River Bank and Cottonwood Trees. Yosemite Valley, California. October 30, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
A thicket of small cottonwood trees leans toward the Merced River, Yosemite National Park
When I first encountered this riverside thicket of small trees, I half-regarded them as a nuisance, believe it or not. My attention was focused on cottonwood trees on the opposite bank of the river and a bit downstream, and I was looking for a good vantage point where I could set up my tripod to photograph them. While I was intrigued by these closely-spaced trees and their beautiful autumn foliage, my initial orientation to them was affected by how difficult they made it to find a good spot for my tripod with a clear view of the other trees! (Yes, I did eventually find a small spot down by the edge of the water from which I could make that other photograph.)
After passing them I looked back and saw the way that the trees varied from almost perfectly vertical in the middle of the thicket to banding almost horizontally over the river closer to the bank in an attempt, I suppose, to find unobstructed sunlight. I knew there was a photograph in this scene but it was a bit tricky. Framing it the way I wanted required the use of a longer lens, but that introduced depth of field challenges. Initially I saw it as a color photograph, especially since the leaves on these cottonwoods were at their peak of intense autumn gold. However, working on the photograph later, it seemed to me that the color wasn’t the main story in this scene, and that a black and white rendition might do a better job of highlighting the varied yet related forms of those tree trunks, and still capture the beautiful side-light coming from across the river and down the Valley at this very late afternoon hour.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.