NEW WORK

Grandma's B-Day

Photography of ancient tufascapes

Settling Storm

This scene was captured in June of 2017 ‘somewhere’ in the Virginia Mountains of Nevada. We have been lucky out here on the west coast of the US to have many storm systems come through our area over the past couple years. These type of Nevada skies were pretty much missing from the equation from 2011 - 2017. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Tommobu Pooha

‘Power of the Storm’ translated in the Native American Northern Paiute Language is ‘Tommobu Pooha’. This area of the Ancient Lake Lahontan Basin, has been inhabited by the Northern Paiute for thousands of years. This scene captures a short moment of a very intense lightning storm spanning over 60 miles wide that moved through the area of the Virginia Mountains, Pah Rah Range, and the Nightingale Mountains of Nevada, starting numerous wildfires on August 9th 2017. When I arrived at this area the lightning was consistently firing off in the distance beyond, and I saw a fire start where the main concentration of lightning is located in this scene. The black smoke quickly started rising from burning cheat grass and sage brush, and was then quickly dowsed by heavy downpours that swept across the lake bed, the fire was out within minutes after it started. This is a single exposure for the earthly portion, and an exposure blend/composite for the sky. Five different captures of lightning were blended together to display the intensity, of which all were captured within seconds of each other, which made blending them easy. This isn’t Kansas, so when lightning storms come to my area of Nevada, I plan for, and take advantage of the photographic opportunities they have to offer and head into the storms – they are one hell of a show! © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Lichen Fang

I thought of many names when looking at this image, the first was “Follow The Leader”, influenced by a Korn Album cover. Then “Rock Stars”, then “Liking the Lichen” (cause I do!), then “Moon Wash”, etc… But, I stuck with “Lichen Fang”. The title was influenced by the ‘almost’ full moon and lycanthropes. Yes, I am into sci-fi and fantasy stuff. Also, there are lichens on the foreground rock, and the pronunciation of lichen was pretty much the same as ‘lycan’ from the movie Underworld. So, anyway, kind of a weird way to name an image but the scene was all about the moon, the fang-like rock in the foreground, and the jagged teeth-like rocks in the middle-ground. Also, this scene would not have worked out as well without weathers blessing of ‘killer’ lenticular clouds on this day. Yes, “killer’; it’s old slang, but we are talking about lycan’s here! So, there you have it…. This scene was captured somewhere in the Virginia Mountains in Nevada during the rising of an ‘almost’ full moon in February of 2017. I was with my photog friend Will, hiking through a canyon which recently had some major flash flooding a month prior. I am not giving out specific locations due to, one; I invested the time, research, exploration, gas, technique, and previsualization, etc., and two; because I believe one needs to explore and see with their own eyes. The technical; this is an exposure blend for the sky, and a focus stack for the earthly portion. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Breaking Down

This image was captured in February 2014 for a UNR advanced photography project. This scene was the background canvas for a composite photograph consisting of two human bodies lacking any identity, which were suspended in mid air. When I captured this image, it was to kill two birds with one stone; capture a landscape image for myself, and to capture background image for a conceptual photography project. At UNR, they were not into “pretty pictures”, which pretty much applied to any landscape image for the most part. What does the image mean? What is the photographer trying to show, or tell, with the image? Conceptual photography was what they were teaching. I strive to capture timeless images, which most of the time requires a landscape that is very old, mysterious, and fascinating, mixed with stormy weather and longer exposures a lot of the time. These fractured pieces of tufa, were once part of a tufa megaform that formed at the bottom of ancient Lake Lahontan, an inland sea that covered a large part of Nevada thousands of years ago. The ground is pretty much the same color as the tufa due to it consisting of very small fragments of the tufa mound that has been breaking down over the years since the ancient waters receded. The sage brush and other desert flora in the area also resemble the color of the tufa in winter, this adds a challenge with processing to create separation, considering the diffused light. This is a revamp of the original image, not a do-over, but a continuation from the original processing back in 2014. This photograph is NOT for sale in ANY medium, and is for display purposes only. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

