Lake, Peaks, Morning Light. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early morning light reflected in the water of an alpine Sierra Nevada backcountry lake.

Yes, I am still mining the vein of photography from that week-long Sierra backcountry trip with a fine group of fellow artists — the “first light gang” and a few other good folks who joined us on this year’s adventure. We spent a week in a beautiful 11,000′ subalpine valley, a place filled with meadows, rocks, and water; and surrounded by high peak and lots of beautiful, rocky lakes. The peak in this photograph dominated the view from our camp, and it figures in much of the work we brought back from the trip.

A relatively short distance above our camp, just up a hill and on the other side of a low saddle, there was a rockbound subalpine lake whose shoreline ran up against the base of this peak. I’m pretty sure that we all made multiple trips up there, often in the very early morning, hoping to work with the first light of the day. On this occasion I arrived before the sunrise light touched the peaks, and I then continued to photograph as it worked its way down the rocky terrain.

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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Treeline Landscape. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Glaciated slabs, meadows, stunted trees and higher peaks near treeline in the Sierra Nevada.

A recent post from Scot Miller, one of the photographers on this backcountry photographic excursion, reminded me that I still had at least one more photograph of my own from this summer 2019 trip into the John Muir Wilderness. This scene was steps from my campsite for a week in this 11,000′ valley, a week during which we had a chance to thoroughly explore and photograph the area.

When I go through my photographs following such a trip there is an almost inevitable cycle to how I work with the photographs. Often I come back with a few specific images that I recall making and looking forward to post-processing… and I typically work these up first. Then I go back through the work and “discover” additional images that I might have paid less attention to but which immediately catch my attention. Eventually I continue to work through the archive and I begin to find more subtle photographs that I like for a range of reasons. This one, to me, has a kind of quiet quality that I like, in part because it suggests the stillness of these locations, but also because it conveys, I think, the contrast between the intimate, such as that nearby tree, and the immense, such as that distant eastern escarpment cliff face.

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.

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

Before Dawn. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Soft pre-dawn light on a Sierra Nevada landscape of peaks, granite, and water.

Truth be told, this was actually more “right at dawn” than “before dawn,” but given the light that comes to this spot a bit later — and the fact that I had been up and out there for a while already — it had a before-dawn feelings. So I’ll leave the title as is! The camera position was less than a minute’s walk from my campsite in this 11,000′ Eastern Sierra backcountry valley where we spent a week at the end of August and during the first couple of days of September. This late season period is always my favorite in the Sierra high country — a sort of last breath of summer with plenty of hints of the autumn transition that is on its way.

These very early mornings have a “two-edged sword” quality about them. Objectively speaking, it is almost always a bit of a challenge to persuade myself to unzip my sleeping bag in pre-dawn darkness and cold to start the process of suiting up, collecting equipment, emerging from the tent, and heading out to be ready for the early light. Subjectively speaking, once you do it the results are virtually always well worth it — for the photographs, of course, but also for the quiet beauty of these first moments of the new day.

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.