Tag Archives: alpine

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

Sunset, Lower McCabe Lake, Shepherds Crest, and Virginia Canyon

October 5, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 4 Comments

Afternoon storm clouds clear from the sunset sky above Lower McCabe Lake, Shepherds Crest, and Virginia Canyon, Yosemite National Park.

With this photograph I get to tell another of the “serendipitous photograph” stories that seem to keep coming up in my work. In this case, we had been camped near the lake in the lower area of the photograph for several days, getting to know the place and having time to carefully photograph various areas nearby. On a previous evening we had climbed to a second lake a few hundred feet higher than the “main” lake, from which one of our group decided to traverse a nearby slope. He ended up at another alpine lake that looked interesting, and the next morning others went with him to visit it. I didn’t, because I had some other things that I wanted to photograph in morning light and because I had a hunch that the light might turn out to be more interesting in the evening, mainly because the area of the lake was open to the west and, therefore, the evening light.

So in the evening, after our typical very early dinner, I departed on a walk to the upper lake that my friends had visited that morning, wandering around “our” lake and through the surrounding forest to pick up a rocky ramp that ascended toward the lake. However, I apparently missed a turn somewhere. I finished the main part of the climb and apparently should have turned left immediately – but I continued on straight ahead and soon found myself in a little meadowy area with a rather steep bunch of rocks between me and my goal. I finally found a circuitous route up a series of ramps, but now it was getting too close to sunset and my turn-around time, so I had to retrace my steps without getting to the lake.

I returned to the small meadow and made a few photographs there, then headed back toward the route by which I had ascended. Despite not making the lake, one of my main goals had been to get up high to photograph the surrounding terrain at sunset, especially since earlier in the day large thunderclouds had been building to the east and creating the possibility of some very special evening light. As I descended the upper part of the “ramp,” the pre-sunset colors started to light up and I quickly found a spot with a good vantage point to view this in several directions. Among the last photographs I made as the light started to fade was the series including this image. (It is actually a composite of two exposures – one for the very bright and saturated clouds and another for the darker shadows down near that lake.) Beyond the lake is the left end of rocky Shepherds Crest and even further in the distance is Virginia Canyon and then the Sierra crest.

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

Sheep Peak, McCabe Lakes Basin, Sunset

October 1, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The last light of the day touches the top of Sheep Peak in the McCabe Lakes Basin, Yosemite National Park.

This was a beautiful and fun evening! We were camped at the lower lake in this basin for a few days. The routine, roughly speaking goes something like this: Up before dawn and off to photograph some morning subject until the light goes or the energy wears down; back to camp for breakfast; do camp chores and generally hang out and shoot the breeze into the afternoon; dinner sometime around 3:00 or 4:00; then off to whatever locations is on the agenda for the evening shoot; back to camp after dark. On this evening we all were on the same page and we all headed up to this lake, a few hundred feet higher and no more than a mile from our camp.

The walk was steep but mostly pleasant, at least as long as one went relatively slowly and stayed out of the creek with its willow thickets and instead found a route through the forest nearby. Eventually the route – there is no trail – began to level out at a meadowy area below the lake. This was gave a false sense that the climb was over, but at least the walk up the meadow was very enjoyable, as the small outlet stream twisted through grassy meadow and past the occasional boulder and some trees, with the higher peaks visible above. At the upper end of this meadow was the lake’s basin, with a tall peak on top of the headwall at the upper end, forest beyond the shoreline meadows to the left, and rugged talus slopes and rocky peaks along the right shoreline.

Here we split up and looked for our own shots. As I sometimes do, I found “the spot” and more or less worked it until the light went away. I walked along the thin shoreline meadow, resisting the temptation to just set up and start shooting, and eventually came to this little group of shoreline rocks and trees that I could use as the close element of photographs of the lake and the peaks beyond as the day came to an end.

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

Tree in Granite Bowl, Sunset

September 29, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small tree near the base of a granite bowl is illuminated by sunset light, Yosemite National Park.

I made this photograph in an area alongside the Tuolumne River where large expanses of granite slabs tilt down almost to the river itself. This is a wonderful place for photography: subjects here include everything from the river itself to the granite and the trees and other plants, the light ranges from colorful light reflected from nearby cliffs to sunset and sunrise light to the soft pre-sunrise and post-sunset light.

I had been photographing some larger trees and some trees and plants growing from narrow cracks in the solid rock, but as the sun dropped to near the horizon and the light’s color warmed, I moved over to an area where a line of larger trees marches up the slope between two expanses of granite. From here I spotted this small and stunted tree growing out of nearly solid rock and with a background of curving granite slabs occasionally interrupted by the odd boulder. The photograph was made in just about the very last light of the evening is it slanted across the rocky scene, and the “golden hour” light intensified the subtle colors of the rocks.

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

Evening Thunderstorm Above Shepherd’s Crest

September 27, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Evening thunderstorms tower beyond the ridge of Shepherd’s Crest in Yosemite National Park.

There is a bit of a serendipitous story behind this photograph. We were camped at a high lake in the Yosemite backcountry for several days. On the first day the weather was that typical Sierra blue sky weather that can sometimes go on for weeks – beautiful if you live benign weather, but perhaps less appealing to photographers. On the second day, a few small clouds appeared around noon and by evening were becoming quite nice looking above the higher peaks, so we walked up to a higher lake in the evening and did some photography there. On the third day, the little precursor clouds began to show up a bit earlier – perhaps by 11:00 a.m. or even a bit earlier. This tends to get your attention if you have spent time in the Sierra, since clouds that appear that early may have time to develop into full-fledged thunderstorms.

On the second night, one member of our party had visited another little like above our base camp and reported back that it had photo potential. Others decided to visit it early in the morning on day three, though I photographed elsewhere at that time. But when I saw these clouds I thought it might be interesting to get up to this “other little lake” in the evening. Since the route is cross-country I got directions from another member of the group – basically “head up the rocky area, keeping to the right of the bunch of willows in the creek bed, and then head up to the lake. Two members of the group, Charlie and Keith, headed up before me and I followed perhaps 15-20 minutes later.

The climb was enjoyable – while it was steep, the views just got better and better. I ascended the obvious route up the “rocky area,” saw the willows ahead, passed them on my left, and continued on. I soon realized that this was a mistake since instead of a passable route up the lake I encountered a steep rocky wall. Apparently I missed something in the instructions. I probed around a bit and finally found a reasonably safe route up some ledges, carefully marking my return route with rock duck cairns as I ascended, and finally emerged at the top of the steep section… way up the canyon from the likely location of the lake. It was spectacular, but it wasn’t the lake and Charlie and Keith were nowhere to be found.

When traveling alone I tend to be rather conservative and cautious, so I had set a turn-around time that I knew would get me back to camp before complete darkness. That time now arrived, so I back down the little system of ledges, made a few photographs of beautiful high meadows right below them, and started back down toward camp, leaving enough time to stop to make photographs on the descent.

As I passed back down below the rocky wall, the view opened up in front of me and to my right, and included within this panorama was the full length of Shepherd’s crest, with a huge thunderhead and plenty of virga just beyond the ridge. This photograph was made a few minutes before actual sunset when the angle of the light was quite low and the sunset colors were just beginning to glow.

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