The Gathering

This is a single exposure captured in July of 2015 during a series of very wet storms that passed over the Sierra Nevada. What started to seem easy after the first couple hours of processing, turned into a royal PITA. I hit pixel burnout, and just wanted to get this thing over with. This is the end result… I had to deal with a few boo boo’s, issues, and challenges along the way, etc. etc. etc. But, it was time to move on, and maybe revisit this one later. Overall, I am ok with how it turned out. The composition; I was not totally jiving with at first, it was a difficult one to frame to get what I wanted. No perspective warping was done here. Anyway, this image was captured at my favorite high alpine ‘small’ lake in the Sierra Nevada, called ‘Woods Lake’ (fitting name). This little gem is somewhat hidden off the Carson Pass and easy to miss. I have captured a few variations of this scene over the years, with sunny skies, cloudy skies, and then this one with totally diffused light from very stormy weather, drizzling rain, and mist floating over the lake; this was definitely the best of the bunch. Prior to ever capturing this scene years ago, I was eating a freshly barbequed hamburger and then looking at this photo op. Yes, there is a barbeque and picnic table directly to the left of where I captured this image. Thanks, for checking it out. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Ancient Fire

This image was captured at Mono Lake’s South Tufa area, back in October of 2012. I know there are a gazillion images from Mono Lake and so many are the same or similar, but unique atmospherics can help set them apart from one another. This was the type of afternoon, where you can only hope for the weather conditions that were at Mono Lake on this day. It was a photographers heaven! I was shooting to the east where dark gray/blue luminous storm clouds were swallowing up the horizon, and light was dancing off the landscape and clouds. Calm reflections of the storm spanned across Mono Lake, it was a show to say the least, and I was unaware of what was starting to happen behind me. I was moving rather fast, tripod and camera attached, and trying to get as many compositions as I could of the storm, and sunset colors, that were starting to unfold on the east side. I started to head for another spot and turned around to walk behind some tufa spires, when BAM, there it was! Nobody else was in the area I was at, so there were no photo bombs at all to dodge compositionally. At the time, I could not recall a sunset more powerful than this, and still, I am sure I have seen one, but this one blew me away and gave me photog anxiety. It had been so long, that I almost forgot about this trip in 2012. I revisited the images recently, and I found this capture that I had bracketed during the shoot, and created an HDR image using Photomatix Pro back in 2012, I have not used Photomatix since then really. So, I opened up the old HDR image in PS and started working on it, but there was a little funkiness in the sky and other areas from the auto blend, so I decided to do a manual exposure blend, consisting of three bracketed exposures, to expand the high dynamic range, using Tony Kypers TK4/5 panels. I have quite a few more images to work up from this trip. I have found lately that I want to process older images that were captured around 5 to 7 years ago when I started taking my photography seriously and educating myself with the visual art of photography through college, online training, and lots of infield and digital darkroom practice. I guess, I liked my perspective back then, and all of my photos from that period were not focus stacked or anything, they were simply bracketed captures. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Peaks of Lundy

Hmmm, not sure about this title… It’s kinda catchy, maybe kinda cheesy? But really, these are some Sierra Nevada peaks captured in ‘Lundy Canyon’ during a storm that was rolling through. So, Peaks of Lundy, kinda stood out - literally. This is a handheld single exposure captured in early April of 2016. Nothing technically fancy here. This was processed as a black and white, then a little color was reintroduced back into the peaks. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Fire Garden

Beyond the fire scarred rocky foreground in the Pah Rah Range, the Virginia Mountain Complex Fires rage in the distance during sunset on July 29th, 2016. Wildfires are common in Nevada’s dry desert environment due to invasive cheat grass, other grasses, sage brush, Juniper, and other desert flora; fuels for fire. The five Virginia Mountain Complex Fires were caused by a lightning storm on July 28th 2016. The fires were roughly 20 miles from each other, and about 35 miles north of Reno Nevada, where I live. One of the largest fires, the Tule Fire (the one you see here), made its way to Pyramid Lake causing the evacuation of Sutcliffe Nevada on July 30th, and temporary closure of the lake. At the same time wildfires were raging in California, and the atmosphere was already hazy from winds blowing smoke from the California wildfires over the Sierra Nevada into Northern Nevada. The setting sun was creating a golden/orange glow from smoke particles in the lower atmosphere. I missed the local news on July 28th, so I had no idea of the fires. I was watching the 5 o’clock news on July 29th 2016, and it started with a weather report warning for a lighting storm in the Virginia Mountains area, and to avoid the area, stay inside, etc. So I immediately loaded up my gear, and headed out to the Virginia Mountains off the Pyramid Highway to do some photography during the lighting storms. Right as I came over the hill into Palamino Valley, you could see large plumes of smoke from the fires stretching the entire span of the mountain range. The sun was casting late afternoon light on the huge smoke plumes, which were mixed in with the storm clouds. It was like driving into hell! I was not sure how close in I could get to the fires safely due to its intensity from winds pushing the fires, and I wanted to avoid and not interfere with all the fire response vehicles heading down Pyramid Highway to fight the fires. I didn’t even know about the fires until I actually saw them. The picture you see here, was one of the very first captures I took on this day, I figured it was the safest area to do some photography across the highway from the Virginia Mountains, away from the fire path. After shooting around this area into twilight, I crossed the highway and went up to a ridge to get a closer view of the fire, and I shot into the night until around 10:30pm. This is the first of several images I will be posting from this night. A little geek out tech detail… This is a focus stack for the landscape and sky, with some additional exposure blending for the sky, and some perspective warping in the immediate foreground to line things up better. I enhanced the veiling flare in the image here, with a technique I learned a while back from a Ryan Dyar instructional tutorial, called "Light Bleed". The image was also cropped to cut out the Pyramid Highway which was directly on the middle/right side of the image; a little peeve of mine is to remove any indicators of human interference in the landscape when composing the shot, but it doesn't work all the time. If interested in more details about the Virginia Mountain Complex Fires, including a fire map, follow the link below: https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/4902/ © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Moonglow Mushroom

