Seen today at Flak Photo:
Untitled (Concave Glass Window), 1970s – from the series Camouflage. Lynne Cohen / HASTED HUNT Gallery, New York.
Tourists, Wawona Tunnel Parking Lot
Tourists, Wawona Tunnel Parking Lot. Yosemite National Park, California. November 3, 2007. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell
After visiting the Wawona Tunnel viewpoint for decades – spring, summer, fall, and winter – I’ve become interested in what the visitors do when they arrive here.
Barn, Foresta
Barn, Foresta. Yosemite National Park, California. November 3, 2007. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell
As you drive down toward Yosemite Valley from the northern highway 120 entrance you can see the small village of Foresta below and to your right. Once it was surrounded by forest, and it will be again some day – but now the area is quite bare following a very intense forest fire there a few years ago. I’ve been intrigued by this barn for some time, and I’ve stopped more than once to photograph it.
How Fast Can the Light Change?
Lighting can change a lot at different times of the day, but sometimes it can change so quickly and so radically that it is almost unbelievable.
In July of 2006 I was in Tuolumne Meadows shooting the sunset from the west end of the meadow. Among the photographs I took that evening were the following two – shot from about the same spot within a five minute span:
Lembert Dome Alpenglow, Tuolumne Meadows. Yosemite National Park. July 23, 2006. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell.
Tuolumne Meadows Alpenglow. Yosemite National Park. July 23, 2006. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell.
What happened on this evening was a phenomenon that I’ve seen more than once in the Sierra at sunset. On a partly cloudy evening the sun drops towards the horizon and as the sun passes behind the clouds and the color fades you begin to suspect that it will be a mediocre sunset. But then the sun drops to very near the horizon and its light turns red and shines upwards at the bottoms of the clouds to the west and overhead – and the most unimaginable wash of color appears for a few short minutes… and then is gone.
That’s OK, I didn’t believe these colors either and I was standing (crouching, actually) right there as it happened… :-)
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.
G Dan Mitchell: Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email
All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.