Rocky Shoreline, Lower Young Lake. Yosemite National Park, California. September 14, 2010. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Morning light shines through the forest on the rocky shoreline of Lower Young Lake, Yosemite National Park.
The three Young Lakes are among my favorite places in the Yosemite back-country, and I visit them pretty much every summer. As I did when I made this photograph, I most often to in the last season – I like to visit after Labor Day weekend, when the crowds begin to diminish, the weather is a bit cooler, fall colors begin, and everything in the Sierra seems to slow down in anticipation of the coming winter.
On this visit I camped for something like three nights at the lower lake, and thus had time to photograph throughout the basin at different times of day. On this morning I got up early as I usually do, and spent a good part of the morning photographing along the shoreline of this lake, starting in the area near where most people camp and where the trail passes along the shoreline. A bit later I crossed the outlet stream and followed the rocky shoreline around to the far shore where the forest opens into rocky meadows near the main inlet stream.
In the photograph, the early light is coming from behind the trees in the shoreline forest and glancing off the tops of the boulders on the shore and in the shallow water. There were two photographic challenges in making this photograph. First, the dynamic range between the brightest sunlit spots on the rocks and the darker areas in the forest is extreme. In some cases I might resort to blending multiple exposures as a way to deal with this issue, but here I was able to recover enough detail from a single frame. The second issue relates to the color of the light. Specifically, while the sunlit areas have a fairly warm quality, the light in the shadows on the rocks and in the shaded areas of the forest turns out to be distinctly blue in a photograph. In fact, these areas end up looking much more blue than you would think if you were there – this has to do with the way our minds process what we see to make it more like what we think it should be… if that makes any sense. In any case, the decisions here ended up being about how much blue would be the right amount.
G Dan Mitchell Photography
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(Basic EXIF data is available by “mousing over” large images in blog posts. Leave a comment if you want to know more.)
Richard, people are strange – but since I’m people, too, I’d better not say much more! In any case, I think that this mouse-over solution seems like a pretty good solution, and I’ve been encouraged to hear from others who like it, too.
Frank, thanks for your comment. The tree highlights from the backlight were among the primary features of this scene that first attracted me, along with those interesting boulders and the reflections in the quiet water.
Dan
Beautiful scene. The highlights on the trees makes an interesting composition
I love the reflection in this image also. Thanks for the compromise on the data Dan. Only viewing your Blog early in the mornings, this morning I was surprised to see how much had transpired since yesterday. I still don’t see why viewers were so against the data being posted, it’s not like it was watermarked across the face of the image, they had to look clear to the end of the blog to see it ruin their vision of your beautiful photographs. Jim Morrison of the Doors was right, “People are strange”. Thanks again!
Richard
Nice reflection in this one. And I like the mouse-over tech details. Well done.
Thanks, Joe. :-)