Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Trees on Granite Slabs, Morning

August 7, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Trees in morning light on granite slabs near Murphy Creek at Tenaya Lake, Yosemite National Park.

This is a subject that I returned to on my late-July visit to the Yosemite high country. I first noticed this scene a year ago, in a place that I have driven past without paying much attention for literally decades. It is one of those odd little “spots” that intrigue me for several reasons, including the fact that it is so easily missed and that it only appears (at least for me) at precisely the right time of day/season and when viewed from one particular angle.

The scene is at a location that is tremendously popular with Yosemite visitors who drive Tioga Pass Road to the high country. It is in the area between iconic Olmsted Point and the domes above Tenaya Lake, a portion of Tioga Pass Road that has something to attract almost the entire range of tourists: climbing, a lake with a beach, big views of tall cliffs, and so on. And on summer days like this one, it sometimes seems like all of those people are crowded along this section of the roadway (Though it can be relatively quiet at the early morning time when I made this photograph.) With so much to see, it is easy to miss things that appear only momentarily and only when you happen to look in the right direction while driving through a portion of the road that seems less spectacular by comparison. I guess the moral, yet again, is that between icon A and icon B, there are almost always hidden beauties C-Z if you keep your eyes open, even in places that you think you know.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Trees and Granite, Morning

August 6, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Morning light shines on the trees clinging to massive granite domes in the high country of Yosemite National Park.

I’ll write a bit less about this photograph since I posted it already in a color rendition and described some of the background of the image in that earlier post. The basic idea is that I used a very long focal length to isolate the single primary tree against a world of granite that recedes toward the rising sun that is above and out of the frame to the right.

When I made the photograph I had a pretty good idea that it might work as black and white. In fact, though I don’t recall for certain, I think I was leaning towards thinking of the scene in black and white when I made the exposure. (Those last two sentences must seem strange if not almost perverse to people whose primary background is in film!) Sometimes, as with this scene, I end up liking both versions, at least at first. While I may end up leaning toward one or the other more after I live with the prints a while, right now I go back and forth. Of course, when two things are different it is not necessarily the case that one must be better than the other; sometimes they are just different.

Oddly, one thing that inclined me towards black and white ends up also suggesting color. Because so much of the content of the frame is nearly monochromatic I think I originally felt that with so little color to work with that it might make sense to just let it be monochromatic. But then, “with so little color to work with,” the subtle effect of color begins, in some ways, to be even more important.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Tree and Granite, Pywiack Dome

August 5, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A weathered juniper tree grows high on the granite face of Pywiack Dome, Yosemite National Park.

This is another “take” on the same juniper tree high up on the slopes of Pywiack Dome that was seen in another photograph of this area that I posted earlier this week. I went through a process of “refining” the photograph that I described in the earlier post, and this was the interpretation that I came up with right before the landscape orientation version that I posted earlier. Unlike that photograph, this one frames the area of the dome containing the tree more tightly.

The color balance is a bit different in this one, also. I thought about that quite a bit, at first feeling that the coloration should be essentially identical since the images were made at about the same time and include some of the same subject matter. But the more I thought about it – and the more I experimented with the results of trying for uniformity – the more I felt that the two photographs are different images and that different interpretations make sense.

These trees never cease to amaze me. I often come across what are evidently very old trees that seem to grow almost straight out of solid rock, and only a closer inspection reveals that roots have grown tightly into small and unlikely cracks and weaknesses in the granite. That this tree should have managed to take root half way up the side of this large dome is even more amazing, much less that it managed to avoid growing into the stunted and twisted sort of shape that is so common among such trees.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Juniper Trees and Granite Slab, Morning

August 4, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Two juniper trees in morning light at the base of Pywiack Dome, Yosemite National Park.

This strong and straight juniper and the smaller twin hiding behind it grow at the top of the rocky debris field at the base of this dome not far from Tenaya Lake in the Yosemite National Park high country. A bit later than the “golden hour” time, the morning light begins to spill around the side of the dome and illuminate these trees from behind, creating a glow in their branches and the branches of trees and brush around them.

Last night someone asked me if I choose when to go to the Sierra to photograph based on the weather conditions. I wish I had that luxury! To some extent I make general decisions about where and what to shoot based on the season – The Valley around the end the start of November, the east side in early October, etc. – but for the most part I go where I can go when I can go there. However, I do alter the focus of my shooting based on the current conditions. This late-July trip is a good example.

I associate certain types of light with different seasons, and I tend to look for clear and crisp light in late July along, accented by snow fields and lots of new growth. I was a bit surprised by the amount of haze in the atmosphere. In fact, in some ways it almost reminded me of very late summer and early fall when Sierra wildfires often create a smokey haze over the range. With this in mind, I figured out that crystal clear photographs of mountain peaks against sky were not going to be in the cards. Instead I focused more on closer subjects, and when I shot more distant subjects I thought a lot about how to use the haze, embracing its effect rather than regretting that I had to deal with it. This photograph is perhaps an example of both of those approaches. The main subject here, the central pair of trees, cannot be more than a couple hundred feet away, if that. Behind the trees and the slab are more distant granite domes and cliffs and forest winding up the mountainside. Shooting almost straight into the sun accentuated the hazy quality of the more distant elements of the scene and enhanced the sense of front to back distance, and separated the foreground trees from the background it a way that would not have been possible in “better” lighting conditions.

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

Monthly Archives: August 2011

Trees on Granite Slabs, Morning

Trees and Granite, Morning

Tree and Granite, Pywiack Dome

Juniper Trees and Granite Slab, Morning

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