(“A Photograph Exposed” is a series exploring some of my photographs in greater detail.)
Shoreline Reflections, Trees and Rocks. Yosemite National Park, California. June 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Black and white photograph of silhouetted trees and boulders and their reflections lining a flooded section of the shoreline of Tenaya Lake.
This photograph is a personal favorite for a bunch of reasons related to how the photograph came about, the experience of making the photograph, associations with the place, and a print that pleases me a great deal.
I maintain the no photographer’s work is wholly original. What comes closest to being truly original is the personal vision of the artist — that particular way of seeing that the photographer develops. That vision is actually unique, but it is built from experiences and exposure to a visual world that includes the ways of seeing of other photographers and painters and more. I acknowledge and am grateful to a wide range of photographers whose work informs my way of seeing the world.
Among them is Charlie Cramer, who I’m fortunate to count not only as a photographic influence, but also as a friend. Charlie’s way of seeing light appeals to me a great deal, and among the photographs of his that stick in my mind is one of some very similar trees at this exact lake. When I’m in a place where another photographer’s photograph immediately comes to mind I often feel cautious about making a photograph that might look too much like their work — and this one may be an example of “influenced by” but “not like.”
On this early summer day I had gotten up early to go in search of photographs, and I had first spent some time photographing a different location in the very early morning hours. Finishing that I headed back past this lake and decided to stop and see what I could find. (It must have still been early, since I recall a range driving up and pulling over, suspicious that I had camped in my car overnight there!)
I have visited this and other areas around this lake for many years. I’ve long been intrigued by this particular area of the lake, where flat granite slabs line the shoreline, allowing the lake to expand and contract across the shallows as the season progresses through a sequence that begins with very high water during the period of spring snow melt to lower water in the late season. Later in the season this spot can be essentially dry, but in the early season of this wetter-than-usual year, the water flooded this small pool and what might otherwise be shoreline trees were on a rocky peninsula.
It was past dawn, but there was almost no one else around, and I had this spot to myself. Not only was it early in the day but it was also early in the Sierra summer season, and the lake level was very high. Later in the season this spot would be more or less dry, but on this morning the lake’s water spilled over past the trees and into this low, rocky area.
Often when I make a photograph I may start out drawn to one particular aspect of the subject, but then as I consider it I begin to see others and to find ways to connect them together in a composition. The first thing that brought me to this spot was the little rocky peninsula beyond the foreground pond, and the row of trees it supports. (It was something along these lines that I remembered from Charlie’s photograph.) Soon my interest in this horizontal element took on the context of the wild vertical structures of the trees and their reflections — and, in fact, the vertical became the main structure of interest. The rocks also fascinated me, and it took a while to find a composition that placed them in interesting places relative to the dark of the trees and light of reflected sky. Although it is not easy to see here, there is also an angular dissonance of light beams from the upper right that illuminate the surface of the water, some places more clearly that others.
I can’t say that I knew whether this would end up as a black and white or color photograph when I pressed the shutter release. The plain fact is that sometimes I know and sometimes I don’t, and the “right” answer only becomes clear to me in post. It became clear to me that this was not a photograph about color relationships. It is a photograph about some rather stark structures, many of them in shadow and almost silhouettes, and monochrome seemed to work well for this.
As to how I feel about the print, let’s just say that if I’m to be judged by my photographs I would be happy to have this one be part of the work that gets judged.
This photograph was a prize winner in the Yosemite Renaissance 2013 show in Yosemite Valley. Prints are available. Email me and/or see the Sales link at the top of this page.
The Photograph Exposed series:
- A Photograph Exposed: “Submerged Boulders, Lake, and Cliffs” (2010)
- A Photograph Exposed: A Tale of Light (2011)
- A Photograph Exposed: Photography and Luck (2012)
- A Photograph Exposed: “San Francisco Skyline — Winter Fog and Haze” (2015)
- A Photograph Exposed: “Two Rocks, Morning, Racetrack Playa” (2015)
- A Photograph Exposed: “Two Islands, Fog” (2015)
- A Photograph Exposed: “Shoreline Reflections, Trees and Rocks” (2015)
- A Photograph Exposed: One Subject, Two Compositions (2015)
- A Photograph Exposed: Technique and Interpretation in Post (2015)
- A Photograph Exposed: Je Suis Bleu (2022)
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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