Back to Mono Lake!

Black Point

Even with great wanderlust for new places, the eastern Sierra, with its sulfurous smells, surprise weather, and sublime light, keeps drawing us back.

The ongoing threat of COVID has challenged photography workshops as well as just about everything else in our lives. Gathering people together is fraught. While of course most of the time spent on nature photography is outdoors, part of the fun of workshops is precisely the gathering of people, with opportunities to share meals and photos. So, when Joe Decker led the first photography workshop hosted by the Mono Lake Committee since the last one (also led by him) in January of 2020, he worked with the Committee to find outdoor spaces for meals and photo sharing. The event was hugely successful and felt reasonably safe, and I was delighted to participate.

Old Marina

Joe leads at an aggressive pace, and there were eight field sessions in an approximately 48-hour workshop. He worked hard to take advantage of the best light under varying conditions. It's considerably easier to get enough sleep between sunset and sunrise shoots in January than it is in May. Friday, we had an afternoon shoot, a sunset shoot, and a night shoot, all before a sunrise shoot Saturday morning. There was a break for an afternoon nap on Saturday before the sunset shoot. I took a nap in my car Sunday before driving home after the sunrise and morning shoots!
Before the Saturday afternoon shoot, we had an outdoor photo sharing session in a Lee Vining solar pavilion. The light wasn't optimal for photo sharing, but it worked well enough, and it felt safer than indoors.

Enthusiastic and exuberant naturalist Nora Livingston of the Mono Lake Committee was a delightful addition to the workshop format. Sunday morning alone, she pointed out a Great Horned Owl, a Bald Eagle, and copulating Ospreys. I did not manage to capture those great moments photographically very well, but I did take an amusing photo of a Red-breasted Sapsucker that she identified on Saturday.

Lundy Canyon

A full-moon night session at South Tufa offered the opportunity to take photos where the light on the tufa looked like daylight, but the sky was full of stars. The experience was magical and the results were memorable.

South Tufa at night

But Joe managed to top that Saturday night with a sunset shoot at Black Point. With the exceptionally low lake level, we were able to take our tripods far out on the beach. The sky over the lake was incredible, and I took that amazing photo at the top of this post.

Mono Lake is a special place to so many of us. We hope that, very soon, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will be forced to reduce diversions from the Mono Lake even further than it already has. We hope that the beaches we were able to photograph at Black Point that fabulous night will soon be underwater as they were before the diversions began. Long live Mono Lake!

Black Point

Beth Zuckerman, self-portrait

I am a high-energy creature of passion, a photographer and an aerial dancer. I share with you my journey as an artist.