We just got back from a family vacation in Lake Tahoe. We stayed in a condo and spent a lot of time by the pool and at the kid’s beach in Tahoe City.
Lake Tahoe is beautiful. Very beautiful. Possibly one of the wonders of the world since it is such a high large body of water surrounded by peaks.
This photo shows Emerald Bay, one of the most beautiful places on the lake.
But Tahoe the lake is also a resort city under the trees. The human impact is causing the clarity of the lake to vanish, at something like a foot a year. The lake is probably 50% as clear as it was in the middle of the last century.
People enjoying themselves (on the boats in this photo, for example) is a good thing, but it doesn’t spell wilderness.
The decline in the Tahoe eco-system is troubling. To imagine Lake Tahoe as it was (or might have been) in pristine glory takes a positive effort.
Many photos take a similar act of creative improvement to reach their potential. This photo is pretty straightforward, but I did work on the sky, selecting the lower portion with Photoshop’s Magic Wand tool set to a low tolerance, and then adjusting the Red level to add a glow at the horizon.