There’s a rule most landscape photographers live by: don’t shoot in midday light. The sun is overhead, shadows go flat, and everything looks like a snapshot compared to what it could be at golden hour. I was on Highway 395 last month, heading home to Truckee after a fishing trip with my brother in Mammoth Lakes, and the turnoff for Mono Lake’s South Tufa area was coming up fast. It was one-thirty in the afternoon. Wrong time of day. I turned anyway.
What followed was one of the more instructive shoots I’ve had in a while — and one of the more rewarding. The conditions forced me to solve problems I wouldn’t have faced at sunrise or sunset, and the solutions produced images I genuinely love. Here’s what I found, what I shot, and what I’d do exactly the same again.
Tufas at Mono Lake 19 — the South Tufa area near Lee Vining, California. Click to view fine art print options.
What You’re Looking At
The tufa towers at Mono Lake are one of those subjects that looks like it should be computer-generated. Limestone spires — some reaching thirty feet or more — rise from the surface of a lake that runs two and a half times saltier than the ocean. The color palette is immediately striking: chalky white formations against water that reads aqua-green or electric blue depending on the light and how you’ve dialed in your polarizer. There’s genuinely nothing else like it in the California landscape.
The formations are calcium carbonate — limestone — built over thousands of years by freshwater springs reacting with the lake’s carbonate-rich water. They grew entirely underwater. The reason they’re visible now is that Los Angeles began diverting the feeder streams in 1941, and as the lake level dropped, formations that had been quietly building in the dark were suddenly standing in open air. The Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve was established in 1981 to protect them. Partial water restoration began in the 1990s, but the lake remains below its historical level — which means the towers we’re photographing today exist precisely because of that history.
Tufas at Mono Lake 22 — weathered formations create a natural arch framing the lake beyond. Click to view fine art print options.
Two Areas Worth Knowing About
The main South Tufa area charges a three-dollar entrance fee collected at a credit card kiosk. Boardwalks and well-worn trails bring you right to the water’s edge, and the formation density here is the highest on the lake. You can work close, work wide, and find interesting angles almost anywhere you point the camera. Volunteer rangers were on-site when I visited — one had a spotting scope trained on an active osprey nest — and the interpretive signage throughout is genuinely good. Families and casual visitors mix comfortably with photographers here.
A short drive west is a second free parking area with a different cluster of formations and far fewer people. This is where I found a wide sandy beach with California gulls spread across it, tufa towers rising behind them, and the snow-capped Sierra Nevada peaks on the horizon beyond. The compositional possibilities there are broader and more expansive than the main area, and I had most of it to myself. Worth the extra few minutes to find.
Tufas at Mono Lake 16 — dramatic towers against a vivid blue sky at the South Tufa area. Click to view fine art print options.
The Shoot: Midday, a Polarizer, and an Unexpected Foreground
I’ve shot Mono Lake before — a dedicated sunset session back in 2010 with a Canon 5D Mark II that gave me images I’m still proud of. That golden-hour light on the formations is extraordinary and worth planning around if you have the time. This visit, arriving at one-thirty with a long drive home ahead of me, wasn’t that. It was midday or skip it entirely.
The thing that changed the equation was a circular polarizing filter. Mono Lake at midday in summer gives you exactly the conditions where a polarizer works hardest: bright overhead sun, a highly reflective lake surface, white clouds against a deep blue sky, and striking white formations that need contrast to read properly in-frame. The filter cut through the surface glare and turned the water from a pale wash to a deep, saturated aqua. It made the clouds pop. It pushed the sky darker and let the white tufas stand out with genuine graphic force against it. This is now on my essential gear list for any future Mono Lake shoot, regardless of time of day.
I shot mostly at f/16 — foreground tufas, mid-ground formations, and distant Sierra peaks all demanded a deep depth of field — handheld at 1/200th of a second with ISO varying as conditions shifted. A tripod would have given me tighter control over the compositions where I wanted everything from six feet to six miles in sharp focus, and I’d bring one on a planned shoot. This time I made it work handheld.
