That's Shadow Lake, one of the must-do day hikes from Mammoth Lakes, California. Start at Agnew Meadows and it's about 3.6 miles to the lake. Directions here. The pic looks better larger -- click above.
Two big peaks -- Banner and Ritter -- sit at the western end of the lake. Meaning you should photograph it in the morning and avoid doing what I always do: hiking there in the afternoon.
It was overcast when I arrived today with the sun peaking in and out of the clouds. With the sun out, the lake was practically un-photographable. But when it retreated behind the clouds, there was a chance to grab a pic.
TIP: When you encounter tough lighting situations such as this -- really bright skies, really dark shadows -- shoot in RAW. You'll have a much better chance of saving some detail in the shadows and skies.
I wanted this to be dark and moody. I shot it with my Nikon df and processed in Lightroom 5 using VSCO film presets until I had the level of dark just right. I'm also going to process in black-and-white, as B&W looked pretty good using Hipstamatic on my iPhone:
Check out my SmugMug site for more of my work, prints and licensing info. To save 20 percent on the cost of a SmugMug account, please click here. SmugMug lets you customize your page and sell prints and licenses -- unlike, for example, Flickr. I also think photos look better on SmugMug than Flickr or Facebook due to the way those sites compress big files.
--S.H.
The photo above is ©Steve Hymon and may not be used elsewhere without my advanced written permission. All rights reserved.
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