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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.
One of a pair of photographs I made of this mid-day scene at one of the more popular photographic sites in the Valley. (The other is in landscape orientation.)
A photograph from a series I made during a recent pre-dawn visit to Glacier Point in early November. The light was, of course, beautiful. I can strongly recommend an autumn visit to this location and at this hour. While Glacier Point is frequently a very busy place, crawling with tourists, there were only four of us there on this morning – and we got to enjoy the rare and wonderful experience of quietly enjoying dawn over the Sierra from a truly astonishing vantage point.
(A few practical issues: Check before going there this time of year; it won’t be long before winter snowfall closes the road to Glacier Point to all but hardy cross-country skiers. And, if you do go, dress warmly!)
Spending a lot of time in the forests of the Sierra Nevada and elsewhere, my point of view regarding wildfires has changed since I was younger. Leaving aside for a moment the possible human cost when a fire overruns homes and other structures, wildfires are a normal part of the forest ecology, and suppressing them has actually caused a number of problems. Once I started to think of wild fires as something part of the natural process and not as disasters I became interested in how I might photograph forests that had been burned.
For the most part I’ve been unsuccessful in creating such images, but I like this one. Many of my previous attempts have focused on the image of forests of burned tree trunks, sometimes with new growth starting below, or on the hillsides laid bare by fire, or on the new growth itself. This is a more intimate view of a fire zone than I’ve tried before – and I feel like it works even more in the larger versions of the image that are not posted here.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
Manage Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
