Alpine Glow
Chicken Spring Lake, Sequoia National Forest, Ca.
Yet another landscape with these dead Coniferous trees. This was night number two on our backpacking trip in the Eastern Sierra. We started out of Horseshoe Meadow, which is near the Southern end of the Sierra, because anything North of here was still buried in snow from a very wet year. This is Chicken Spring lake, our first stop, which is near 11,500 feet. As you can see in any shaded area there was still large patches of snow here.
We spent a day here to acclimate - even though we should have spent a day in the meadow 1,500 feet below us before starting. We paid the price for going straight from sea level to 12,000 feet in the same day with headaches and nausea. I am glad that we got to catch this tail end of a storm though! We had thunder storms drop a lot of rain on us for the first half of the trip. But then it would inevitably clear up and leave us a great sky. I particularly loved the glow that seemed to come from all directions. I can't explain it other than maybe some clouds behind me that were reflecting the light back.
This was an interesting image to process. I started with three exposures and first attempted an HDR with them but decided that didn't do it justice so a lot of manual blending ended up happening.
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