Shoreline, Forest, Morning. Yosemite National Park, California. July 15, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Morning light and forested shoreline reflected on the surface of a subalpine Sierra Nevada lake
It is way past time to share this photograph — it has been sitting here since I made it back in July! The location is a familiar one to those who visit the Yosemite high country and drive across Tioga Pass Road, but sometimes I do stop at those iconic locations and make a photograph, especially in a quiet and uncrowded morning like this one.
Lakes like this one are among the places that often make me wonder if visitors have any idea what they are missing. So many people, for practical reasons or because they don’t know better, come to such places in the middle of the day or in the afternoon. While they are certainly beautiful at any time, these locations are almost (but not quite always!) at their most beautiful at the very beginning and very end of the day. Lakes like this one are often completely still at dawn, sometimes with a bit of fog rising from their surface, and the surroundings are usually quiet and uncrowded. Even in a spot like this one — where I can assure you there were crowds later in the day — I can have the place virtually to myself.
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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