Two Snags, Morning Light

Two Snags, Morning Light
Two snags stretch toward the sky below an Eastern Sierra Nevada peak in morning light

Two Snags, Morning Light. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two snags stretch toward the sky below an Eastern Sierra Nevada peak in morning light.

This location was a short walk above the Eastern Sierra backcountry base camp where our group spent a week in late August and the very beginning of September. We were camped at about 11,000′ of elevation, where the trees start to give out just below timberline… and where the landscape’s main feature is rock, including granite slabs, glacial moraines, talus fields, and rugged high peaks.

I walked up here early one morning with a plan to photograph a subject just a bit farther away, but I got distracted by beautiful and developing light. I had noted these snags several days earlier and made a plan to return to photograph them in better light. As I arrived the dead trees were still in shadow, but within moments the sun/shadow line reached the trees, and I made this photograph just as the entire height of the trees came into the light.


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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