Mobius Arch And Mt. Whitney — Alabama Hills, Eastern Sierra

Mobius Arch And Mt. Whitney — Alabama Hills, Eastern Sierra

Even with all the years visiting Yosemite and driving Highway 395, this past May was my first visit to the Alabama Hills. I had no specific shooting locations in mind — I wanted to sample a little beer and BBQ along the way, camp out at Lone Pine Campground, and maybe find some good light.

Movie Road in the Alabama Hills is Hollywood's famous on-location filming spot for hundreds of Westerns and adventure films going back to the 1920s. The Alabama Hills occupy a strange visual category — a place so thoroughly photographed and filmed that you arrive already having seen it through a thousand other eyes. On first visit, I found it a little underwhelming. The rounded, heat-worn boulders feel modest next to the violent verticality of the Sierra Nevada immediately behind them. But if you drive and hike through long enough, the landscape starts to reveal itself in a different register — less like a backdrop, more like a subject.

We had mostly flat light for most of my days there, and almost no clouds except those that gathered over Mt. Whitney each afternoon and then quietly vanished at dusk. Still, the Mobius Arch does what it has always done — it composes. Whatever its immediate surroundings, the arch frames Whitney and the Needles in the clean, direct way that only geology can. Strangers and veterans alike keep coming back for it. Now I understand why.

Fine Art Alabama Hills Photography Print

The Mobius Arch in the Alabama Hills frames Mt. Whitney and the Needles in the bright afternoon sun.