Category: California (Page 1 of 2)

North Lake Sunrise — Sunrise on North Lake, Eastern Sierra, Near Bishop, California

Cold & Golden Valentine’s Day

February 14, 2025 / Hitzeman Photography / 0 Comments

As a child, it was FUN when it snowed! It meant, hopefully, a day off from school and getting together with my buds to make snow angels, snow men, snow forts and have snow fights.

Now, as an adult, snow can mean something different to me, and much less fun. Shoveling the driveway and sidewalk. Dangerous driving conditions. Road salt getting all over my car. And sometimes, for days after the snow arrives, temperatures can drop to dangerous levels for frostbite.

But young or old, I’ve always delighted in how the snow softens and quiets the world, how it forms in different ways on trees and stones and mountains, and how—with a bit of luck being in the right place at the right time—I can capture a photograph that displays the snow with a glorious backdrop of GOLD!

I share this gold photograph from today’s very cold Naperville IL, as a Valentine’s Day greeting. In these chaotic times, I chose to love my neighbors, love my sweetie pie, and love Love LOVE!

Thank you for reading/viewing my posts. And …

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I invite you to share your experience of snow in the comments.

Anza-Borrego Desert

November 14, 2016 / Hitzeman Photography / 0 Comments

Cherish Your Own Emotions

“Fonts Point IV” at Anza Borrego Desert, California

“You have to make up your mind to be alone in many ways. We like sympathy and we like to be in company. It is easier than going it alone. But alone one gets acquainted with himself, grows up and on, not stopping with the crowd. It costs to do this. If you succeed somewhat you may have to pay for it as well as enjoy it all your life.

Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them.

We are not here to do what has already been done.”

— from “The Art Spirit” by Robert Henri

Shine Your Light

March 16, 2014 / Hitzeman Photography / 0 Comments

Sunrise on Mount Laurel at Convict Lake, Eastern Sierra, near Mammoth Lakes, California

“To love beauty is to see light.”

— Victor Hugo

North Lake Sunrise

January 30, 2014 / Hitzeman Photography / 0 Comments

Sunrise on North Lake, Eastern Sierra, Near Bishop, California

“My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.”

– Michael J. Fox

I could have become very unhappy on this trip because of a certain expectation — that the aspen leaves would have been present on the trees, creating a bright yellow band on the distant shoreline.

Instead, the leaves were gone, wiped away by a winter storm the day before.

Instead, an even more glorious show of yellow beyond my expectations appeared, reflected in the icy covering on North Lake.

Instead, I experienced and accepted this marvelous morning with great gratitude and happiness.

Death Valley

May 2, 2010 / Hitzeman Photography / 0 Comments

Death Valley National Park surprised me with countless textures and shapes and colors of rock and mud and clay and stone. I wanted to stop the van every few miles and capture images. And there were vast open spaces, no cars or roads or telephone poles or power lines to litter the eye. Not even trees to block the sight line to the bases of mountains rising up in a snowy patchwork.

Even the weather surprised me with its variety – snow (in the upper elevations), some rain with standing pools of water turning the dust red, surrounding dried-out sage brush. Imagine photographing steam rising from the clay furrows at Zabriskie Point! And there were just enough mostly scattered clouds to give color and texture to the sky.

What Death Valley National Park shows me are the phases of an ongoing geological process that’s over 5,000,000 years old. Pretty long time. 70,000 lifetimes or so. I’m glad I had a chance to see it in this one.

Death Valley National Park has the widest variation in geological forms and colors I have ever seen. This image shows the Mesquite Sand Dunes like waves of gold stretching below the Grapevine Mountain Range.

Mesquite Sand Sunes, Death Valley National Park, California

This trip also included a drive to Lone Pine, California, in the foot hills of the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains. They’re called the Alabama Hills — unusual and beautiful rock formations and a few arches. In the early days of movies, westerns were filmed in this site because of its scenic rock formations and nearness to a local town.

“Sierra Gold Sunrise”, Lone Pine Peak, Sierra Nevada Range, California

Zabriskie Point is a part of the Amargosa Range in Death Valley National Park. Its erosional landscape is composed of sediments from Furnace Creek Lake, which dried up 5 million years ago. The site was named after Christian Brevoort Zabriskie, vice-president and general manager of the Pacific Coast Borax Company in the early 20th century. The company’s famous, iconic twenty-mule teams transported borax from its mining operations in Death Valley.