One unexpected gift: yellow pollen floating on the lake surface near both areas. I normally work around pollen in water — it’s a familiar problem at Tahoe and Donner Lake and usually reads as a distraction. At Mono Lake, set against that polarized electric blue and the white limestone, the warm golden pollen became a foreground element I actively composed toward. Some of my favorite frames from the session have it prominently in the shot.
Tufas at Mono Lake 25 — California gulls on the shoreline with tufa towers and the Eastern Sierra beyond. Click to view fine art print options.
The Wildlife That Made It Into My Frames
Walk close to the shoreline and you’ll encounter the alkali flies — black clouds lifting off the ground ahead of you. It’s one of the more striking things to witness at Mono Lake, and worth understanding: these flies are specifically adapted to the lake’s extreme alkaline chemistry, and along with the brine shrimp, they’re the entire foundation of the food chain here. The lake supports no fish. What it does support, through those two organisms, is somewhere between forty-four thousand and sixty-five thousand nesting California gulls per year — one of the largest breeding colonies in the American West. For photographers, that means bird subjects everywhere, in compositions you can control by moving around the formations.
Tufas at Mono Lake 23 — formations and lush shoreline grasses at the South Tufa area. Click to view fine art print options.
f/8 and Be There
There’s a saying usually attributed to the photojournalist Weegee — f/8 and be there — and Mono Lake is a good place to think about what it means. The aperture is almost beside the point. The variable that matters is showing up, having the camera in hand when the opportunity is in front of you. I wasn’t there at the right time of day. The session wasn’t planned. I was there because I took a highway turnoff on a drive home and decided that “I’ll come back when the conditions are better” is a promise photographers break more than they keep.
The polarizer handled the conditions. The location did the rest. Some of the images from that afternoon are among my favorites of the year.
Sunset at Mono Lake 1 — from a previous visit in 2010. Golden-hour light tells a completely different story from the same formations. Click to view fine art print options.
On location at the South Tufa area with the Canon R5 Mark II — a last-minute stop that turned into one of my favorite shoots of the year.
A Few Notes for Photographers Planning the Stop
Cell signal is weak along Highway 395 near Mono Lake. Preload your navigation before you lose coverage — the South Tufa turnoff can be easy to miss if Google Maps won’t load. The access road is well-maintained dirt and gravel, suitable for any vehicle.
Timing: Sunrise and sunset will give you dramatically better light than midday. If midday is what you have, bring a polarizer and work toward the water. Plan your compositions to take advantage of the depth in the scene — foreground formations, mid-ground formations in the water, and the Sierra peaks beyond.
Gear: Circular polarizing filter is close to essential here. Tripod strongly recommended for planned visits. The shoreline can be muddy in spots, so wear shoes you don’t mind getting dirty.
Logistics: Main South Tufa area is three dollars at a credit card kiosk, with restrooms in the parking area. The free western area is a short drive further and worth exploring for the beach and bird compositions. Hat and water for both — it’s high desert with no shade.
The Images: Fine Art Prints Available
The full collection of Mono Lake images from this shoot — along with the 2010 sunset images — is available as fine art prints at TruckeeTahoePhotos.com in the Other Areas Gallery. The tufa formations are a subject that rewards large-format printing — the tonal range and color contrast in these images are best experienced at scale. Metal prints are my recommendation for anything with that Mono Lake blue in it.
Browse the full slideshow below:
Browse Mono Lake Fine Art Prints →
Scott Thompson is a fine art and commercial photographer based in Truckee, California, operating under the brand Scott Shots Photography. His work has been featured in Tahoe Quarterly, the Wall Street Journal, and Robb Report. Fine art prints are available at TruckeeTahoePhotos.com. Commercial photography services at ScottShotsPhoto.com.
