Photographing the Eastern Sierra: From Alabama Hills to Mono Lake

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The road to Mt. Whitney at sunrise — Portal Road before the light hits the face

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Badwater Basin — the salt flats at the lowest point in North America

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Fine Art Eastern Sierra Photography Prints


Mt. Whitney and the Sierra Nevada crest seen through the Mobius Arch, Alabama Hills, California.


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The Mobius Arch is a Jurassic sandstone formation at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, older than the mountains it frames. Standing inside it, with Whitney and the Needles filling the opening and the desert floor dropping away beneath, the compression of distance is almost vertiginous — the arch perhaps fifty feet away, the summit fourteen thousand feet distant, both in the same frame. This is the Eastern Sierra's essential image: old stone framing older stone, warm desert rock in front of cold granite, the arid present looking through to the alpine past. Spring clouds have built against the east face of the range — they move in from the Pacific, hit the wall of the Sierra, and pile up against the peaks, casting the specific purple-blue that high cloud throws over granite in the hour before the light changes. The peaks carry patches of snow. We have stood here many times in different seasons and different light. The composition is always waiting, and it is never quite the same twice.

The Mobius Arch in the Alabama Hills frames Mt. Whitney and the Needles in the bright afternoon sun.
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Möbius Arch — Alabama Hills, Eastern Sierra

The Mobius Arch is a Jurassic sandstone formation at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, older than the mountains it frames. Standing inside it, with Whitney and the Needles filling the opening and the desert floor dropping away beneath, the compression of distance is almost vertiginous — the arch perhaps fifty feet away, the summit fourteen thousand feet distant, both in the same frame. This is the Eastern Sierra's essential image: old stone framing older stone, warm desert rock in front of cold granite, the arid present looking through to the alpine past. Spring clouds have built against the east face of the range — they move in from the Pacific, hit the wall of the Sierra, and pile up against the peaks, casting the specific purple-blue that high cloud throws over granite in the hour before the light changes. The peaks carry patches of snow. We have stood here many times in different seasons and different light. The composition is always waiting, and it is never quite the same twice.