Running... Again?

Image
  If you know me you know there was a time about 10 years ago or so where I was running. A lot. At least 5 days a week and at least 5 miles a run. I wasn’t training, I wasn’t preparing for a race or a marathon. I just found myself enjoying the time spent running. I wasn’t obsessed with numbers, but I kept track of them all and liked seeing improvements in time and distances. It was good physical health and mental health. Then I tweaked my knee. Not bad enough that I couldn’t walk on it, just a tweak that told me I needed to back off of running for a little bit. So I decided on 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks I aborted a run very early as the pain was still there. 2 weeks became 3, became a month, became 5 years. 
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Panoramas From the Road

Between the Clouds
Before we get into the meat of this post, if you're viewing this on a mobile device, these photos really don't translate that well on it. These are large panoramic photos and really need a large screen to do them justice. Now on with the post.

Occasionally during my Eastern Sierra trip I had the idea to take panoramas to try and take in the full view of what I was seeing and feeling. I tried to focus on a part of the view I was seeing that would fill up my frame, but I felt that it didn't full get the whole feeling with only part of the view, but this led to other problems. All the panoramas I took were literally on the side of the road, meaning I was in the middle of driving, with someone who's not a photographer. So, not wanting to annoy them I left the tripod in the car and took these panoramas free hand. When taking handheld panos my general rule is to take many photos and to go well beyond and after my intended start and stop points so that the photo software has lots of points in common to stitch the photos together, and I will hopefully have plenty of excess photo that can be thrown away on the edges.

The top photo was taken off highway 44, directly north of Lassen National Park and looking out west. We had been climbing for a while at this point and got to a point where we were on top of the fog that had filled the canyon we drove up out of, but just below the cloud base. Not a sight I see all that often. This shot is a 5 shots stitched together in Lightroom.

Looking Down on Mono Lake
This shot is another off the road viewing area, this time off Highway 395 at just about 7,700 feet up. We had just crested a summit and sighted this Mono Lake Viewing Area. This is a view looking south-east down in onto Mono Lake with the Sierra bordering on the right. A storm had just swept through a couple days earlier leaving these great clouds. Towards the bottom middle, and leading into the photo, is highway 395.

This pano was made up of 7 shots, handheld, and again stitched in Lightroom

Eastern Sierras in Black and White
This panorama, from the same spot as the previous one, just looking more west onto the east facing side of the Sierra Nevadas, was a precursor to something I thought I might be doing once situated in Lone Pine; making use of black and white. The desert on here isn't much for color, at least during the non-prime time hours of sunrise or sunset, but is high on texture. From the scrub brush up front, to the trees, and finally to the mountain faces themselves, I though black and white would accentuate this gritty feel. I originally took this panorama in black and white (the camera saves RAW files in color, and spits out JPEGs with whatever treatment I select) and while I liked in general what the camera did, I felt it could be more.

This, I'm surprised to find out, is a 10 shot panorama, though in terms of dimensions is a good thousand pixels slimmer than my 7 shot panorama looking down on Mono Lake. Lightroom certainly threw out a lot of extra space.

I've linked the 3 photos below to show them in full screen, as Blogger doesn't allow for easily showing that.

Up in the Clouds
Looking Down on Mono Lake
Eastern Sierra in Black and White
Location: US-395, Lee Vining, CA 93541, USA

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