I think I may have been there when the “alien life”* arrived at Mono Lake… ;-)
* Just kidding, of course, but given the recent stories about “alien life” (or, more correctly, some very strange terrestrial life) this cloud came to mind. The original post is here.
G Dan Mitchell Photography
Flickr | Twitter | Facebook Fan Page | Facebook | Friendfeed | Email
Upper Yosemite Fall and Lost Arrow, Autumn Storm Clouds. Yosemite Valley, California. October 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Autumn storm clouds swirl around the Upper Yosemite Fall, Lost Arrow, and the cliffs of Yosemite Valley.
Shooting with a long lens, I watched as the clouds floated in and out of this scene, at times almost completely obscuring Upper Yosemite Fall and then clearing. At this instant the clouds cooperated for a few seconds, lining up so that the fall was completely visibly, parting enough to let the pinnacle of the Lost Arrow appear at upper left, and revealing just a bit of the tree covered ridge in the background. A few seconds later the clouds again thickened and this view was gone.
I posted a black and white version of the same photograph perhaps two weeks ago. I have since printed the monochrome version and I like it a great deal. Today I returned to these files and since I feel that it also works in color I decided to post it again.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
G Dan Mitchell Photography
Flickr | Twitter | Facebook Fan Page | Facebook | Friendfeed | Email
Meadow Grasses, Autumn Rain. Yosemite Valley, California. October 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Meadow grasses made shiny by autumn rain, Yosemite Valley, California.
This fall I have been “playing around” with photographs of very dense and detailed vegetation. (Two other recent related photographs include one of aspen leaves and one of creek dogwood.) This is a difficult thing, especially with a subject whose colors seem somewhat muted, but if it works the largish prints can work both by revealing some form that might be difficult to see in all the detail and by presenting the detail itself. (As much as many of us rightfully point out that sharpness is not everything, sometimes it is pretty important!)
I noticed the subject of this photograph while shooting something quite different. I was standing in a meadow near Curry Village in light rain and using a very long lens to photograph mist and clouds drifting among trees and spires high on the Yosemite Valley rim when I happened to look down at my feet. (Always a good idea to look at the other stuff when shooting a specific subject that you came for.) I noticed the shapes of the grasses and the mixture of greens and browns with the “cool” light from the cloudy conditions. Since I couldn’t shoot this subject with the lens I was using at the moment, I went back to the other subject and made a mental note to switch lens and pay some attention to the grasses when I finished.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
G Dan Mitchell Photography
Flickr | Twitter | Facebook Fan Page | Facebook | Friendfeed | Email
Fog and Trees, Yosemite Valley. Yosemite National Park, California. October 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Forest trees are almost completely obscured by evening fog in Yosemite Valley.
If you have been watching some of my recently posted photographs, you have perhaps figured out that I’m working on a series of photographs in which mist and fog and clouds obscure to a greater or lesser extent some underlying elements of the landscape. (If you haven’t been watching my recent posts… you can still be my friend! ;-) In a few of them I am seeing how far I can take this and still have an interesting photograph. This one marks a further step along that path in that at least half of the scene has little or no detail, being almost completely obscured by drifting fog, and even in the areas where trees are still visible the details are very muted.
I’m thinking about just how little detail I can retain in the scene and still retain a sense of form. And this isn’t the most extreme in the series at all. I’m working on another one which retains less “solid” detail than this one. (It may be that it works as a print but perhaps not as a web jpg, in which case I may not post it here – we’ll see.)
The photograph was made at – icon alert! – Wawona Tunnel View above Yosemite Valley on an evening when I had little interest in shooting the classic view of the Valley itself, but had instead gone there because I was almost certain that fog would form among the trees on the Valley floor as the temperature dropped following a rainy day. If anyone had noticed me shooting on that evening among the line-up of dozens of photographers, they might have been perplexed as to why I was aiming a very large lens down when the famous view was obviously straight ahead! ;-)
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
G Dan Mitchell Photography
Flickr | Twitter | Facebook Fan Page | Facebook | Friendfeed | Email