Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Photographs from Northern California

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

Tuolumne River Canyon Below Glen Aulin

November 22, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

The Tuolumne River enters Tuolumne River Canyon below the Glen Aulin High Sierra Camp.

This photograph looks west from a rocky point along the Tuolumne River just below Glen Aulin in the Yosemite National Park back-country. In September I spent a total of four nights in this specific area and photographed in and around the granite bowl that rises from the river near the foreground rocks and spreads to the right of the area shown here. The photograph was made very late in the afternoon – it had been raining when I arrived at Glen Aulin but, as often happens in the Sierra, the clouds dissipated later in the day and the skies were starting to clear before sunset.

While my favorite Sierra landscape is at the elevations where the last small trees give way to alpine tundra meadows and the rocky slopes of the highest peaks, there is also something very compelling about these lower (from my point of view) elevation areas, and especially about this particular spot along the Tuolumne. Looking west from this point along the river I had the distinct feeling that I was standing more or less on a boundary between the higher and more alpine zones (exemplified by the Tuolumne Meadows area) and the beginnings of the lower areas in which I feel like I’m heading towards the Central Valley. Here, all of the really tall peaks are behind me (OK, some are to my right…) and before me the land overall drops towards the Valley, the slightly hazy light and air of which is in the far distance in this photograph.

Making this feeling even stronger for me is the fact that very close to Glen Aulin, the Tuolumne abruptly changes from a generally meandering river that descends very gradually for the most part past large meadows and forests to one that drops precipitously into an increasingly narrow and steep canyon surrounded by granite slabs and domes and peaks that begin to take on an appearance that reminds me of Yosemite Valley.

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

Trees and Granite Bowl

November 21, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A variety of trees grow on a shallow layer of sandy soil in the middle of a large granite bowl, Yosemite National Park.

While the small, stunted and contorted trees that grow in impossibly small and barren cracks in the granite are amazing examples of how life can thrive with minimal support and against all odds, in some ways these groves of larger trees are at least as surprising. This group includes some very large and old specimens, yet they are growing in what cannot be much more than a foot or so of sandy soil washed down the surface of this glaciated granite slab – which elsewhere within its area supports nothing this extensive. In what must be the lowest part of the descending surface of the bowl, where perhaps more moisture is found and more sand and gravel transported, this “soil” – largely sand mixed with rocks and boulders – has collected and somehow these trees have managed to put down roots that allow them to grow and fill out a small grove.

I made the photograph in the very late afternoon as the sun was heading toward real evening light. The light is coming in at a low angle from the left and is just beginning to take on the warm coloration of evening. Because it was partly cloudy, I waited until the shadow from a thin cloud muted the light on the granite surface of the bowl in the background.

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

Granite Slab After Rain

November 20, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Details of a section of glaciated granite slab following an afternoon rain storm, Yosemite National Park.

Yet another photograph of rock today as I continue to mine the vein (yeah, awful pun) of these photographs from a glaciated granite area along the Tuolumne River made during my mid-September week-long photography-focused backpack trip.

Since it may not be apparent in the jpg, let me try to explain a little bit about this photograph. It had been raining lightly in the afternoon, and as evening (the “good light hours!”) approached the rain began to let up but things were still very wet and the clouds had not completely dissipated. We walked to a nearby granite bowl full of interesting photographic subjects, among them the beautifully red stained rock that is somewhat unusual in this granitic area of the Yosemite high country. The colors were brought out more clearly by the moisture left on the rocks by the rain. In this photograph I looked for an interesting bit of the rock and simply pointed the camera straight down to capture a “scene” that includes exfoliated layers of rock near a joint in the slab and bits and pieces of “small stuff” that typically ends up in these places: some moss growing in the wet cracks, a few rocks in other colors, twigs, dry pine needles, and the endless variations in the texture and coloration of the stained rock.

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

Stones, Stained Granite

November 19, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Granite stones rest on glaciated slab of stained granite near the Tuolumne River, Yosemite National Park.

Scared you, didn’t I? Thought I was going to miss posting a daily photograph, right? Yeah, both of you… ;-)

In any case, I may have mentioned previously that I’m a sucker for Sierra granite, especially the glaciated kind that is found almost everywhere you go in Yosemite National Park, from the Valley to areas surrounding the very highest peaks. (Some of the highest peaks escaped the glaciation themselves, but that’s a longer story for another time.) For me, some combination of glaciated granite slabs, a few “erratic” boulders (“erratics” being boulders moved from their source and left behind by retreating glaciers), some trees, and a bit of meadow grass, perhaps with a stream or lake nearby shouts “Sierra Nevada.”

This photograph does not include all of these Sierra ingredients but it does include the granite. I photographed this small bit of granite slab along a section of the Tuolumne River than runs through the back-country during a week-long backpack trip this past September. Something about the arrangement and color of the four larger stones against the water-stained underlying rock with its complex textures interested me. A lot of what is in the frame may not be visible in the small jpg version posted here, but there is a lot of detail in the frame: the texture or rock, crystal structures on some of the stones, several smaller pebbles, even a bit of dried pine needle.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Category Archives: Photographs: Northern California

Tuolumne River Canyon Below Glen Aulin

Trees and Granite Bowl

Granite Slab After Rain

Stones, Stained Granite

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