A full moon rises behind light cloud cover casting a ghostly glow beyond a fractured toppled tufa-mushroom at Winnemucca “dry” Lake, NV. These tufa formations were created thousands of years ago from discharging springs at the bottom of ancient Lake Lahontan, located in what would later be named, North America. Shortly after the construction of the Derby Dam on the Truckee River, Winnemucca Lake desiccated in the early 1930’s, revealing more tufa creations throughout the area. What this place must have looked like to the native peoples from hundreds and thousands of years ago when they viewed these lands. Imagining the night skies not impacted by light pollution from modern cities, and the beaming stars and moonlight illuminating this ancient landscape, it is truly fascinating! The snow patches in the foreground were from the only light snowfall we received in the beginning of 2015 out here in Nevada, a continuation of the ongoing drought. Needless to say, right after the start of New Year 2017, rain and snow have returned to the west coast, Sierra Nevada, and surrounding areas, with a vengeance! Captured January 2015, this is a single exposure. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Flowing Through Winter White

*Published in the February 2017 Winter Wonderland Gallery of Landscape Photography Magazine. This image of the North Fork of the Yuba River in California, is a B&W conversion. Processing for this single handheld exposure, involved using CRAW/Photoshop, with Tony Kypers TK4 Panel, and NIK software's Viveza and ColorFX Pro filters. This was the third time I have re-processed this image since 2011. I am pretty satisfied with the image overall, considering the conditions in which I took the photograph (no water droplets on the lens), and the quality limitations of the camera I had at the time, which was a Canon Rebel T1i with a Canon EF 18-55mm lens. The timing was perfect for this capture, heavy snow fall had temporarily turned into light snow flurries when I stopped the car to photograph this scene, and there was a fresh clean white coat of snow covering the underlying dirty layers of snow along, and atop rocks on the Yuba river. After capturing this scene, we turned around and headed up the Golden Chain Highway to head over the mountain back down to Sierra Ville, and on home to Reno, Nevada. I had just let go of my 2005 Nissan XTerra due to financial woes after the recession, and I had recently purchased a new, better gas mileage, front wheel drive, Kia Forte. We hit a steeper section right at the top of the mountain, and started to slide backwards and sideways. I tried a couple more times to make it over the top, and had to turn around and head back down towards Sacramento to find some chains, and give Donner Summit a try. At this point, the snow was building up and really coming down. We made it to Sacramento, found some snow chains, and then drove the new Kia over Donner Summit in one of the worst white out blizzards of the year. We made it back to Reno safely, and had a few pictures to remember the more peaceful and serene parts of this journey. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Storm Path Reflection

Captured in June of 2013 during stormy weather near Lake Tahoe’s Northern Shore, right off North Lake Blvd. This is a single exposure… Nothing more to report on this, it is a rework. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Tahoe Beautiful Gloom

This is a rework, of a rework, of a rework... A single exposure, captured on a nice stormy day from Nevada’s rocky Eastern Shore of Lake Tahoe, back in June 2013. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Autumn Aspen Shithouse

