All images and material © 2016 by Mike Clasen Photography • All Rights Reserved • Use By Permission Only
A sagebrush stands strong, spared from the fast burning cheat grass that surrounded it. A full moon rises behind light smoky skies caused from wildfires in California and Nevada, August 2016. Cheat grass is very invasive, and is a wildfire threat. The recently charred earth in the foreground was due to a fire caused by a “careless/care less” target shooter.. This was not a planned photo shoot, as none of my images are rarely from one. I am very mobile when I do landscape photography, and never could quite understand how anybody could stay in one place for a couple hours or more waiting for the right conditions to occur, etc. I guess I am more into the “picture hunt” aspect of landscape photography, constantly moving, composing with my eyes, seeing different possibilities, and all too often scrambling to find SOME interesting foreground elements for the capture. Or, I am a spaz, and impatient, and can’t sit still for very long. Connie and I were four wheeling, exploring the recent burn scar out here. I did not think the full moon rise would be visible due to the smoke and clouds above the mountains, so we figured we would just head on back home since it was getting dark. Well, you know how it goes, your out there in the middle of nowhere, and you have to take a leak. So, I stopped the Jeep, walked to the back of it to do my business and there it was, a red moon breaking over the mountain range with thin slivers of clouds going through it. So, I grabbed my gear, and started “scrambling” to find some interesting foreground element, which really what I had on my mind when scouting earlier, was a burned up sagebrush – they do look cool as black skeletons. I found this little guy that survived the burn, standing strong next to a wash cutting through diatomaceous earth leading around to the smoky moon. This vertical comp was from the last sequence of shots I captured, specifically for an exposure blend. The red moon with slivers of clouds in it, might be another future work, we’ll see. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com
This image was captured in November of 2015 during a winter snowstorm that was building up throughout the Sierra Nevada and surrounding areas. I photographed for an hour or so within 30 miles of this area in the ancient Lake Lahontan basin, in relatively flat and softly diffused light conditions, no sun whatsoever. Right before sunset, the storm cleared up quite a bit, and a window opened up for about ten minutes, casting the last rays of sun upon the entire span of the partially tufa encrusted Mountains. Shortly after taking this picture, the snow moved in again, I photographed a little while longer, but figured I better get while the getting’s good, it did not take long for the snow to create whiteout conditions with low visibility. It was not so much fun driving back home with headlights creating a “snow warp” effect. I passed several wrecks and overturned cars on I80 heading back to Reno. I made it home safely, with some good memories of this short afternoon venture. This is a single exposure, exposed for the highlights. During post, I created two smart object layers from CRAW, dropping the exposure 1 stop on one of the smart object layers, then exposure blended the two layers, and further processed the image using luminosity masks via the TK Panel, to build up depth and dimension. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com
