Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Morning, Wildfire Smoke

December 1, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Wildfire smoke layer drift, above Mono Lake at sunrise

The subject of this photograph comes about as close to being insubstantial as possible. When I began photographing before dawn on this September morning, Mono Lake was still mostly visible, though a large cloud of wildfire smoke was gathering to the southeast and beginning to drift toward the lake. First, layers of smoke began to stretch individually across the lake as sunrise approached. As more of them arrived they began to completely obscure the more distant landscape and to mute the colors and details of objects that were even closer. If you look at this photograph for a moment you can begin to see what remains — a bit of a peninsula with some tufa formations along the right margin, and in the lower center and stretching toward the left some soft reflections of morning light on the surface of the lake.

For a moment when I first saw the smoke I was disappointed that it might interfere with my photography, but it only took a moment to realize that these were special and beautiful conditions not likely to occur that often. The smoke and the morning backlight rendered details almost invisible, only seen faintly through gaps in the smoke. The smoke itself, dividing into layers and taking on subtle colors from the morning back-light, filled the scene with nearly abstract shapes. But before long smoke filled in even more, and soon it was too opaque to photograph at all.

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

Photographs: Mono Lake Basin, Photographs: Nature

Wildfire Smoke, Morning Light

November 30, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light reflects on the surface of Mono Lake, partially obscured by drifting wildfire smoke

The night before I made this photograph I had driven back to my Lee Vining Canyon camp from a backcountry hike in the Tioga Pass area, leaving the park and descending the steep route after dark. As I crossed the upper end of Lee Vining Canyon, where there is a relatively clear view to the east, I saw the pall of smoke from a developing wildfire and the glow from the flames lighting it from below. Given California’s drought, the late point in the dry season, and the number of other fires in this area, I was quite concerned about what might be happening.

I got up well before dawn the next morning and as I headed down canyon toward Mono Lake there was just a bit of smoke in the air. As I came around the final bend before the junction with US 395, however, I could see that there was a very dark cloud to the southeast and that layers of smoke were starting to drift across the surface of Mono Lake in the pre-dawn light. My first though was a bit of disappointment that the smoke was likely to interfere with my photography plans, but this was quickly replaced by the realization that I was starting to see some very special and unusual conditions as the dawn approached. I found a high place and went to work photographing abstract and soft patterns composed of the reflecting surface of Mono Lake, the drifting smoke bands, and the partially obscured distant mountains.

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

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspens, Earth Shadow, Morning

November 29, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

On a cold and clear morning in mid-September earlier this year I left my camp in the Sierra and headed east, past Mono Lake and on out into the mountains east of the Sierra Nevada and east of US 395. I did not have a specific goal in mind, but I thought I would do a bit of early season aspen color reconnaissance in preparation for planned visits to photograph fall color a few weeks later. I gradually worked my way further out from the Sierra, stopping from time to time and poking around the ends of various gravel roads. Finally I found one that looked promising and took it.

I knew that I had previously seen aspens atop ridges in the general area of this road, and I had made a note to come back this way in the fall. I don’t typically expect to see much fall color by mid-September in the Sierra, but I soon found quite a bit of it — a whole mountain top was covered with small trees that were beginning to turn colors almost uniformly. I took a short spur road to an overlook and parked — from here there was an almost unobstructed view of a big section of the Sierra crest. It was cold enough to let me know that autumn wasn’t far away as I waited for the sun, beginning to photograph in that lovely predawn period of warm colors when the earth’s shadow can be seen in the darkened atmosphere just above the horizon.

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.

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

Clearing Storm, Pacific Coast

November 28, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

An autumn storm clears along the Northern California cost above Fort Bragg

On this November day, the light along the Pacific coast north of Fort Bragg, California was mostly spectacular and in a constant state of change. In rained, occasionally hard and more than once taking us by surprise, there was fog, the sun appeared, clouds were dark one moment and luminously bright the next.

We paused at this overlook, where the meeting of land and water is less steep. The nearly level coastal bluffs run along the water at the base of low coastal mountains, and the underwater slope is also apparently not very steep, judging from the distance from the shoreline that the waves begin to rise and break. The atmosphere was semi-opaque, filled with a combination of fog and light rain, and the glow of light on clouds was diffused and soft. To the west, sun broke through the clouds and lit the water brilliantly in patterns that curved toward the horizon. The waves broke against the seaward side of the huge sea stack — more of an island, really — that stood in front of us just off from the shoreline.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Morning, Wildfire Smoke

Aspens, Earth Shadow, Morning

Clearing Storm, Pacific Coast

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