This is an older single exposure, captured back in October 2011 with a Canon Rebel T2i and a Canon 17-40mm L Lens. I really liked the combination of the Rebel and the 17-40mm L lens, the images that were produced with this combination, were sharp, and had good detail for the smaller sensor size. I had processed this image back in 2011 horribly, I mean horribly, and have been wanting to redo it for a year or so. As for the name, what could be more fitting? After all, lets not glamorize what went down in that beautiful old weathered outhouse! Another photog friend of mine and I were looking at this image back in 2011, and were wondering what to call it. It started innocent, but soon turned funnier than hell with the names we were coming up with. Autumn Aspen Shithouse had the best ring to it. This area is off of State Route 267 between Truckee and Lake Tahoe California. I returned in the fall of 2012 again to shoot the old forestry service cabin and outhouse, and there was a tree in the front of the Outhouse that had fallen over, which made for a nice leading line. I returned again in the fall of 2013 to do some more shooting in the Aspen Groves where the old structures sat, and oddly the old outhouse was no longer there, not even the wood, it was just gone. So, this image for me is unique now, not something I, or anybody, can go and capture ever again. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

The Edge Spirit

Captured July of 2015, during one of the best summer storm systems to roll over the Sierra Nevada that I have been able to witness. What you see here was captured on the sloping portion of a steep cliff right off the road. Dare not venture out on the saturated slope too far at all, it would surely be death if one slipped and fell. The cool thing about this storm was, nobody else was up there with a camera, or out in the storm, anywhere! It was wet, it was drizzling rain the whole time, so towels and lens cloths were a must have, along with some very technical rain gear for the camera; a shower cap and a Ziploc bag. This tree seemed to be at one with the storm, a part of it, or conducting it, with it’s branch arms reaching out to the side, and head of branches lowered in the storms direction. This ancient volcanic area, is on the north side of, and looking away from Thunder Mountain, near the crest of the Sierra Nevada right off the Carson Pass. This is a single handheld exposure… © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Storming on the Crest

Captured from the Carson Pass in July of 2015. This is a single hand held exposure (a little soft), captured from the side of the road when I was traveling up to the Caples Lake, and Kirkwood areas. We had a series of storms during the spring and summer of 2015 that rolled over the Sierra Nevada bringing a LOT of rain, while creating moody atmosphere, and very dramatic skies. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Remnants of a World Before Time

Captured in April of 2016. Coral like tufa formations stand the test of time in haunting stillness on a shoreline of ancient Lake Lahontan. This is an exposure blend… This image is NOT for sale in ANY medium. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Across Ancient Islands

This scene was captured July 8th of 2016 in the Virginia Mountains of Nevada, looking out to the Pah Rah Range. The lenticular clouds on this day, formed and transformed on into the night, what a show it was! What you are seeing here is an ancient landscape formed and sculpted by volcanism, weather, and the waters of Ancient Lake Lahontan. Old shorelines, and partially tufa encrusted hills and mountains, mark the geology around this area. The hills, and peaks in the distance were all islands at one point, thousands and thousands of years ago. There is a little portion of Pyramid Lake in the background of this image, not visible due to downsizing. Pyramid Lake is a sub lake of Ancient Lake Lahontan. When the sub lakes of Lake Lahontan rose, they would eventually spill over into other areas, like the valley below. This is a focus stack for the landscape portion, and exposure blend for the sky. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Popcorn Explosion

This image was captured in August 2016, when the California wildfires, and Virginia Mountain Complex fires in Nevada had brought in quite a bit of smoke to the area, which really boosted the power of sunsets and sunrises. This particular sunset went on for roughly an hour or better, and golden colors in the clouds and atmosphere started forming well before sunset. It was one of those days where I needed to go for a ride to get my head out of the funk it was in. I didn’t really plan on doing any photography, didn’t really care to, just needed to go for a ride to get away for a few. So I decided to head out to Pyramid Lake since it’s close, and always changes my mind for the better. This image was the unplanned result. Tech details: - Focus stack of 10 images for the landscape portion (6 auto focused captures, 4 manual focused captures). - Exposure blend of 4 images for the sky portion. - Both the stacked image, and exposure blended image, were then blended together, all with the help of Tony Kypers TK4 Panel. - A little bit of perspective correction in the bottom portion of the frame to create a better flow, and geometrical feel with the image. This photograph is NOT for sale in ANY medium, and is for display purposes only. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Smoke Moon Rising

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 in the Virginia Mountains (NV) area back in May 2016. I hope they get this person, there was a reward for information leading to the shooter last I heard. 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 element for the capture. Or, I am a spaz, and impatient, and can’t sit still for very long. Connie and I were four wheeling out at the Virginia Mountains – just exploring the recent burn scar out there. 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 white chalk washout 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

Ten Minutes of Storm Light

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 around the northern area of Winnemucca Lake for an hour or so 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 Nightingale 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 once I reached 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

Shore and Sky

This is a single 30 second exposure captured in high winds during a winter storm at Pyramid Lake, NV. It took quite a few attempts to capture a sharp image, due to wind gusts up to 60 mph. I shielded the camera with my open jacket during the long exposure. Captured February 2014… This image is NOT for sale in ANY medium.

