Tag Archives: after

Photographs: Urban/Street

Morning After

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Morning After
Sad pumpkin, the day after Halloween.

Morning After. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Sad pumpkin, the day after Halloween.

And you thought we’d get through this season without me sharing a pumpkin picture. No such luck! A couple of weeks ago someone suggested making photographs of orange things. Pumpkins seemed kind of too obvious, but in the end I could not entirely resist. Mostly I kept my eyes open for anything that was orange — signs, paint, vehicles, lights — but somehow these gourds kept jumping into the frame. (If you have never tried it, going out and constraining your photography to a color or a shape or something similar is a great exercise.) One thing I learned from the process is that “orange” is much more nebulous concept than I had thought — the “edges” of this color bleed over into red, yellow, and brown.

This sad fellow was sitting at the edge of a driveway in a pile of leaves on the morning after Halloween. The expression seemed like the ultimate “meh” look to me. Finally, in case you are wondering… yes, there is still one more pumpkin photograph to come. I know you are thrilled!

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

A Forest After Fire

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A Forest After Fire
A dark forest, several years after a managed fire.

A Forest After Fire. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A dark forest, several years after a managed fire.

For obvious reasons, wildfire has been on my mind a lot during the past few weeks. Back in August a spectacular and extremely unusual series of electrical storms rolled across the San Francisco Bay Area, touching off scores of small fires that soon merged into three very large and very destructive infernos. Since that time we’ve lived in a pall of smoke around here. I briefly escaped — or so I thought — to the Eastern Sierra, with plans for a short pack trip… the weekend that the huge Creek Fire started south of Yosemite. Since that time the entire west coast has been afflicted by historically awful fires.

I’m familiar with wildfires in California, for one reason from years of late-summer and early-autumn backpacking. Some smoke is common at this time of year, most often continuing on into the very beginning of October when the first rains often arrive. Long ago I reconciled myself — after years of Smoky the Bear exposure — to the idea that some fire is a natural and beneficial part of the natural environment. But it has been harder to find photographic beauty in fire-scarred landscapes. This scene merges those two notions. This forest had been burned in a management fire a year or two earlier, scorching the lower trunks of these trees and consuming some excess litter. But when I made the photograph the forest was again looking quite healthy, albeit with visible signs of the fire remaining.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Forest, After Snow

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Forest, After Snow
Densely intertwining forest trees after a Yosemite Valley snow storm

Forest, After Snow. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Densely intertwining forest trees after a Yosemite Valley snow storm

My previous day in Yosemite Valley had drawn to a close as snow showers dropped a few inches of snow. A blustery and cold little weather front had arrived, bringing showers — the sort of weather than gives you a few minutes of impressive snowfall, followed moments later by the light breaking through. On my way out of the Valley — I was staying up at Wawona — I had stopped to photograph it before starting that snowy drive back to my cabin.

I suspected that the weather would clear the next morning and that bright light and new-fallen snow could turn out to be my subject. My first thought had been to head for Tunnel View, not usually my first choice for Yosemite Valley photography at this point, but potentially very beautiful in these conditions. But when I arrived there the completely clear skies produced a rather mundane sort of scene, at least by comparison to what I had hoped for. (I know… that view is never actually “mundane,” but I’m more likely to photograph it when something really special happens these days.) But further down in the Valley I passed an area of skeletal trees, mostly without leaves or needles, that still held snow and was back-lit. The location was about as non-iconic as you can find in the Valley, but I stopped and wandered off into this forest scene to photograph the patters of branches, trunks, and snow.

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Dogwood Leaves, Spring

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Dogwood Leaves, Spring - New spring dogwood leaves after morning rain along Crane Flat Road, Yosemite National Park.
New spring dogwood leaves after morning rain along Crane Flat Road, Yosemite National Park.

Dogwood Leaves, Spring. Yosemite National Park, California. June 7, 2009. © Copyright 2009 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

New spring dogwood leaves after morning rain along Crane Flat Road, Yosemite National Park.

There is a grove of dogwood trees along highway 120 into Yosemite, between the park entrance and the valley, where I stop several times each seasons. Most recently I stopped there on a quiet autumn evening this past October when the dogwood leaves were turning fall colors. Much earlier in the season I stop to see and photograph the dogwood flowers. I made this photograph several years ago on my first visit to the grove that season, on a rainy morning when the leaves had emerged and the flowers were in bloom.

While the flowers were the main reason I visited the grove on this morning, it turned out that the flower photographs were less interesting, in some ways, than the photographs I made of the leaves of the dogwood trees and of other newly sprouted plants. Not only where the plants young and fresh and green, but the soft light and the drops of water from the light rain intensified the colors and made the light less harsh.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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