Oak in Winter. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Light snow covers a meadow and the branches of an oak tree during a spring storm, Yosemite Valley
I went back and forth on the question of whether this photograph should be black and white or color. When I made the photograph, in light snow flurries and soft and low light, there was hardly any color in the scene, and I imagined the “I might as well” go with monochrome. I toyed with the idea of doing a color rendition and leaving the viewer to figure out if it really was in color or not. Finally, I simply decided that color wasn’t a particularly important aspect of the image… and here you are.
The scene might be just a bit deceiving. It is clearly a winter-like scene (though photographed in early spring) with new fallen snow. However, a closer look reveals that the snow is quite light — perhaps no more than an inch or so — yet it is fresh enough to cling to branches and cover the ground. It was snowing lightly as I made the photograph, in fact.
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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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