Banning, CA: Clear, Cold & Beautiful

Posted on Mar 2, 2023 | No Comments

After a week or more of nasty weather, highly unusual here in Southern California but not unwelcome after years of drought, Thursday dawned clear, cold and beautiful. I drove a short distance up Hwy. 243 to capture a panorama, below, showing the city of Banning with a backdrop of the snow-covered San Bernardino Mountains, below, then later stopped downtown for a cup of coffee and captured this view, top, of San Gorgonio Ave. looking north, with the mountains behind blanketed in snow.

Capturing decent snow pictures requires getting out early to capture sunlight at a low, raking angle, otherwise the snow renders as nothing more than a textureless mass without detail. If a storm breaks at dusk or dawn that can be a real bonus.

Nuts & Bolts: The panorama is four frames, shot handheld at f8 using a Nikon 50mm F1.4 AIS lens, focused at infinity on a Nikon full-frame DSLR, later stitched together using the Photo Merge feature of Adobe Lightroom. I made similar photographs from this same location in December 2020, only with a longer lens, so the view wasn’t quite as deep.