Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

First Light, Sierra High Country

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First Light, Sierra High Country
First light touches Sierra Nevada peaks and reflects in the surface of an alpine lake.

First Light, Sierra High Country. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

First light touches Sierra Nevada peaks and reflects in the surface of an alpine lake.

The photography, of course, is the main excuse for our trips to places like these. We go to some lengths to put ourselves in locations like this for days or longer — lots of advanced planning, solid backcountry travel to get there, and then a week or more of living in tents. But the advantages are many. Obviously the “scenery” is often right outside our tent doors, and when great light happens we are essentially right there. Because we are there for a significant period for time we can more carefully and completely explore our surroundings, finding hidden gems, figuring out best times for various subjects, and returning to them as necessary. We also have the time to slow into the natural backcountry rhythms, where it seems that we have much more time to do all of the important things — photography, of course, but also sitting a looking or having a look discussion with colleagues/friends.

This view was literally steps from my tend, set on what seemed almost like a large peninsula nestled within the curve of the lake. After our first sunrise here it became apparent that the intensely colorful first light would be a fleeting subject. Due to the surrounding geography, this first color would initially spread across the summit of this ridge… but then quickly lose its color. This was a quiet morning, with little wind, so I decided it was time to stake out a camera location and photograph the first light reflected in the lake.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Photographs: San Francisco, Photographs: Urban/Street

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Weathered and cracked numbers painted on the wall of an old San Francisco hotel

50. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Weathered and cracked numbers painted on the wall of an old San Francisco hotel.

Photographs like this one have, at least for me, several purposes or rationales. To some extent, walking into a regular city environment and looking for little visual odds and ends is an important exercise in visual awareness. It is so easy to walk through such places and not pay a lot of attention, and when you do so while searching for images you see things that you’d otherwise miss. It is also interesting, I think, to “excerpt” small things from their larger context. (This bit of signage, is small enough that you might barely notice it if you took in the whole building at once.) With this one there is also a bit of that odd characteristic of some photographs, where their age — or the age of the subject — becomes somewhat interesting on its own.

So, what is it? It is a bit of a hand-painted street number sign on a very old (and somewhat iconic) building on a street in San Francisco that I often walk on these street photography visits. What else is it? It is color and form, abstracted to some extent from its original context. But not entirely abstracted, since if you look closely you might notice the extremely weathered and cracked paint and you might wonder about the history of this little bit of a sign, especially in an era when one-of-a-kind hand-painted signage is increasingly replaced by industrial signage.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Ocean & Coast

Near Point Sur

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Near Point Sur
Morning fog clears above a long beach and coastal bluffs near the mouth of the Little Sur River and Point Sur

Near Point Sur. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning fog clears above a long beach and coastal bluffs near the mouth of the Little Sur River and Point Sur.

The summer/fall seasonal boundary is not necessarily my favorite time to visit the California coast, but sometimes I get lucky! Although it may seem counter-intuitive to folks who aren’t familiar with this region, the beginning of autumn is generally the sunniest and warmest time of the year on the coast. And while that may seem like great news to people who go to the coast to visit beaches — and who want warmth! — as a photographer I prefer more “interesting” conditions: large surf, clouds, incoming and departing storms, or at least some fog!

The weather report wasn’t promising on this day — it looking like the coast would (literally) be “clear.” But since I had the morning free I headed towards the area south of Monterey anyway. The first hint that the weather reports might be wrong in a delightful way came halfway there when I entered thick inland fog that clearly had come from the coast. Monterey Bay was largely socked in, and below Carmel the fog was still reaching up into coastal hills. As I approached this familiar bay, where the Little Sur River reaches the ocean just above Point Sur, the fog was intermittently thinning and rebuilding, so I stopped in a high location and waited for the right conditions to emerge.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Timberline Lake, Soft Light

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Timberline Lake, Soft Light
Quiet morning light at a Sierra Nevada timberline lake.

Timberline Lake, Soft Light. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

An alpine stream descends through a boulder-strewn, meadow-filled Sierra Nevada valley.

I photographed this scene in what a colleague refers to as “the quiet light” — the soft light in shade, found here during the daytime but also found before sunrise and after sunset. This lights is not as striking as the more dramatically colored light of sunrise and sunset, but it has a special peaceful quality.

The lake wrapped around our basecamp, with nearby streams flowing into and out of it. The rocky shoreline on the far bank is backed by tiny bits of meadow, some trees, and a series of rocky benches rising to a low, glaciated ridge. Beyond that — and not visible from here — is an alpine lake. And above that rocky talus slopes rise toward the base of the highest peaks, in a world of rock.

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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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