Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Southern California, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Bearpaw Camp

September 15, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Main tent at Bearpaw Camp, Bearpaw Meadow along the High Sierra Trail through Sequoia National Park.

I photographed the main tent (also known as the dining hall) at Bearpaw Camp back in 2008 while hiking the High Sierra Trail across the Sierra from west to east and culminating at Mount Whitney. This was the second time that I hiked this wonderful trail, having previously hiked it several decades earlier with my wife. On this second trip I was traveling with my “back-country friends,” a somewhat informally organized group known as the “talusdancers.” It is a long story…

A photograph of one of these old camps, much like the high sierra camps of Yosemite, always seems to recall images of the “old-time” Sierra for me. One of my first experiences in the high country of the Sierra involved a similar, though less isolated, seasonal tent camp in Yosemite – the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge. My dad had finally summoned up the courage to take his two oldest kids – that would be me and my younger brother, Richard – on what we thought might be a backpacking trip out of Tuolumne. As I recall (though the memory is now a bit hazy) it was September, and we were surprised by snow and cold. Somehow we ended up in one of the tents at the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge, keeping warm by using the little wood stove in the tent, and eating in the dining hall.

As I got older my interests turned to backpacking (and eventually cross-country skiing, some winter camping, and even a bit of rock climbing) and I regarded these camps, even those in the back-country, as being sissy-fied versions of the real thing. But at the same time, I began to develop an appreciation for the back-country history that they connect to in a real and physical way, and also through some of the employees who have worked these places for years or even decades.

In any case, on this August morning my friends and I broke camp a bit to the west of Bearpaw meadow and started hiking. When we got here, even though we are all confirmed back-country types, we couldn’t resist stopping at the main tent and having a look around. The woman inside invited us in. Two of my friends were astonished to find a place like this on the trail that they decided to sit down and order glasses of wine (at the mid-morning hour!) just because they could.

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Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Mono Lake, Thunderstorm

September 14, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Eastern Sierra Nevada thunderstorms build over Mono Lake, Mono Craters, and Lee Vining, California.

Mono Lake can be an unforgiving place in which to try to make photographs during the day, but sometimes one gets lucky! It is a wonderful place, but if you only know it from photographs – which, of course, tend to be made at the most appealing times – you might not know that it is often hot and hazy and dry during the day. These are among the reasons that it is a place often photographed at dawn or at sunset on days when the clouds are interesting. (The latter poses its own set of problems, since the Sierra Nevada range begins to block the light well before actual sunset.)

But I did get lucky on this late July afternoon. It was thunderstorm weather, so there were some very impressive clouds floating around. However, the clouds did not completely fill the sky, so patches of light were moving across the landscape – in this photograph one illuminates the green area at far right along the shore and, more importantly, the Mono Craters beyond the far shore of the lake. And the vegetation around the lake was still green, or at least green enough to look alive in this light.

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Events, Locations, Sierra Nevada Fall Color

Searching for Aspen Color in the Eastern Sierra Nevada – The Show Starts Soon!

September 13, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

At about this time each year my thoughts turn to the phenomenal aspen color in the eastern Sierra. I seek out and photograph these trees every fall. I shared some hints in a couple of blog articles from recent seasons – links below:

Each season is unique – starting at different times and developing in various ways that seem to depend upon how the previous winter-summer weather evolved, elevation, north/south position with the range, and other imponderables that seem beyond prediction.

While many signs of the seasonal change are already visible, the real show typically begins at the very end of September in a few places and really gets going around the beginning of October. I tend to regard the first half of the month as being “prime time” for eastern Sierra aspen color, though the season can end earlier if the weather blows down a lot of leaves or a cold snap turns them brown, or it can last longer for those who follow the color transition all the way down into Owens Valley and other low areas. (Note: While there are some colorful trees west of the Sierra crest, they are not nearly as numerous or accessible as those on the east side.)

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Pacific Northwest, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

Bridge, Olympic Sculpture Park

September 13, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A bridge crosses railroad tracks at the Olympic Sculpture Park, Washington.

Back in 2008 I travelled to Seattle on mostly family business. I arrived a bit early and ended up spending some time wandering around the Olympic Sculpture Park, a place I enjoy both for the art and for the architecture and other features of this public space.

The bridge across the railroad tracks had interested me previously, but I’ve found it a difficult subject to photograph – somewhat surprisingly, since it seems to me like such an obvious thing to photograph. So in this image I more or less obscured most of the bridge itself, leaving not much more than the white vertical supports along its exterior and its overall shape and mass. I thought that the relationships between the texture of the metal bridge and the concrete underneath was interesting, as were some of the relationships between various shapes and angles. As I have done in a few other recent photographs, I played around with “pure” color and black and white renditions of the image – in the end deciding to sort of split the difference, thinking that a somewhat de-saturated color image might be most in line with my memory of the place and the scene on that winter day.

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