Treeline Landscape

Treeline Landscape
Glaciated slabs, meadows, stunted trees and higher peaks near treeline in the Sierra Nevada

Treeline Landscape. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Glaciated slabs, meadows, stunted trees and higher peaks near treeline in the Sierra Nevada.

A recent post from Scot Miller, one of the photographers on this backcountry photographic excursion, reminded me that I still had at least one more photograph of my own from this summer 2019 trip into the John Muir Wilderness. This scene was steps from my campsite for a week in this 11,000′ valley, a week during which we had a chance to thoroughly explore and photograph the area.

When I go through my photographs following such a trip there is an almost inevitable cycle to how I work with the photographs. Often I come back with a few specific images that I recall making and looking forward to post-processing… and I typically work these up first. Then I go back through the work and “discover” additional images that I might have paid less attention to but which immediately catch my attention. Eventually I continue to work through the archive and I begin to find more subtle photographs that I like for a range of reasons. This one, to me, has a kind of quiet quality that I like, in part because it suggests the stillness of these locations, but also because it conveys, I think, the contrast between the intimate, such as that nearby tree, and the immense, such as that distant eastern escarpment cliff face.


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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