

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Backyard and Pleasanton Trail Birds

As the title suggests, today I have bird photos I took in my backyard and on Pleasanton Trail (Arroyo Del Valle Trail). Well it was actually the Pleasanton Sports Park, but I'm going to call it Pleasanton Trail anyways because it was kind of the border between the trail and the park. LOL So anyways, if you are new here, the trail is located in Pleasanton, CA. (Duh!) So here are the photos! I'm going to start off with my backyard photos.

Full Resolution Photos and Prints: If you want to see full resolution photos or buy prints of any of the photos you see, they are up on my portfolio for viewing. To see my best bird photos of 2012, use this link. To view my best 2012 backyard photos, use this link. To see all of my at home and backyard photography shots of 2012, use this link. To see my best photos of Pleasanton in 2012, use this link. To see all of my photos from Pleasanton in 2012, use this link.

Black Phoebe (Sayornis nigricans)

The black phoebe really loved to perch on my bird cage (the one I'm not using). There are a lot of bird poop on the top... If you are new here, I used to have a lot of pet birds. 2 died and 1 flew away. Now I only have 2 parakeets left, which I keep in my smaller cage now, which I can bring indoors easily. I don't use my big cage now. My big cage is located near the nest, and the black phoebe enjoys using it as a perch before flying up to its nest. 

Nom nom nom... HAHA It caught a bug...

Well anyways, here is the story of this family of black phoebes. The family nested in my backyard and had baby birds. Now they flew away because the babies hatched. I enjoyed their company though. I got some great photos! :D

That looks like a dragonfly in its mouth. Nom nom nom... 

 Another photo of it perched on top of my bird cage. My big bird cage had a small bird play gym at the top. 

 Fence post got in the way of this shot... That's the thing in the bottom right corner. I was taking these photos indoors to not startle the bird. I temporarily removed my window's mesh screen to get these photos.

The bird standing on my wire vine crawler thingy I stuck in my flower pot.  

You know what bugs me... How a bird can grip such a thin round piece of wire and not flip upside down. LOL

The black phoebe was from my backyard. The rest of the robin photos are from the Pleasanton Trail/Pleasanton Sports Park border...

Looks like it found a worm. 

American Robin (Turdus migratorius)

This is all the photos for this post! I hope you have enjoyed viewing them. Next time, I will have some bird and squirrel photos from Pleasanton Sports Park. After that post, I will begin my Monterey photos! :) I know all of you have been looking forward to those, so 1 more post before I start! Please don't forget to share the blog posts with your friends! Also, if you would like to get notifications next time I post, you can "Like" me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Google+. These links can also be found on the top of the right sidebar.