This page is sort of like the deleted extra scenes you see in a movie when you buy the DVD.  May it make you do backflips of joy!

Yosemite and Sequoia :: photos by Ken Lee :: music by TK Major

Photos by Ken Lee, http://www.elevenshadows.com  :: music and video presentation by TK Major

This video presentation created in honor of Phyllis Pope -- who loves Yosemite -- on her birthday, 2010.

The musical piece used in this video is "My Second Mistake," by TK Major's one man band, one blue nine. You can find more music by TK Major at http://www.AYearOfSongs.org/ and from one blue nine at http://www.onebluenine.com/

Yosemite and Sequoia :: photos by Ken Lee :: music by TK Major (from FaceBook in case YouTube doesn't stream)

I spent one of the evenings trying to photograph Yosemite Valley from Tunnel View, but the lights from the oncoming cars interfered with the photos.  I made lemons out of lemonade by turning the camera around and doing long 20-second exposures of the long tunnel that cuts through the mountain. 

A photographer named Herb from Bakersfield joined me in the fun.  We were completely entertained when one truck sped through, it's extra top lights causing an unexpected light show.

Here are the mysterious tufa towers of south Mono Lake, strange limestone rock formations that grow by underwater springs rich in calcium mixing with the lakewater rich in carbonates to chemically form limestone, creating towers of up to 30 ft. high that take decades or centuries to form while underwater.  Wow.

Now, I did say underwater.  Because Mono Lake has been, until recently, receding due to us Los Angelenos taking water from the lake.  But that apparently has reversed, and the lake will return to higher levels relatively soon, we are told.

This photo gives you some sense of the immensity of these trees.