Peninsula, Trees, Evening Light. Yosemite National Park, California. September 3, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening light comes to a tree-dotted peninsula on a subalpine lake, Yosemite National Park

A subalpine Sierra Nevada lake like this one, where I photographed over the course of six days in September, is both a comforting source of familiarity and an opportunity to seek and discover new things. Anyone who has spent much time in the Sierra back county is familiar with lakes like this one. It is set in a very shallow bowl between higher ridges in most directions, a low and rock ridge in another, and a forested valley holding its outlet stream. This one is entirely surrounded by forest, dense and growing right to the shoreline in places, and sparse and rocky in others. A walk around the lake — and I made quite a few of these walks! — reveals marshy sections, places steep and rocky enough to make passage challenging, rocky outcroppings, views through trees, small granite islands, and more.

These walks almost inevitably brought us to the far end of the lake, near the marshy outlet, where this granite peninsula extends into the lake and supports ground cover and a few isolated trees. As we explored and photographed individually, it was not unusual for us to run into one another in this spot where there are so many interesting possibilities. The peninsula was a bit of an enigma for me. Its visual appeal was immediate — the individual trees standing in the light, the granite rocks, the open views of surrounding terrain, and its path away from the shore and out into the lake. But once there, I discovered that it was not as easy to photograph as I might have expected! Despite its obvious appeal, there were challenges — how to find an effective background, getting just the right light, and placing the individual components of the scene into a pleasing composition. On this evening I shot with a wide-angle lens and decided to work the curving shoreline that faced the late-day light.

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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