Summertime at Donner Lake — Nathaniel Young

Donner Lake Sunset | Sony Alpha a7R II + 24-70mm f/4 @ 24mm, f/11, ISO 100, 0.8 sec x 16

This past summer, I visited Donner Lake which is not too far from Lake Tahoe, and my parents booked a nice lakeside place. While a lot of people come here in the summer for boating, we enjoyed catching the beautiful views and hiking along the alpine trails.

On the first evening, it was shaping up to be a good sunset since there were a lot of beautiful high/mid altitude clouds. We drove around the lake trying to find a sunset spot and ended up at a public pier along the north side of the lake. We only arrived about 10 minutes before sunset, and I was having trouble trying to figure out what I should photograph. There were not any interesting foreground subjects, and the sky was still mostly gray color with a bit of warm light towards the west. Additionally, there was also a good bit of low clouds hanging around the mountain peaks towards the west which looked like it would block the higher altitude clouds from catching any colors. During this time, I experimented with long exposures and different focal lengths to try to capture an interesting photo but to no success.

Feeling a bit defeated, I decided to take some photos with my parents. Afterwards, I realized that all the high-altitude clouds in the southeast were catching this beautiful orange-pink hue. With the clouds being the primary subject of my photo, I titled my camera upwards to capture more of the sky and less of the water. When you tilt your camera this much, the vertical parallel lines start to converge (or in other words, the trees towards the corners of the frame look like they are slanted). This would be the perfect situation to use a tilt-shift lens; however, since I do not have a tilt-shift lens, I would have to do a perspective warp in Photoshop to achieve the same effect. The unfortunate thing about the perspective warp is that it throws away a lot of your image resolution because you need to crop in a lot afterwards. To solve this problem, I ended up taking a panoramic photo to capture as much resolution as possible. In Photoshop, I merged the 16 photos together before using the warp transform tool to fix the perspective. This resulted in a 132 MP photo.

Overall, I was surprisingly satisfied with the final photo that I came away with especially since I did not have much of a plan of what my subject or composition was going to be. The shapes, structures, and lines formed by the clouds were all very intriguing to me. As a bonus, you can even see the half-moon (first quarter) on the right-hand side. The colors were very fleeting as it lasted for about five minutes, but this is probably one of the prettiest cloud formations that I have photographed.

Donner Lake Overlook Sunrise | Sony Alpha a7R II + 16-35mm f/2.8 GM @ 28mm, f/8, ISO 100, 2 sec

Looking at the next morning’s weather forecast, there was going to be some high-altitude clouds in addition to some fog which was really exciting. We headed up the road to an outlook point where we had a nice view of the lake and the surrounding landscape to ourselves. From the viewpoint, we could also see the distant mountains which lay on the Nevada side of the border. There was still a lot of time before sunrise, and the scenery was so peaceful. While there were not as many high-altitude clouds as I would have liked, I was still hoping that the clouds would catch some nice sunrise colors. As the morning wore on, it seemed like that hope was not going to be a reality. Instead, the clouds were still gray color, and the fog continued to mask more of the scenery.

A self portrait with some colorful clouds

So just like the day before, I was feeling a little disappointed. My parents had wandered off for a walk, and I decided to take some selfies. As I was reviewing my selfies with my back turned away from the lake, I was surprised to see that there was some color in the clouds in the background of my photos. I turned around and setup my camera again to capture the clouds catching this bright orange color.

When I was editing these photos back at home, it turns out that I liked the earlier morning version of this photo as you can see above. When I was standing there, I did not actually realize that the high-altitude clouds had caught a little light before fading to gray. While the bright orange high-altitude clouds that followed were also nice, I liked the much deeper blue hues in the sky from earlier in the morning which gave the scene more contrast overall. As much as I like fog, there was too much fog and you could not even see the lake; thus, there was not a main subject in the photo. For the final photo, I blended three exposures so that I could capture enough detail in the shadows as well as the bright highlights along the horizon.

After our sunrise session, we drove back down to our room at the lake. On our way down, we passed below the fog, and beneath the fog, the atmosphere was totally different. It was wet and gloomy looking. After some rest and food, our day was filled with a good hike. I left my camera behind, but it was quite warm and sunny. In the evening, there were no clouds which made for a boring sunset; however, clear skies also means that it could be a good opportunity to see the stars.

We waited until the moon set behind the mountain and headed out after midnight to see the stars. Even though this area has a lower Bortle class number than when I photographed the milky way with light pollution, the combination of the bright moon light and abundance of city lights around the lake did not make for a great opportunity to take pictures of the night sky. I did check the PhotoPills app for any active meteor showers. The only one of any significance had an expected 1 meteor per hour rate. As I was staring up into the sky trying to identify any constellations, I distinctly heard and saw a single meteor whistle through the sky.

Overall, it was an enjoyable trip. Even if you are not into boating, it is still nice to enjoy the lake and the beautiful views. And if I learned anything photography wise on this trip, it is that patience is key when you are waiting for the best sunlight.