The Flickr Alabamahills Image Generatr

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Lights, Camera, Action!
Stacked/Blended

Nestled near the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada in the Owens Valley, the Alabama Hills are a range of hills and rock formations. Now known as the Alabama Hills National Scenic Area, this area serves as a gateway to Mount Whitney and the Eastern Sierra Nevada. Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the contiguous US, towers nine thousand feet over the Alabama Hills, which stands 1500 feet above the Owens Valley floor.

The Alabama Hills have long been a popular filming location, from television to movie productions. The earliest known movies to be filmed here where shot in 1919. Hundreds of movies have been filmed there, especially Westerns. If you have the opportunity to visit the area, I'd recommend spending part of your afternoon visiting the Lone Pine Film History Museum to learn more.

What brings many visitors to this area are the dozens of arches, most accessed by short hikes from several of the roads in the area. The most notable arch, and therefore the most photographed, particularly by nightscape photographers, is Mobius Arch. Knowing that Mobius Arch can be very popular at night, my Milky Way photography bestie and I, along with my husband, kept driving past this iconic spot, hoping to find Boot Arch all to ourselves. It was not to be. We just missed getting to this location ahead of four young men and their two dogs. I'm not sure what they were trying to capture with their bright lights on the arch, but it was frustrating having to wait, since we also wanted to photograph at nearby Cyclops Arch. Boot Arch doesn't align to get the Milky Way through it until very early in the morning this time of year, and we weren't going to stay that long. I was able to capture the rising Milky Way with the arch before we packed up to head towards Cyclops Arch. I caught some light on one of my foreground images from some passing headlights and liked the subtle effect they added to the arch.

EXIF:
Nikon Z6ii astro-modded, Nikkor 20mm f/1.8 S
Sky: 12 ten second exposures, f/2.2, ISO 6400, stacked with Sequator
Foreground: Single 120 second exposure, f/3.2, ISO 6400
Blended in Photoshop

IMG_3091

Pretty realistic placement of the Milky Way, but it was taken 45 minutes and from a different tripod location before the foreground images were taken.

The Los Angeles Aqueduct near Lone Pine California in 35mm Black and White shot on a Nikon FG20

Near Lone Pine California.

The Alabama Hills are a popular filming location for television and movie productions, especially Westerns set in an archetypical rugged, isolated milieu. The first known movies to be filmed there are the lost films Water, Water Everywhere and Cupid, the Cowpuncher, both shot in 1919 and released in early 1920. The oldest surviving film shot in the hills is The Round-Up (1920), starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, which includes a cameo from his friend, Buster Keaton.[10]

Since then, hundreds of movies have been filmed there, including: Gunga Din, The Walking Hills, Yellow Sky, Springfield Rifle, The Violent Men, Bad Day at Black Rock, the Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott "Ranown" cycle, How the West Was Won, Joe Kidd, Saboteur, and Django Unchained, Tremors, Iron Man, and The Monolith Monsters.

Among the television shows that have been shot there are The Gene Autry Show, The Lone Ranger, Bonanza, and Annie Oakley.[11]

In Lone Pine, the closest town to the Alabama Hills, the Lone Pine Film History Museum explores the area's relationship to the art of cinema. Exhibits include the Dr. King Schultz dentist wagon from Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, the 1937 Plymouth Humphrey Bogart drove in Raoul Walsh's High Sierra.[12] and a Graboid underground monster from Tremors.

Every Fall the Museum hosts the Lone Pine Film Festival, which bills itself as "the only film festival on location", because festival-goers watch films shot in the area and then take tours to see the very spots where the scenes were filmed.
Source: Wikipedia

The Alabama Hills serve as a gateway to Mount Whitney and the Eastern Sierra Nevada, and are managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) as the Alabama Hills National Scenic Area.

Alabama Hills
Lone Pine
California

Though geographically considered a range of hills, the Alabama Hills are geologically a part of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

If you have an active imagination, you may find a seven-toed right foot among these weathered granite stones, or a four-toed left foot.

Thanks for stopping by!

© Melissa Post 2025

Movie Flat Road

A colorful display of native plants and wildflowers in the Alabama Hills at the base of Mount Whitney and Lone Pine Peak in the Eastern Sierra at sunrise.
www.optimalfocusphotography.com

Linhof Technorama 617s III | Schneider Apo-Symmar L 180mm f/5.6 | Ilford Delta 100 Pro