Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Red Maple Trees, Autumn

November 26, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Autumn red maple trees growing against a sandstone cliff, Zion National Park

Sometimes I just have to make a photograph that is full of color, and finding these trees constituted one of those “sometimes.” During the latter part of October we passed through Zion on our way to points east, so we spent most of a day along the Mount Carmel Highway looking for various subjects that can be found there in a fall. Among them, we were looking for autumn foliage. (The color comes to this high country area of Zion while things are still mostly green back down in Zion Canyon.) At this point some cottonwood and box elder trees were changing, though there was a lot of green still around. However, the red maples, which seem to change first, were at peak color conditions in many spots.

As we drove along the park road, we were more or less hanging out the windows, looking for those combinations of light (quality and angle), color (or trees and rocks), and geology that might make good photographs. Most often we found ourselves looking down into narrow canyons where colorful trees lined the banks of the stream beds. Sometimes we photographed from above, but the most productive shooting involved hiking down into these canyons and then slowly walking them while looking intently for subjects. Of course, the red maples don’t require a lot of careful looking! This group of trees was in a shady curve in the bottom of a canyon, so I found a frame-filling bunch of branches and leaves and made a few exposures.

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Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Canyon Reflections, Utah

November 25, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Reflections in the surface of a slot canyon stream, Utah

Among photographers that I know, finding ways to photograph the surface of flowing river and creek water is almost a bit of a game or even an obsession. There is something very appealing about either stopping the motion of the water, or about using longer shutter speeds to let the water blur, revealing the smooth patterns of flowing water and the interesting colorations that we can otherwise easily overlook. People I know seem to have developed their own little idiosyncratic tricks for working with this subject – special shutter speeds, an eye for particular types of reflections, and so forth.

The Utah canyons are a prime place to look for interesting reflection patterns, at least in those canyons in which the water is flowing. This narrow desert canyon contained a small, burbling steam – just enough water to be interesting and dampen boots and pants legs, but not so much as to impede progress up the canyon or make shooting difficult. The trick is to look beyond the apparent surface of the water and instead learn to look for and see the reflections instead. Part of this is looking for interesting flow and ripple patterns, such as the bit of faster moving water moving diagonally across the frame in this image. Another part is to anticipate and then find sources of reflected colored light. This photograph includes several: blue from overhead sky visible above the center of the canyon, purple and burgundy from shaded cliff faces, intense orange reflected from sunlit sandstone, and bright yellow-green from cottonwood and box elder trees.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Aspen Covered Hills

November 24, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Aspens, some golden and some bare, cover high elevation slopes near Brian Head, Utah

The distant trees are likely along the border of Cedar Breaks National Monument, although the foreground trees are outside of the monument and actually along the boundary of Brian Head, Utah. While exploring some gravel roads the day before I had driven up a side road that turned out to be the route to the 11,000+” summit of Brian Head Peak. While I was up there taking in the 360-degree panorama, I had looked down to get a different perspective on the area along the ridge above Brian Head and, for the first time, I saw whole hillsides covered with aspens that I had not been able to see from the main roads through town. After descending from the mountain I figured out how to get to this aspen area and I ended up shooting there a couple of times over the next two days.

The shooting position was a very short walk from my car after I drove a short dirt side-road. From here there were open views to the west where large aspen groves seemed to trail off into the distance, beginning with groves that were very close by. Looking down from this high spot, I had an interesting perspective on the lower forests, a mixture of coniferous trees and very tall and straight aspens that seemed to be the tallest trees. I had not seen a forest like this before, where the two types of trees were so intermixed. By this time most of the aspens at this elevation had lost their leaves, revealing their skeletal vertical trunks among the other trees, though there were a few spots of color remaining here and there.

Deals and Sales

Black Friday Through Cyber Monday Deals at B&H

November 23, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

I have just updated the Deals Page to include direct links to products featured the Black Friday through Cyber Monday sale at site-sponsor B&H. These prices are valid between now and this coming Monday. Included are:

Four-Thirds cameras
Nikon, Canon, Sony, Olympus DSLRs/lenses
Various small format cameras (e.g. – Canon G12 at $299, etc.)
Bags
Tripods
Lighting
Printers
Memory
More…

See the Deals Page for more information and direct links. (Also, here is a direct link to B&H Black Friday deals.)

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Red Maple Trees, Autumn

Canyon Reflections, Utah

Aspen Covered Hills

Black Friday Through Cyber Monday Deals at B&H

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