All posts by G Dan Mitchell

G Dan Mitchell, photographer and visual opportunist focusing on the Pacific coast, the Sierra Nevada, redwood forests, California oak/grasslands, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography and more. Posting daily photographs since 2005, along with articles, reviews, news, and ideas.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Subalpine Lake and Pinnacles, Afternoon

December 9, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Afternoon clouds and light above an eastern Sierra subalpine lake and pinnacles

I am continuing my late 2014 nostalgic return visit to photographs from a 2010 backpack trip into the southern Sierra Nevada with a group of friends, a visit that took us over three very high passes (one over 13,000′) and into some quite remote areas of the Sierra Nevada in Sequoia National Park. For some reason I had sort a number of the photographs behind, sequestered away in raw files where I had not looked at them since that trip. I have some theories about how this came about — I won’t bore readers with all of them, but I do know that sometimes we aren’t quite ready to see photographs for what they really are until some time has passed.

We began our trip at the high Onion Valley trailhead in the eastern Sierra, crossing a familiar first-day pass over the crest and then descending to this beautiful subalpine valley, where short trees grow around rocky lakes that are bordered by a line of rugged and rocky pinnacles that extend back toward the crest. This is a place I have passed through quite often over the years, and since many of the visits were on the first or last day of much longer trips, I think that I may have missed some of the area’s beauty while focused on where I was going next. This time we arrived fairly early on a beautiful afternoon with broken clouds — the kind that suggest the possibility of thunder but then don’t produce it — and the light only became more beautiful as afternoon wore on toward evening.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sequoia-Kings Canyon, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Timberline Lake, Rugged Ridges

December 8, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small timberline lake sits on a bench in front of rugged summits of the Great Western Divide

This is yet another in series of photographs from a 2010 backpack trip into the far reaches of the Kern River drainage in Sequoia National Park. For reasons that I’m not certain that I can identify, last week I decided to go back and take a look at these old photographs, few of which have not previously shared. They exemplify one of the reasons that I rarely delete old raw files, even if they don’t look all that interesting at the time — too often I return to the photographs months or even years later and find things that make me glad I kept them. Sometimes I find photographs that I simply passed over or didn’t understand at the time, and other times I simply have the joy of reliving an experience that had largely slipped from my mind.

On this trip a group of close friends with whom I have backpacked for years were on yet another summer adventure, this time into the remote backcountry of Sequoia National Park. We traveled a popular but long trail over several very high passes to get to the general area, and then we left that trail and headed west to a place that is visited much less frequently, a location tucked back up beneath the Great Western Divide. I had touched the edges of this area a few times before but never had gone straight there — and now I wish that I had visited earlier, as we found an infrequently visited region of monumental mountains and valleys and a stupendous alpine setting. This photograph overlooks a lake on a bench in an area where we camped, and the view extends westward toward the crest of the divide.

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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Morning Musings

Testing? Testing? (Morning Musings 12/8/14)

December 8, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

This morning I saw an article over at The Online Photographer (which you should be following) about a particular camera/lens combination and the process of doing a quick and informal test of that gear… right there in the kitchen.

I read a lot of photography questions about how this or that thing works, which setting is “best” for a particular result, what shutter speed range works for hand-held photography, how much the shadows can be pushed, whether a lens is sharp enough for some particular usage, and much more. Folks are often looking for quick answers — and who wouldn’t in most cases. However, the quick answers often turn out to be less clear than they might like, and sometimes the simplest questions can end up in controversy.

A simple answer is to simply try it out yourself!

The answers to many of the questions that we ask are too complex to lend themselves to absolute answers. Yet, we can often get a very good and quite accurate feeling for these things by just giving them a try. In some cases the “testing” can be very informal, while in others it might require just a bit more care and organization. But in our modern photographic world of digital cameras and computer post-processing and display the testing is much easier than it might have been in the past, and it is well within our grasp to do it ourselves.

I recall one of the first times I put this to good use with a digital camera. Continue reading Testing? Testing? (Morning Musings 12/8/14) →

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Quiet Shoreline, Morning

December 8, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A quiet morning shoreline at a subalpine lake, Yosemite National Park

This is a “quiet” photograph — no warm golden hour coloration, no grand vista, no motion. This is a very early morning scene. The sun has risen, but is still behind higher ridges to the east, so the shoreline is in shadow. The water is almost completely still, and although the photograph can’s show this, it is very quiet.

This is a beautiful time of day in the high country. The cold air makes fingers numb and encourages one to look for those first beams of warm light that will soon come over the ridge. The place itself is quiet, and that quiet seems to encourage me to move quietly as well, as I start my search for photographic subjects.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

All posts by G Dan Mitchell

Subalpine Lake and Pinnacles, Afternoon

Timberline Lake, Rugged Ridges

Testing? Testing? (Morning Musings 12/8/14)

Quiet Shoreline, Morning

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.