Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Photographs from Northern California

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

Morning, Tuolumne Meadows

July 22, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Trees of Tuolumne Meadows in morning light, with forest ascending background slopes, Yosemite Naitonal Park.

As a photographer, I am often up and off to shoot some interesting subject well before dawn. When I am car-camping, as I was during my mid-July visit to Tuolumne Meadows this year, I have a loose ritual that I usually follow. The night before I come up with one or more subjects that I would like to photograph in morning light. Based on where those are – driving or walking distance, and closer or further away – I set an alarm for a much earlier time than I want to. Then I have everything ready for a quick and fairly brainless early start – anything I’ll need to take from the tent sits by the end of the zipper I’ll grab to open the tent, and other things are already in the car. The alarm goes off – way too early for my brain, of course! – and I try to sit up so that I won’t go back to sleep and then put on whatever clothes I need for the morning weather. On a good day, I’m out of the tent and in the car in 5 minutes. On a bad day it might take 15. (On a really bad day, I have been known to just go back to sleep! Hey, it happens… but not very often.) I get in the car and try to drive out of the campground as quickly and quietly as possible.

You may have noticed that something was missing from that routine – breakfast! Indeed, I usually don’t bother with breakfast before shooting, preferring instead to get to work while the light is good. As hard as it can be to get started, it usually doesn’t take too long to find some site so special and compelling that I forget how hard it was to get up so early. In fact, once I get going I am often surprised to find so few others out and about at this time of the most beautiful light. Frequently I may see only a few hikers and perhaps another photographer or two, and even a couple of hours later, as the best light begins to transition into the “blah” daytime light, many people are apparently still in their sleeping bags.

I didn’t have far to go on this morning. Tuolumne Meadows is just across Tioga Pass Road from the main campground. The early light was a bit hazy, and as the backlight lit up the meadow and fringed the many trees, this haze enhanced the sense of distance between the closer trees and the forest leading up the more distant hillside.

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: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: Wildlife

Harbor Seals, Point Lobos

July 21, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

California harbor seals interacting on a haul-out rock at the Point Lobos State Reserve.

The harbor seals are found in many areas of the California cost and elsewhere. These were lounging about on a haul-out rock at the Point Lobos State Reserve just south of Carmel and at the northern end of the Big Sur coastline. I have been going to Point Lobos for many years, and this particular rock is one I usually check out since it is quite close to the shoreline and there are often harbor seals about. Indeed, on this day there were perhaps a dozen of the critters on this rock, and more were hanging around nearby.

On one hand, it seems like a pretty lazy life they lead, especially on a calm summer day like this one. Haul out of the water and lounge about on rocks for hours. If they get hungry, the water is only a few feet away. But I suspect that the reality is much different. I have also gone to see them in the winter when the surf here can be astonishingly wild, and the ocean must be a very dangerous place. As I watched this group – which is sometimes an experience close to watching paint dry – eventually the middle seal decided to turn around and face the smaller one to the left. As it did so it arched its body to pivot around and the smaller one reached out with a flipper, suggesting a sort of friendly pat to the those with anthropomorphic tendencies.

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

Tuolumne River, Alpenglow

July 20, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The Tuolumne River curves through Tuolumne Meadows as alpenglow colors the landscape, Yosemite National Park.

I have written previously about several topics that connect to this photograph. For one, I have described a certain type of atmospheric condition in the Sierra that may bring astonishingly intense evening colors when clouds above the mountains end to the west of the range, allowing the final sunset light to illuminate the clouds from beneath. On this evening it looked like all the pieces were in place for such a show, but I know that while these conditions make the light possible, they do not guarantee it – and on this evening there was a wonderful, subtle glow just after sunset… but not the imagined overwhelmingly brilliant light.

For another, I have written about scoping out a shot ahead of time, sometimes earlier the same day and sometimes weeks, months, or even years earlier. Earlier on this day I decided to take a walk in the meadow without my camera gear, with precisely the task of “scoping out” in mind. I wandered around somewhat aimlessly, following my nose this way and that to investigate lots of interesting things and places that I might have passed by on a more purposeful hike. Before heading back to camp for an early dinner I had selected three possible subjects that I thought might work well.

I have also written about how little control we have over our subjects when shooting landscape. We can anticipate and guess and be fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time with the right gear and the skill to know how to use it, along with the ability to see what is happening – but in the end, in many ways, we take what we can find and work with it. When I arrived back in the evening an hour or so before the time of interesting light, I had a feeling that the first subject I had seen earlier might be the most promising. This was a scene that placed Lembert Dome between a couple of groups of trees and a bit of the river when viewed from the middle of a footbridge crossing the Tuolumne. I arrived and set up and began the planned wait for what I hoped would be very interesting light. However, as sunset approached, I could see that the shot I had planned was not going to work in the light that I found myself working with. So, on the spur of the moment and acting essentially intuitively, I picked up the tripod and camera and moved to a nearby spot and rather than making a tightly focused shot of the dome, I zoomed way out to include a gentle curve in the Tuolumne, a sandbar, and a line of foreground trees, and I made this photograph of the much subtler-than-expected post sunset light.

Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Owens Valley

Sand Tufa, Mono Lake

July 19, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Early morning light on details of sand tufa formations, Mono County.

I have wanted to photograph this subject for some time. The sand tufas are not found in the same location as the better-known “tufa towers” that are so often photographed, and they are smaller and somewhat subtler (if that is the right word) subjects. If you weren’t aware of what you were looking for, it would be very easy to pass right by them and barely notice their presence at all. They also appear to be very fragile, so great care should be taken if you ever happen to come across them. Walk around, not over or through them, and minimize your impact on them to the greatest extent possible. If you come across examples, it is probably best to not blast a lot of specific information to the world. I don’t know all of the details of their formation, but judging by their locations and by the recent history of lower lake levels, I suspect that they may have been underwater before the historically recent extraction of water from the eastern Sierra by Los Angeles.

If you are thinking of looking for an interesting and easy to shoot photographic subject, don’t bother with the sand tufa. You’ll probably have much better luck and more fun shooting the impressive and better known and larger “tower” features at other areas. These small structures do not tower above anything. Some are only inches tall, and the largest are just a few feet tall. Their natural color is a muted and, let’s be honest, boring gray color. Their location does not particularly allow them to be paired with more impressive and distant large-scale landscape features such as the expanse of the lake’s surface or the surrounding mountains and hills, with the possible exception of certain kinds of cloud formations. When I went there I had some pre-conceived ideas about I might photograph them, perhaps including the Sierra’s eastern escarpment in the images, but these ideas did not pan out. However, by shooting in the first few minutes of light and working with a long focal length to crop tightly I found some interesting fluted patterns to work with.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Morning, Tuolumne Meadows

Tuolumne River, Alpenglow

Sand Tufa, Mono Lake

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