Retired Yosemite High School teacher to hold book signing at YHS theater
BY EARLENE WARD - SPECIAL TO THE SIERRA STAR

Larry Pesetski, retired Yosemite High School teacher and International Baccalaureate coordinator, will hold a book signing Saturday, from 2 to 5 p.m. in the theater at Yosemite High School. His book, “A Journey to Lake Tahoe and Beyond,” has just been released.

The book of photographs of Lake Tahoe and the Reno Balloon Festival was two years in the making. “It was quite a process, Pesetski says.
There will be a slide show of his photography during the signing and there will be refreshments.

The same weekend, Pesetski’s work is entered in the Yosemite Western Artists’ art show. His work can also be seen on his Web site, www.lllphotography.com.

The photography book was published by Sierra Vista Publishing and sells for $39.95. The company already has him tentatively scheduled to do two more books - the Yosemite area with writings of John Muir and the Big Sur area.

He said these projects are exciting because these are the two areas, besides Lake Tahoe, where he has spent a lot of time hiking and taking photographs.

The book is divided into five sections: Seasons of Tahoe, The Tahoe Area, The Flowers of Tahoe, Moonsets and Sunsets, and The Reno Balloon Festival.

The book is the culmination of more than 20 years of photography at Lake Tahoe, where he has been going since 1963. He says he has been seriously involved with photography for about 20 years. He mostly used a Canon system for his work. None of the photographs are digitally enhanced. He uses a polarized filter to get the best images.

Pesetski says lighting is one of the most crucial aspects to capture quality images. “You also have to know the area well enough to understand the climactic conditions to give you a chance to get a quality image,” he says. A person also needs to know the geography of the area so they know where to go.

He says he goes searching for photographic opportunities in the back country and off the beaten path. He will go back to the same area time after time to capture the best images.

Pesetski says it’s really hard for him to select a favorite photograph but, he says, the “grandest moments at Lake Tahoe are the sunsets. Each is unique. To be able to see the sun go down over the lake is incredible. It’s a wonderful time to be on the shores of the lake which is usually calm and serene but can look like the ocean and be really angry.”

Even though Lake Tahoe has been commercialized to a large extent, he says there are still places in the area where one can be alone. “It is still a wild place despite the development. It is still a very primitive, wild, beautiful place. In many ways it is the same as when Kit Carson saw it from Red Lake Peak near Carson Pass in 1844 and the Washoe Indians before that.”

The introduction to Pesetski’s book is written by YHS English teacher, and published author, Bob Miller. The two have been friends for 23 years and have hiked a lot of the back country together.

One of Pesetski’s favorite places in the back country is Lake Schmidel in Desolation Wilderness. In that area, the date September 1922 is carved in a tree.

“It must have been glorious to have been there then,” Pesetski says. “A lot of what I have seen is what people have been seeing for thousands of years; it’s just easier to get there now.”

Pesetski believes he and Miller are the only published authors on the YHS staff. Miller published a book several years ago describing his family’s search for their missing son, Kenny, who was lost in the Lake Tahoe area and later found dead.

Pesetski says Kenny’s influence is still here for him. He spent countless hours helping to look for him and found many new areas to explore in the Hope Valley and Carson Pass area. He says he never goes to those areas without remembering Kenny.

Hot air balloons also hold a fascination for Pesetski and he has been filming the Reno festival for 10 years. Next year he plans to go to Albuquerque, N.M. which has one of the largest balloon festivals in the world. He is not a balloon pilot but has been up with others and calls it “one of the most quiet experiences.”

The future book about Yosemite with John Muir’s writings is to be one tracing Muir’s footsteps and matching images to what he wrote about.
“In doing these projects, the thing I've noticed is that the more things change the more they stay the same,” he said. “If people are willing to take a little time and expend the energy, they will see the same things people saw hundreds of years ago. The more effort you put into something, the bigger the rewards.”

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