Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Photographs from Northern California

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

Hope Valley, Autumn — Five Photographs

November 23, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

This set of five photographs features scenes of autumn in Hope Valley in the California Sierra Nevada.

A colorful grove of autumn aspen trees, backed by pine forest, Hope Valley, California

A “wall of trees” photograph made in the evening at Hope Valley, California near the peak of the 2014 aspen color season.

Forest and meadows with fall color, Picketts Junction, Hope Valley

Fall meadow colors along the creek in Hope Valley, California near Picketts Junction were highway 88 and 89 meet.

Aspen color and pine forest, Hope Valley, California

Brilliant autumn aspen foliage in shades of yellow and orange in the upper portion of Hope Valley, just east of Carson Pass in the eastern Sierra Nevada.

Autumn forest including willow and aspen stretches up Hope Valley toward Carson Pass

A giant pine forest, intermixed with the autumn colors of aspen trees, extends across Sierra Nevada slopes toward Carson Pass.

A colorful grove of autumn aspen trees, backed by pine forest, Hope Valley, California

Photographed in evening light, the curving shape of a grove of autumn aspen trees with colors of green, yellow, and orange.

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

Forest, Granite Bowl

November 7, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening light on forests and a glaciated granite bowl, Yosemite National Park

Large slabs of nearly unbroken granite, left behind in the wake of ancient glaciers, are a prominent and characteristic feature of the high country of Yosemite National Park. There is granite all of the Sierra, but this granite often seems to me to be more intact, and rather than encountering fields of broken rock it is common to come across these beautiful structures of exfoliating granite, often still with areas of smooth and reflective glacial polish. Scattered trees have taken hold in surprisingly thin cracks.

This bowl is in such a characteristic place, in the bottom of a great river canyon, just where it begins to become narrower and steeper. The area clearly shows the effects of glaciation, from the smooth rock in the canyon bottom to the sculpted domes and faces above. I have photographed in this bowl before on several occasions, and despite shooting there many times I continue to find new ways to see it every time I visit.

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

Peninsula, Trees, Evening Light

November 3, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Evening light comes to a tree-dotted peninsula on a subalpine lake, Yosemite National Park

A subalpine Sierra Nevada lake like this one, where I photographed over the course of six days in September, is both a comforting source of familiarity and an opportunity to seek and discover new things. Anyone who has spent much time in the Sierra back county is familiar with lakes like this one. It is set in a very shallow bowl between higher ridges in most directions, a low and rock ridge in another, and a forested valley holding its outlet stream. This one is entirely surrounded by forest, dense and growing right to the shoreline in places, and sparse and rocky in others. A walk around the lake — and I made quite a few of these walks! — reveals marshy sections, places steep and rocky enough to make passage challenging, rocky outcroppings, views through trees, small granite islands, and more.

These walks almost inevitably brought us to the far end of the lake, near the marshy outlet, where this granite peninsula extends into the lake and supports ground cover and a few isolated trees. As we explored and photographed individually, it was not unusual for us to run into one another in this spot where there are so many interesting possibilities. The peninsula was a bit of an enigma for me. Its visual appeal was immediate — the individual trees standing in the light, the granite rocks, the open views of surrounding terrain, and its path away from the shore and out into the lake. But once there, I discovered that it was not as easy to photograph as I might have expected! Despite its obvious appeal, there were challenges — how to find an effective background, getting just the right light, and placing the individual components of the scene into a pleasing composition. On this evening I shot with a wide-angle lens and decided to work the curving shoreline that faced the late-day light.

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

Morning Haze and Light, Shoreline Trees

October 31, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Forest trees at the edge of a Sierra Nevada subalpine lake in morning light, Yosemite National Park

This is another photograph from that magical first day of shooting at a location that I would stay at for nearly a full week. As I wrote previously, the magic of this first morning comes from many things. Recognition is one of them — the experience of experiencing again the familiar elements of the Sierra backcountry that I have known for so many years: the sounds of gentle wind and water lapping at the end of the lake, the stillness of the morning air, that beautiful light coming over a ridge and striking trees and rocks from behind, the bits of detritus along the shoreline. A sense of expectation is another — the focus on seeing what is new at this place, the almost certain knowledge that I will discover new and unexpected things during the upcoming days.

On this morning I walked down to this lake for the first time. (I had arrived so late the previous day — after sunset, actually — that I had not even gone to the shoreline.) I began to circle around its west side slowly, first on a trail through flat terrain near where we camped, and then on rockier areas that forced me to ascend above the water a bit. All the time I was looking for subjects and compositions — though it would take a few more days before I fully fell into the ideal mode of seeing. I love backlight and I live juxtapositions of subjects, and I was attracted to the fringe of morning light on the branches of the trees at left and on the grasses below, and to how they contrasted with the deeply shaded area beyond.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Hope Valley, Autumn — Five Photographs

Forest, Granite Bowl

Peninsula, Trees, Evening Light

Morning Haze and Light, Shoreline Trees

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