Bonsai Rock

For years, I have resisted ever taking a vacation unless it focused on nothing but SCUBA diving. How things have changed.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Kendra and I decided on a long weekend up around Lake Tahoe, Nevada. The cheap lodging and easy access to several different shooting locations helped play a part in our decision. Being close to casinos and a multitude of Safeways, Subways, and Starbucks was an unexpected surprise.

For our first day, we got up at 6am to finish packing and get to Tahoe by lunch time, thus allowing ourselves plenty of time to scout out and find Bonsai Rock. It seemed like a good place to start as the weather forecast called for worsening wind and potential snow showers as the weekend progressed. Stephen Oachs had mentioned something about reflections and wind, and yeah they don't mix.

Kendra is the GPS queen, and she loaded up a bunch of spots for us to check out. As we drove around the lake, she would randomly tell me how fast I was driving by looking at her GPS. As we passed Sand Harbor, I knew Bonsai Rock was close and told Kendra to look out the window for it as it is down a relatively steep incline from the highway.

"But the GPS says we have four more miles", she said. "No", I replied,"it's only about half a mile or so from Sand Harbor". At that instant, I hear "there it is!" and the GPS chimes in that we had reached our destination. Funny how four miles can be covered in 30 seconds. Good job GPS.

So this is my reflections shot of Bonsai Rock, you won't see many more reflections from me out of this trip. The weather forecasters were pretty accurate.

Equipment: Nikon D300, Nikkor 12-24mm, 15sec, f14, ISO 100, Polarizer, .9+.6 GND Filters