Pyramid Lake at sunset

Gallery: LandscapePosted January 13, 2010137 views3 comments

I drove 40+ mile two evening from Reno to Pyramid Lake before I was able to get an image that I hope is worth posting. My first trip the lake wss socked in fog. The second evening the lake was cover in heavy clouds, but just as I was heading back the clouds opened just enough to light up the opposite shore for about 15 minutes. This was the best of the batch.
That is the normal color of the water in Pyramid Lake (located NE of Reno at 3800+ feet)

Processed in Nikon NX2 and sized in CS3.

D300, 18-200 AF-S DX VR at 55mm, 1/25, f9, ISO 800, polarizer

Dan Ryan
Northern California

Comments

3 comments

Comment posted by Steve Sieren on January 13, 2010 at 10:07 PM

My folks live up this way so I visit the place often. Dan, the way you have layered the composition works great. The lake is very blue but you might need to desaturated it just a tad. I do like the hovering clouds over the peaks. Nice work

SS

Registered on January 2, 2008, 360 Posts, 5321 Comments

Comment posted by Jeff Beard on January 14, 2010 at 10:22 AM

This is a solid composition, the cloud over the mountain is a great, the light too, the exposure is good. If I took this shot, my instinct would been have to take it at f16-22 and at a much lower ISO, like 100. Cheers!

Registered on July 1, 2009, 0 Posts, 25 Comments

Comment posted by Lon Overacker on January 14, 2010 at 11:25 PM

Hey Dan,

There is much I like about this image including the vibrant blue of the lake, the light on the background landscape and the details of the foreground. Now I hope I'm not overly critical but the choices here leave me a little confused. What I mean is that I believe you were attracted to the great color in the lake and the light that was happening - for a short period. But by focusing on the foreground and using a pretty wide aperture, the background is quite soft because of DOF. The foreground is quite nice, but I think the story is the light and color of the background. So, your focus point and DOF tells me the foreground is what you're trying to portray, yet it's the light and color the background that I think you wanted to display? Maybe I'm a little off, but that's my guess.

I'm also guessing that because things were changing so fast you didn't have a whole lot of time for making decisions and that's certainly understandable. But facing this scene, you might have considered a smaller aperture to get more depth of field. then again, you may not have had a tripod handy and we're back to making due with what you had available.

Anyway, I like the scene, I like the light, I'm just wishing that the depth of field didn't keep me in the foreground rabbitbrush.

Lon

Registered on November 24, 2006, 521 Posts, 19147 Comments