Many people think good photography is all about camera gear.  With today’s phones everyone has a capable camera.  Professional cameras are more about being able to change lenses, shoot in challenging situations, and blow images up larger.

What is the most important thing about getting great images?  Being there.  Unless you are creative with AI applications you cannot take a picture of something unless you are there. You will only come across great scenes unless you go out a lot.

I was coming back to Hwy 395 from the eastern part of Hwy 120.  There is a certain portion of the road that looks over Mono Lake.  Just as I was passing through that area this scene evolved in front of me.  There were beautiful cumulus clouds all day.  In front of me was an angry dark cloud with a microburst.  It was such a surreal scene I had to take a picture. 

The image tells a great story.  That everything in nature is related and relies on each other.  In this case water is the key to everything in the Eastern Sierra.

• The foreground – remnants of burnt sagebrush from a brush fire that happened a couple of years ago.  The drought has made the intensity of these incidents more intense.

• The main subject - the microburst.  Warmer temperatures cause the air to be thirstier. Warmer air is dryer and absorbs more moisture than colder air.  It sucks water up.  From the ground, plants, and the clouds.
  
  In my younger camping days, it felt like it rained every afternoon.  I remember having to go back to our tent most afternoons to poke the accumulated water from the tent roof. Nowadays it feels like there is more virga than microbursts.  Virga is rain that evaporates before it hist the ground.

• The background - Mono Lake and the mountains – the Eastern Sierra has a wet and dry season.  The winter is when the water is delivered and distributed.  Snow and lakes allow the water to be distributed into the environment gradually throughout the dry season.

 So, this is an image of a microburst that tells the story of the microcosm of the Eastern Sierra!