Majesty Doubled, Sierra Nevada mountains near Bishop, california

This photograph could have been called “Persistence”.

Not the persistence of mountains, not the persistence of trees, not the persistence of water and clouds.

This location is not in any Guide Book or Google Map.  It’s not on anyone’s GPS tracking device.  This location — the place where I was standing to make this photograph — was discovered through Persistence.

And it was not discovered by MY persistence but by my friend Steve Ornberg‘s persistence!

After a long day of mostly cloudy skies, the sun came out and we wanted to drive around and see what we could find.  I hiked into a field for an hour and had a really mediocre composition of a cotton wood tree from a really bad angle.  I was fed up and wanted to quit for the day.

Then good old Steve, as we were driving back to our hotel, said “Hey, I wonder what’s up this way.”

We followed a nondescript dirt road for about a hundred yards and came upon an irrigation pond that served as a perfectly positioned reflecting pond.  It doubled the majesty of the Eastern Sierra mountains in the west.

Majesty Doubled!