Mono Lake, Thunderstorm. Mono Lake, California. July 23, 2007.© Copyright 2007 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Eastern Sierra Nevada thunderstorms build over Mono Lake, Mono Craters, and Lee Vining, California.

Mono Lake can be an unforgiving place in which to try to make photographs during the day, but sometimes one gets lucky! It is a wonderful place, but if you only know it from photographs – which, of course, tend to be made at the most appealing times – you might not know that it is often hot and hazy and dry during the day. These are among the reasons that it is a place often photographed at dawn or at sunset on days when the clouds are interesting. (The latter poses its own set of problems, since the Sierra Nevada range begins to block the light well before actual sunset.)

But I did get lucky on this late July afternoon. It was thunderstorm weather, so there were some very impressive clouds floating around. However, the clouds did not completely fill the sky, so patches of light were moving across the landscape – in this photograph one illuminates the green area at far right along the shore and, more importantly, the Mono Craters beyond the far shore of the lake. And the vegetation around the lake was still green, or at least green enough to look alive in this light.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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