Lassen I by John Opie

A late afernoon shot of Lake Helen in Lassen National Park, near Bumpass Mountain. Lake Helen is named for Helen Tanner Brodt, the first woman to reach the peak of Mt. Lassen. It's at 2438 meters and has the distinction of being the snowiest place in all of California: annual snowfall is between 15 and 18 meters (600-700 inches), driven by Pacific storms. The deepest point of the lake is over 100 ft. The lake is usually frozen Oct-Jul.

Coordinates: 40°28′07″N 121°30′36″W

Lassen National Park is an interesting place that has active geothermal areas and some breathtaking vews, as welll as giving you from several viewpoints an understanding of volcanic erosion: historically there was a very large volcano here, but one that was made of fairly light rock that eroded qucikly (in the geological sense of the word) leading only partial remnants. Since it is a bit off the beaten path (Northern California, 165 miles from Sacramento and 180 miles from Reno) it's not heavily visited. We spent far too little time there, running under time constraints on our trip...

It's a large one, 400 images, that took close to 20 minutes to take.

What really worked well is the dynamic range covered: while the reflection of the late afternoon sun in the water whites out to the max, there remains quite a bit of shadow detail that would have been lost by not using a DSLR with its greater dynamic range. Could be a tad better, but given the fairly large extreme ranges between light and dark, I'm fairly pleased.

Kit: Epic 100, Olympus E510 with 40-150 lens zoomed out to 150mm (35mm: 300mm), exposure 1/250@f8...