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Mono Lake Photo Series

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Mono Lake CaliforniaMono Lake, California, sits at the western edge of The Great Basin, the expansive drainage area that lies between the Rocky Mountains in the east, and the Sierra Nevada range in the west. All lakes from Salt Lake in Utah across to Mono Lake in the west have no outlet to the sea and over thousands of years as a result of evaporation have become highly concentrated in salts.

Despite the waters of Mono Lake being too alkaline to support fish life, the waters abound with brine shrimp and alkali fly pupa which support millions of migrating birds.

Limestone towers known as "tufa" rise from the lake, formed by freshwater springs percolating up into the lake. The calcium in the fresh water combines with the carbonate in the lake water to form the calcium carbonate from which the tufas form. If you've ever been in limestone caves with stalagmites, you will recognize them as essentially the same things but formed by different processes.

In the photos of Mono Lake that I have published, you will see nature's dramatic primary color palette composed of a bright green lake and bright blue sky. It was quite a sight! I also did several of them as sepia-toned photos. And right there to the west is the very edge of the Sierra Nevada range. What a place! Get in a visit if you can some day.

By the way, if the bottom of the photos are cut off on your computer screen, did you know that by pressing the F11 key on your computer keyboard, you can hide your browser menu bars and get to see more of the picutures. When you're done, just press the F11 key again to show you menu bars again. This works for Internet Explorer - I'm not sure if it works the same with other browers.

Slide Show of Photos of Mono Lake

Read more about Mono Lake


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Do Not Disconnect - The Real Digital Divide

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The fly in the ointment, Opito Bay, around 2007. This post was originally published in November, 2007. Almost two decades on, the photograph and the argument both feel — if anything — more relevant than they did then. I have updated this post lightly in May, 2026, some 19 years later! The Photograph I was on holiday in Opito Bay on New Zealand's Coromandel Peninsula, sitting on the couch in the place we were staying at. A friend's iPod was resting on the coffee table, on top of a copy of The Economist from March 2005, whose cover story happened to be titled "The Real Digital Divide." A fly landed on the iPod's click wheel and stayed there. I reached for my camera, took the shot, and edited it later in Photoshop to give it the grungy, oversaturated look you see above. The fly on the iPod along with "The Real Digital Divide" struck me — immediately, and with a kind of emb...
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Samoan Youth

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This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm
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Anza-Borrego Wildflowers

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Anza Borrego Desert State Park California Wildflowers This cluster of wildflowers is typical of the flowers in Plum Canyon in Anza-Borrego Desert this spring. Because of the dry and harsh environment, most of the flowers are tiny like the three in this photo. But what they lack in size, they make up for in color. It's pretty difficult to try and identify all these flowers, but I'm pretty sure the white one is Desert Pincushion. Help out if you can. I've been using the CalFlora.org website to try and identify the flowers in this series.
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