Bands of grass, lakebed, lake, island, hills and sky stack in this image from early 2015.
I love situations where the landscape becomes the abstract. That effect is heightened here by a telephoto perspective, the use of monochrome and a bit of carefully orchestrated virtual filtration, dodging and burning.
Taken from near Black Point on the north side of Mono Lake, the Mono-Inyo Craters and Negit Island provide a background for the increasingly shallow water between the island and shore. That water was, as of January, only about chest-deep in places, it was possible to walk to the island from shore. When and if the lake level drops a couple more feet, as it did once before around 1979, coyotes may again return to decimate the gull nests here. Two-thirds of California gulls nest on Negit and surrounding islands.
I will be returning here in October and January, for my own Eastern Sierra workshop and the annual Mono Lake Winter Photography workshop, respectively.