Projecting the Past

Captured August 2015 for a TMCC photography course project. A toppled broken tufa spheroid reveals the fascinating workings of its inner core, which were created thousands and thousands of years go under the waters of ancient Lake Lahontan. This ancient tufa formation, which resembles a speaker cone or an eyeball, is roughly ten feet in diameter. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Exploder Dream Fantasy

So the name for this image was not totally taken from anything I saw in this scene, except for the sunset explosion over the Sierra Nevada, and the dream like tufa spires in the foreground. The name ‘Exploder’ is a heavy metal guitar solo by Akira Takasaki from the Japanese heavy metal band “Loudness” back in 1984-ish. Dream Fantasy is a song from the band Loudness which includes a drum solo, also from around 1984-ish (been a long time). Combine both names, and there you have it. This was captured at Mono Lake’s South Tufa area, back in October of 2012. This was the type of afternoon, where you can only hope for the weather conditions that were at Mono Lake on this day. I was shooting to the east where dark gray/blue luminous storm clouds were swallowing up the horizon, and light was dancing off the landscape and clouds. Calm reflections of the storm spanned across Mono Lake, it was a show to say the least, and I was unaware of what was starting to happen behind me. I was moving rather fast, tripod and camera attached, capturing the storm and sunset colors that were starting to unfold on the east side. I started to head for another spot and turned around to walk around some tufa spires, when BAM, there it was… I was like, holy shit! Nobody else was in the area I was at, so there were no photo bombs. At the time, I could not recall a sunset more glorious than this, and still, I am sure I have seen one, but this one blew me away. It had been so long, that I almost forgot about this trip, and I only processed a few pics initially after it, and it was pretty crappy processing for what I knew back then. So I went to revisit the images over the weekend, and I found this capture that I had bracketed during the shoot, and merged to HDR using Photomatix Pro back in 2012 So, I opened up the merged HDR image in PS and started working on it, and this is what I came up with. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Desolate Awakening

This was not a capture I planned on working out. I only took three bracketed sequences of this shot (literally setup and captured them in a couple minutes), as I figured it would be a wash due to shooting directly into the sun. For one bracketed sequence; I blocked the sun with my fingers to get rid of the sun flares in foreground. Blending the exposures worked out ok.. If the little cloud would not have been there to diffuse the sun somewhat as it was rising, this would not have worked out with the sun star, as it would have been too bright and overpowering. Captured April 2015... © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Sierra Storm Fade Reflection

The weather in the Reno/Tahoe area and in the Sierra Nevada has been out of the ordinary during the summer of 2015. We have had a LOT of storms roll through and a LOT of rainfall. A great time to go get some of those photo-ops waiting up in the Sierra’s and surrounding areas. The reflections on Woods Lake, are a site to behold. This is one of the prettiest alpine lakes in the Sierra Nevada I have had the privilege of visiting. It takes little work to frame a shot and alleviate any signs of human involvement around Woods Lake. There is a picnic bench on the shore, 15 feet from where I captured this picture, a great place to BBQ hamburgers. ;-) So, I hit pixel burnout on this image. There is a lot of shade, if not total shade in this image, it took a lot tweaking to get this image as close to how it looked when I was there. It was dark when I captured this image (total shade), so when I was adjusting levels selectively and globally while viewing the histogram, it became very monotonous, a lot of dodging and burning. This is an exposure blend of two images (for the sky), from a stand and shoot capture in July 2015. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Desert Jewel Stormset

Captured May 2016, between “Warriors Point” and “The Willows” at Pyramid Lake, NV. This is a stand and shoot single exposure. This image is NOT for sale in ANY medium, and is for display purposes only. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Passing through Lundy

This scene was captured early April 2016 while a storm was rolling over the Sierra Nevada. We were headed to Mono Lake, and had never been to Lundy Canyon before, so we decided to head up and explore. The atmospherics in the canyon were great, and the rain had let up enough to where many low lying clouds were moving through the area, providing for some great photo ops. This is one exposure, a quick snap, no tripod. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com

Thorns of Desolation

This scene was captured March of 2016 during one of the few photography outings I have been able to pull off this year, so far. Beyond ancient toppled tufa-mushrooms, a full moon illuminates lenticular cloud formations, the Nightingale Mountains, and a desiccated ‘Mud Lake’ while thorns dance with the wind in the foreground. © MIKE CLASEN PHOTOGRAPHY www.mikeclasenphotography.com