Category Archives: Photographs: Nature

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Mono Lake, Photographs: Nature

Shoreline, Mono Lake

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Shoreline, Mono Lake
A hazy summer morning along the shareline of Mono Lake.

Shoreline, Mono Lake. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A hazy summer morning along the shareline of Mono Lake.

Perhaps you see a few of my photographs and read the accompanying text… in which case you may already know my Mono Lake story: I’m attracted to the immense space and profound quite and stillness of the place, more so than specific features such as tufa towers. Perhaps because I’ve been to those popular features many times, I now tend to poke around in somewhat more obscure places or try to see other aspects of the lake and its surrounding basin.

I made this photograph on a clear sky day when haze — perhaps from wildfires? — was obscuring distant features on the far side of Mono Basin. With the light come from above and beyond those far ranges the atmosphere was luminous and seemed to almost glow. Winds were creating patterns on the surface of the lake. I included some of the near shore, too, perhaps to more clearly show the immense size of the lake.

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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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Red Rock Face

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Red Rock Face
Detail of a sandstone face, Capitol Reef National Park.

Red Rock Face. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Detail of a sandstone face, Capitol Reef National Park.

Many times when I have photographed in red rock country I find myself looking for other subjects that work with the sandstone to produce compositions — juxtapositions of features, trees, a bit of sky or clouds, water, light and shadow, and all of the other things that are part of the experience of this Southern Utah landscape. But at times it strikes me that the rock itself can be the entire subject. This is one of those photographs.

These masses of sandstone are remarkable on their own. They may first seem somewhat undifferentiated, but a closer look in the right light — in my view, the shaded light in canyons is ideal — reveals remarkable variations and detail. The color of the rock varies greatly depending upon time of day and, especially, the color of reflected light bouncing between anyone walls. Cracks and imperfections mark the rock even on the smoothest sections. And an infinite variety of markings combine on the surface — internal irregularities, color differences where the surface has been disturbed, and everywhere vertical lines formed by seeping and flowing water.

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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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Dusk, From Boulder Mountain

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Dusk, From Boulder Mountain
A distant peak in sunset light beyond autumn aspens in the Boulder Mountain area.

Dusk, From Boulder Mountain. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A distant peak in sunset light beyond autumn aspens in the Boulder Mountain area.

This photograph marks a step in my process of learning about the remarkable landscape of southern Utah. I’ve written previous about how I managed to miss photographing Utah for a long time — it is a long story having to do with Sierra obsessions and family travels though less visually stimulating portions of Utah when I was very young. My first real photographic visit was in the early 2000s in the springtime… and I was taken by this landscape. On our way across the state we passed through the Boulder Mountain area, and I made a mental note to try to revisit this area’s extensive aspen groves in the fall.

A few years later we went back in autumn, on a long trip that started in the Eastern Sierra, crossed empty areas of Nevada, and arrived in Southeast Utah… where I discovered that fall colors arrive earlier there than in the Sierra. When we eventually worked our way across Boulder Mountain it was clear that we were catching the tail end of the aspen colors, and many groves were already bare. At dusk we found a location where lines of still-colorful trees alternated with bare trunks. Among the photographs I made was this one, looking toward the last light on the Capitol Reef area and higher mountains beyond.

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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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Autumn Aspens, Broken Boulders

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Autumn Aspens, Broken Boulders
A group of autumn aspen trees grows in jumbled and rocky Eastern Sierra Nevada terrain.

Autumn Aspens, Broken Boulders. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A group of autumn aspen trees grows in jumbled and rocky Eastern Sierra Nevada terrain.

Aspen trees frequently grow on what we might regard as less-than-optimal soil and terrain, at least in the Eastern Sierra Nevada. While some manage to find a home in canyon bottoms and other places with good soil, many trees live their lives in dry, rocky, and exposed places. Often the trees seem to adapt — perhaps remaining quite small or maybe maintaining more space between them. The trees in this photograph are growing on truly rocky terrain. The trees are rooted in little more than cracks in the granite, and around them are solid rock and a field of broken granite.

Dealing with color when photographing aspens in locations like this can be tricky, especially since I much prefer to photograph them when they are shaded. (Direct sunlight on these trees can be quite harsh.) The light in shadows can be extremely blue, mainly because the main light source is that giant blue light panel we call the say. On the scene, our human visual system adapts and we register the rocks as gray. But the camera is, to an extent, more objective, and the intense blue color of those “gray” rocks is revealed in a photograph. With that we are faced with a subjective, interpretative question: where should be set the colors along the continuum stretching from the objective blue to what we recall in our mind’s eye? Here, as I often do, I shifted the color away from blue to produce colors that are more like what I recall — and even here those rocks seem quite blue to my eyes. Fortunately, there is no one right answer to this question, and I’ve seen effective interpretations that were strikingly blue along with others that used much warmer colors.

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.