Monolith, Trees, and New Snow. Yosemite Valley, California. March 1, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Trees on a snowy bench in front of the granite face of Half Dome
With this photograph I continue on the theme of Yosemite Valley winter photographs I made back in the late winter, while there for the opening of an exhibit in the Valley. The opening was just one evening, but that meant that we had most of three days to photograph. It had been anything but a snowy winter in the Sierra, but we were fortunate to arrive not long after one of the few snowstorms, and the Valley walls and pinnacles had a thin coating of new snow.
While out in a meadow photographing other subjects I looked up and saw that some of that snow was still plastered to the vertical face of Half Dome and to the row of trees standing precariously on the ledge running down from right to left at the base of the main cliff. Such places in the Valley are very interesting to me — spots that everyone can see but which remain virtually inaccessible to all but some climbers… and to photographers with long lenses who look closely. And, yes, I’m aware of the obvious precedent when I use the term “monolith” in the title of the photograph.
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.
Thanks for the comment, Craig! This subject provides some “interesting” compositional challenges. The subject is, of course, a long ways away from the camera position. The coloration of the face of Half Dome is actually quite subtle, and color balance is a bit tricky in this very cold light. I took two approaches to the scene. This one used the vertical format and was cropped closely enough to leave out some distracting surround. The other one is even tighter, but in the landscape format.
Dan
This image is very interesting to me. The amount of negative space is startling, at first. Negative space generally, I think, serves as contrast to isolate the subject of the photograph. And it probably would have if you had made a tighter shot of the trees that eliminated the snow at the top and the left. But your decision to frame the negative space makes it the subject and the foreground trees provide a wonderful sense of scale that helps us better appreciate the magnitude of the scene. Quite intriguing and powerful.