Chasing Lenticular Clouds
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I started a new job in mid-January. That same week, I contracted COVID. Thankfully, I had been vaccinated and boosted, but the experience was still altogether unpleasant. Even after recovering, I still felt some of the lingering effects weeks after. Partly as a result, I did not go out to photograph anything for about a month. I was tired from adjusting to a new job and recovering from post-COVID fatigue and paid little attention to exercising any degree of artistic creativity. That changed when my manager strongly urged me to use up a floating holiday I had. I mistakenly thought I could save it, until she informed me that I would lose it unless I used it for President’s Day. Holiday in hand, I booked a quick weekend trip to the Eastern Sierra to mentally recover from the past month and to hopefully scout out some new compositions.
Initially I didn’t expect very much from the trip. Up until several few days before my departure, the weather reports predicted clear skies and temperate weather for most of that weekend—a nightmare for landscape photographers (we’re a weird bunch). Then a brushfire raged outside Bishop, fueled by high winds and an abundance of dry grass. I thought about canceling the trip but as the date approached, however, the forecasts changed. A storm scheduled to arrive the day after President’s Day would bring some clouds into the area during the weekend I would be there. Stormy weather can make for some good photographs, so I decided to stick to my original plans.
On Saturday morning, I began the six-and-a-half-hour-long drive from the Bay Area to Bishop. Because most of the Sierra passes are closed in winter due to snow, I had to detour up to around Lake Tahoe in order to cross the mountain range. I arrived in Bishop in time to see sunset as I drove into town.
I started Sunday inauspiciously—by waking up late, ten minutes before sunrise. Though I managed to get dressed, rush out the door, and drive to my planned sunrise spot in about eight minutes, it was still too late. By the time I walked up to where I’d planned to set up my camera, the pink, pre-dawn glow had already given way to the warmer, harsher light of golden hour.
Disappointed, I drove back into town to get breakfast and explore the area. I decided to drive up into the White Mountains, the sixty-mile-long mountain range that sandwiches the Owens Valley with the Sierra Nevada. I hoped to explore the groves of bristlecone pines up there and see what scenes I could find. However, as I drove further up the road, progressively larger snowdrifts began to cover the pavement. Eventually I decided to turn back. My car wasn’t equipped to handle driving in the snow, and I didn’t want to risk it. I drove back down into the valley and contemplated my next move. Since it was still early in the day, I decided to drive up to Mammoth Lakes and explore the area.
As the day wore on, lenticular clouds rolled in from the west. Lenticular, or wave clouds, occur when rough terrain, like a mountain range, force high winds to move upwards. They combine with continuous cycles of evaporation and condensation to form otherworldly clouds. I first read about lenticular clouds in Galen Rowell’s book Mountain Light: In Search of the Dynamic Landscape. His photos piqued my curiosity, and I too wanted to see and photograph them. Though I had seen lenticular clouds in person once last year, my pictures from that encounter were not particularly memorable. I hoped to get some better results this time.
I hemmed and hawed for an hour as I checked webcams and weather forecasts for both the outskirts of Bishop and Mono Lake. Finally, I decided to bet on the latter. I drove up Highway 395 and onto the bumpy gravel road that led to the south shore of the lake. At the shore of the lake, I photographed several scenes in somewhat decent light, but I didn’t feel particularly inspired. To the west, the sun had ducked behind some thick, foreboding clouds. I didn’t have high hopes for sunset, but I figured I might as well stick around and find out for sure.
I tried my hand at a composition of the stormy sky above some rabbitbrush bushes (above) and then turned around to check the light. Much to my surprise, I started noticing a faint pink glow on the eastern horizon, and correctly deduced that the light would intensify within the next few minutes. I picked up my tripod and camera gear, then ran furiously across the beach to some tufa formations on the other shore. The light intensified and more clouds began to reflect the cotton candy pink.
I rushed back towards some scenes (see above) I had shot earlier and began setting up my tripod and camera. By now the lenticular clouds directly overhead completely lit up. I pulled out my phone and began to meter the shadows and the clouds to figure out the difference in exposure. The app registered a two-stop difference between the foreground and the sky. To my eye the clouds appeared brighter than that, but with the light bound to fade within the next minute or two, I deferred to the meter reading and immediately began sliding a two-stop graduated neutral density filter in front of my camera lens. I bracketed several exposures and filter placements before the light faded.
The next morning, I resolved to revisit a familiar spot for sunrise. Back in October, I had finally found a composition I had mulled over in my head for the better part of a year. It had taken multiple trips to the area over a six-month period and quite a bit of detective work to finally find the right location where all the elements lined up for a good photograph (picture below).
It was a fine picture, but I still wasn’t completely satisfied. The composition was solid, but the mountains were a bit bare. I wanted to revisit the location in the winter when there were some more clouds hovering over the snow-capped mountains. On this morning, the conditions lined up perfectly.
Unfortunately, when I arrived at the location, I found myself struggling to find the exact composition. The rabbitbrush bushes had changed since my last visit, and I couldn’t find a group of them that could serve as a good foreground interest in my photo. As the light started to change, I scrambled around the field looking for some photogenic rabbitbrush. I imagine that local residents looking out their window might have scratched their heads seeing a man in a red jacket running around madly from bush to bush with a camera and tripod. Eventually I settled on a composition and set it up as the light started to peak.
During this weekend, I managed to check off quite a few items on my photography bucket list. A lot of the success came down to luck. My pictures would not have turned out if the weather conditions hadn’t lined up perfectly. But luck doesn’t tell the whole story. Louis Pasteur once said that “Chance favors the prepared mind.” As I’ve learned and photographed more, I’ve found out just how true that is. Even my “unlucky” trips—situations where I get few, if any, photographs worth keeping—help me build up knowledge and experience for next time. The process of exploring allows me to get “lucky” more often. Indeed, my most rewarding photographs have come after several trips to the same area, or even the same scene. I don’t often write or post pictures about the times when I’m unlucky, but when they happen, I’ll think of them as laying the groundwork for a future portfolio-worthy shot.