Lake, Mountains, Evening Light. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening light over a small alpine lake and tall mountains deep in the Sierra Nevada backcountry, Sequoia National Park.

This photograph takes me way back, almost a decade ago, to a long Southern Sierra pack trip with a great group of fiends. We came in over a high Sierra crest pass, then a couple of days later crossed an even higher pass (that doesn’t cross the crest), and dropped into some of my favorite Sierra Nevada backcountry in a place where we walked for miles through broken and rocky terrain before finally descending to the first trees we had seen since early that morning. We camped, and the next day we headed further into the backcountry, to an area where far fewer backpackers are found.

I made this photograph in a truly magical place where we camped that night. It was one of the few spots I’ve been to in the range where I could almost imagine that I was camping in a spot that no one had previously visited. (I know better, but it was isolated enough to feel that way.) We saw no one other than the members of our own little group fo three that day, that night, and into the next morning. This evening photograph looks across a small alpine lake toward a towering and rugged range that is not, despite its appearance, the Sierra crest.

---

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.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

---

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

Intertwined Trunks. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Tightly laced tree trunks, Southern Sierra Nevada.

This photograph took some time to arrive in this form. Originally there were two versions of the subject — one was a vertical format version in black and white while the other was a horizontal format color renditions. (If you look around on my website you should be able to find both of those.) I always liked the abstract flow of the portrait-orientation black and white photograph, but I also liked the unusual coloration in the landscape-orientation color versions. And — duh! — it only took me several years to decide that what I really wanted to do was combine that flow and those colors in this version! Sometimes it is not obvious, at least not to me, how I will ultimately “see” a photograph until quite some time after I push the shutter release button.

The photograph explores something that has long intrigued me about high country trees in the Sierra Nevada. While they are, obviously, living things, they live on time scales that are much longer than we know. Even these “stunted” (to use the common description) high elevations trees, despite their relatively small size, are often many hundreds of years old. As such, they seem to me to occupy an intermediate state between our shorter frame of reference of “living” and the much longer time scale of geology. In some cases the trees take on a character that almost seems closer to that of rock. The colors in the photograph may also warrant some explanation, since they may seem unusual for trees. In typical light, these trees would mostly appear to be a combination of grays and browns, but I these trunks were in deep shade and illuminate by late-day light spilling in from the very blue sky.

---

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.

---

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