Evolution Split Mirror Lake Reflection

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Kings Canyon National Park, Fresno County
early morning Monday September 1, 1980, slide 80A_15-31
Olympus OM-1, 50mm Zuiko. Slik 500GL
Drum scanned 35mm Kodachrome 64 to 100mb RGB file
Adobe Photoshop 6.0 processed for accurate image fidelity
Lightjet5000 on Fuji Crystal Archive paper
signature bottom left

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I took this picture during a nine-day adventure into Kings Canyon National Park high country. It is an unnamed lake away from any trails. All I will say is it is within the Evolution Creek drainage that has many unnamed lakes. Evolution Creek is tributary to the South Fork of the San Joaquin River. The image has always been special to me because it was the first truly fine image I'd made during my first year as a serious photographer. I had been backpacking in the Sierra Nevada during the 1970s decade as a trout fisherman and gradually became more interested in photography. In 1979 I bought my second SLR, an Olympus OM-1, which was being touted as one of the first fine lightweight SLR systems of the day. I added a lightweight Slik tripod and a couple zoom lenses and thus began a burdensome life of a pack animal. At summer's end I had decided I would hence be a serious landscape photographer of the small format. But not as a professional since my electronics career was a much more certain moneymaking path in life.

The snowfield at frame left is within large granite talus boulders. At frame right is monolithic granite bedrock, last smoothed during the glacial epoch ending about 10,000 years ago. On that rock along with some green turf, a few stunted whitebark pine, pinus albicaulis, cling beneath the protective lee side of that slope.

At my camp spot among similar trees nearby, abundant marmots explored my campsite hopeful for food scraps whenever I walked away. In the waters of the lake is a modest population of sizeable golden trout. Yet another reason for these sealed lips.

Miles distant in the background other peaks poke above the far end of this alpine lake's calm waters. But the waters are not totally calm. On the left lake edge, one can see slight waves on the water where cool sumping air within still shadowed areas above, easily flows down the hillside and out over the waters. Whether a lake has calm on a given morning depends on a number of factors of weather and topography. This lake is often breezy. When the lake does calm such is likely to be brief, as daily up canyon breezes due to warm valley air mass expansion dozens of miles distant soon overcome any remaining downward sumping night flows.

For this frame I did not include the usual foreground except the dark shadows of the lake edge in the right lower corner. And I'm glad that on this, an early time of my trying to be a photographer, I did not try to add a foreground. The simple image is very aesthetic as is without lower distractions. I returned to this lake late summer 1989 but disappointingly all the snowfields had long melted.

Crop at 100% print size:

   David Senesac
   email: sales@davidsenesac.com

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