Well I got my camera back from when a gust of wind tipped it over on the tripod just in time to take it down to shoot fall colors around Mono Lake. It cost me $800. to get it fixed, a expensive lesson learned, just spread the legs out super wide or just lay it on the ground.

The colors were just not there yet so I want to go back down this weekend and hope this storm that is moving through will help the colors.

I went with Tim Torell again and it always seems I come back with some worth while images. We left at 4am Friday morning and got to Twin Lakes just west of Bishop, CA for the sunrise but we had a hard time finding a good vantage point, we then went on a scouting trip to find out where we wanted to spend our time shooting over the weekend. We visited Virginia Lakes, Lundy Lakes and June lake Loop. That night we went to shoot star trails at a cabin we found driving around and got back to Lee Vining at 11pm. We opted to go back to the beaver ponds up behind Lundy Lake for the Pre-dawn/sunrise shots, so up at 5am we got there while it was just getting some light in the sky and set up for the morning light. We just wished we had better fall colors. Mono lake was our spot for the sunset shots and we had some late clouds blow in for some interest for the sky. We stayed for star trails again and I broke my shutter release remote so I tried some 30 sec exposures with the tufa and stars in the background. We finally got back in at midnight and up at 4am for moon lit tufa shots and sunrise at Mono Lake. I really like the shots about a half an hour before the sun come up, it give the best colors.

It's good to have my camera back, I wasted money on shooting some old 35mm slide and print film that must have gotten heat damage because the colors were all off. I did like the feel of the Nikon F4 with the 28-105 lens on it. I did shoot more 120 black and white I just have to develop it to see if it's worth getting back into the darkroom to print some of it.

I'll post some photos of this last weekend soon.

Take care everyone!