According to John Muir, often called the father of America’s National Parks, “ the Sierra should be called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light... it still seems to me above all others the Range of Light, the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain-chains I have ever seen.”
Elizabeth Carmel is a Sierra-based landscape photographer and along with husband Olof owns and operates The Carmel Gallery in Truckee, California. Carmel has spent years exploring and photographing the diverse landscapes of the world and her images grace museums, galleries and private collections throughout the United States. Carmel is one of twelve photographers to receive the Hasselblad Master Photographer award for 2006.
Carmel follows the footsteps of landscape photographers such as Ansel Adams in capturing the beauty of the Sierra Nevada and using the images in the fight to protect that beauty.
“I hope to give readers a glimpse of what is at stake as climate change affects our cherished corner of the world. I hope these images will inspire action to counteract these threats so that future generations can enjoy the Sierra Nevada we know,” says Carmel in her preface toher new photo book The Changing Range of Light.
Adding weight to the magnificent images is collection of poems inspired by natural beauty from a range of notable poets. Interspersed with the word images are sobering scientific vignettes warning of the consequences of global warming to the delicate ecological balance in the Sierra Nevada.
The Scientists
Geoffrey Schladow, Ph.D. focused his research for over thirty years on the interactions between the complex fluid motions found in nature and their impacts on water quality, ecosystem health, and renewable energy production. Dr. Schladow is the founding director of the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center.
Robert Coats, earned his Ph.D. in 1975 with research focused on the transport of nitrogen through the forested watershed of Ward Valley, near Lake Tahoe. He continues his research in the Tahoe Basin, concentrating on the effects of land disturbance on water quality and (more recently) on the regional trends and impacts of climate change in the Basin.
One example of the effects of global warming on the Sierra Nevada is the increasing number of deaths of the Whitebark pine. These trees are under attack from beetles that need extreme cold to keep them in control. The Whitebark pine (P.albicaulis) grows at elevations normally too cold in winter for the beetles to survive (page 124).
The Photographs
The pictures in the book are superb, with Carmel capturing the delicate, yet rich, colors of the Sierra Nevada. They show arrange of landscape types and seasons from colorful autumn on the Truckee river to stark white beauty of Lake Tahoe in mid winter. Then there are the awesome images of mountains where Carmel’s images convey the grandeur of the peaks and valleys shaped over eons by the retreating glaciers.
The Camera
Carmel uses a medium format Hasselblad H3D 39 megapixel digital camera as her main landscape camera. She says the Hasselblad “seems to produce images with more color variation and depth to them” than the smaller full format DSLRs such as the D3x from Nikon, which she also uses.
Part of the explanation lies in the amount of data collected from each pixel by the different camera systems. The Hasselblad uses 16 bit image data compared to the Nikon D3x that only uses 14 bit image data from each pixel. The larger digital number gives a greater range of color tones.
Carmel also appreciates the extra resolution for large fine art prints of her landscapes she sells from the Carmel Gallery.
The Changing Range of Light is published by Hawks Peak Publishing and is available from November 2009 and can be pre-ordered for $US49.95.
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