Black and white photo of a backpacker standing above Lake Virginia watching the evening light develop.

Reading the Light

Lake Virginia, John Muir Wilderness, California

Robert above Lake Virginia, deciding whether the light was done. It was not — the red meadows an hour later made the evening — but I like this frame better than what followed: the pack still on, the lake going pewter, a person doing the same arithmetic I was doing. Photographing photographers- at-heart is the easiest portraiture there is. They hold still on their own.

Nikon Z 7_2 · 17-35mm f/2.8D · 17mm · f/5 · 1/2500 · ISO 450

July 13, 2025

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More from Lake Virginia, John Muir Wilderness, California

Red meadow grasses and still water at Lake Virginia at dusk in the John Muir Wilderness.

More from JMT

Long exposure of Lake Edison at night from Vermilion Valley Resort, mountains mirrored in still water.Black and white photo of backpackers riding the morning ferry across Lake Edison back to the John Muir Trail.A backpacker climbing through sunlit lodgepole forest above Mono Creek toward Silver Pass.A fisherman casting into Purple Lake in morning light while another hiker watches from the shore trees.The Milky Way core over two backpacking tents at a wilderness camp above Rainbow Falls at night.