Billie and I spent a few days at South Lake Tahoe in June. This California town spreads southwards along the lake from the California/Nevada border. We love the mountains here in California as much as we love visiting Maui. The Tahoe area is a wonderful setting, has lots of places to stay, great dining, and has the advantage of being only about a four-ish hour drive away (rather than a 5 hour flight).
Of course, I wanted to spend some time making photos and had decided to focus on shooting predominately from the east side of the lake on this short trip. I discovered, unfortunately, that one of my favorite sites was off-limits due to some long-term road construction. That necessitated me scouting some alternative locations. I finally settled on a residential area in the mountains close to the Heavenly Valley ski area and which could also be reached quickly by car. I was able to identify a couple of spots that did not trespass on anyone’s private property (or their privacy). The cloudless sunset photo, catching the last direct rays of the sun on the mountains and the lake, at the top of this page is one example of a vista from that location. Another is the pre-dawn photo below taken from a similar angle (many more lights than I expected this early in the morning). 
While still at that specific location I also turned my camera about 90° right so I was looking north along the lake and more into Nevada. You can see that the casinos at the town of Stateline, Nevada stay lit all night and through the entire morning into the next day. 
Before the sunrise was over and to get some different angles on the mountains and the lake I moved about 1/4 mile south along the road until I had a better view of the south end of the lake. By this time the sun was just up and, as you can see, was lighting up the tops of the mountains to the west. The tall one (at slightly over 9,700 feet) just about in the middle of the shot, is the well-known Mount Tallac and is a prominent feature of the Desolation Wilderness in this part of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. 
In the image below, captured about 30 minutes after the one above, some clouds have developed behind me and are dimming the sun so the top of Mount Tallac is in partial shadow. More interesting to me is the spread of those interesting and unusual ribbon-like clouds.
We’ll be returning to this area in August with some of our family. I’m definitely looking forward to spending time with them but I’ll hopefully also find some time to develop some additional images.
Please feel free to leave a comment below. If you’d like to see other images from the Lake, other parts of California, or other parts of the world (that we’ve manged to visit) please check out my photographic website at CedBennett.Photography
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