Category Archives: Commentary

Commentary, Locations

Reader Question: Yosemite in October

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“Tom” recently sent me a question about visiting Yosemite in October, and I thought I would reply here where others can see the information, too.

I will be in CA in October and was planning on going up to Yosemite for a few days. Any advice you’d care to share would be greatly appreciated. :)

California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the SierraBefore I answer your question below, you might be interested in my book, California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra, available from Heyday Books and from Amazon. It shares a lot of what I have learned about locating and photographing Sierra Nevada fall color, along with a large collection of my autumn photography in locations from the eastern Sierra to Yosemite Valley.

October may be my favorite time of the year to be in the Sierra in general and in Yosemite in particular. While some things that draw people to Yosemite (waterfalls, for example) are not likely to be at their best, there are many other wonderful attractions at this time of year. October is a transition month in the Sierra, with early October often having the character of late summer and late October often feeling more like early winter. Conditions can change quickly, and warm and sunny days may be followed by a day of rain or snow.

Autumn Light, Yosemite High Country
Autumn Light, Yosemite High Country

I have divided the following description geographically to separately describe Yosemite Valley, the Yosemite high country, and the east side of the Sierra Nevada range.

Yosemite Valley – The busy summer tourism season winds down in September after the Labor Day weekend, and by October the Valley is no longer quite the crowded, urbanized, noisy zoo that it can be on the worst days during the summer. (I generally steer clear of the Valley in June, July, August, and early September.) The meadows will have turned golden brown already, and real autumn colors begin to appear later in the month. While some are subtle, such as the transition of the oak tree leaves, others are quite striking, including brilliant fall colors of maples and dogwood trees. I make a habit of shooting autumn colors in The Valley every fall right around the end of October or beginning of November. (You’ll often find me there on Halloween!) Continue reading Reader Question: Yosemite in October →

Commentary, Locations

Yosemite High Country – A Brief Late July Report

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Carefully timing my visit to miss the weekend crowds, I spent the better part of the last week of July (2011) in the Yosemite National Park high country along and around Tioga Pass Road. I posted the first photograph from this visit earlier today, and more will appear here soon. But while the visit is still fresh in my mind, I thought I’d share a few observations and comments that might be useful to others heading there or to other parts of the high Sierra soon.

In a typical late July, all of the snow is melted out at “campground elevations” (generally 8000′ – 9000′ or so – Tuolumne Meadows is at 8600′), essentially all of the usual high country areas are accessible by trail or cross-country travel, wildflowers are at or near their peak, mosquito populations have reached their peak, and visitors are starting to arrive en masse for day use, camping, and backpacking. With the exception of the influx of visitors, this is not quite a typical season, however.

Snow – As I drove up Tioga Pass Road on July 26, the first surprise was finding that there were still large snow patches in some forested areas as low as 8000′ or so. I don’t recall seeing this much snow so low so late in the season in the past. (My memory may not include the lower elevations at this time of year in 1996, the last year with such impressive snow fall.) I stayed at the Porcupine Flat campground, and at least one site there still had enough snow as to make it pretty unusable. Continue reading Yosemite High Country – A Brief Late July Report →

Commentary, Site News

RSS Problems – Better But Not Fully Resolved?

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I wrote yesterday about a couple of technical issues that arose when I switched to this new theme a few weeks ago. I’m certain that I have now solved the problem that left photographs out of search results when using the search box on this site. I’m still getting some reports from people who don’t see the photographs in the daily posts of new images. (They may see the affiliate link image.)

I’m still working to get to the bottom of this. It seems like those who encounter this problem may be seeing the so-called “summary” of the posts rather than the full post. This perplexes me since I just double-checked and I have selected the option to send the full post content in the feed. In addition, I see the full content in my Google Reader versions of the feed.

However… there are two other places where I’m also seeing a version that does not include the images.

  • The first is when I check via the RSS feature in my Apple OS X Mail program. (I don’t normally use this, but I used it as a test case earlier today.)
  • The second is in the “Networked Blogs” posts that let the blog automatically post into my Facebook account. To be honest, I’ve seen others having problems with the Networked Blogs service, and I’ve been considering eliminating it.
If you follow the RSS feed, it would be useful if you could take a moment to let me know whether or not you see the images in posts. You can simply reply to this message here at the blog or at Facebook if you see it there.
(For those who wonder if I perhaps decided to keep my photographs out of the feeds for any number of reasons… that isn’t the case. This is entirely a technical issue and not one that I intended.)

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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Commentary, Community, Site News

Format Problem with Blog Search and RSS Solved?

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Earlier today I posted:

A week ago, after having recently updated the theme for this blog, I became aware that search results returned by the blog do not include images. That is a problem on a photography web site! Earlier today, several people emailed to point out that the images have also disappeared from the RSS feed for the site.

The loss of images in search and RSS was certainly not intentional! I’m going to try to figure out why this has happened and correct it as soon as I can. (“Thank you” to readers who alerted me to this!)

I have a bit of an update, and I also have a quick request if you have a moment…

One problem was that images were not showing up when visitors searched to site using the search box that appears near the top of the sidebar on each page. Only text was being returned in the search results. I believe that I have fixed this problem – my own searches now include images incorporated in the original post. That is pretty darned important on a photography blog!

The other problem was that several readers who subscribe to posts via the RSS feed reported no longer seeing images in the feed. This has proven a bit more complex. I checked my Google Reader feeds, where I had been monitoring two versions of this blog’s feed. I discovered that the photographers were, indeed, missing from one version of the feed. I cancelled both feeds and resubscribed and… now they both work correctly. I also checked the php files for the RSS page and it looks like it should include the entire posts, images and all.

So, if you have encountered a problem with images disappearing from the RSS feed recently, I would like to suggest the following:

  1. Try to unsubscribe from the feed in your feed reader. The subscribe again, as if you were doing it for the first time.
  2. If you do this and the images are still not visible in posts that follow your completion of this step, I would be grateful if you would let me know a bit more about how your subscribe.
  3. You might also consider using Google Reader as your RSS feed reader. That is what I now use, and I’m pleased with the interface… and the images seem to show up correctly there.
Thanks!