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

Aspen Trees, Conway Summit, Fall

October 18, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 7 Comments

Aspen trees in peak color at Conway Summit along highway 395 in the eastern Sierra Nevada.

I isolated this small bit of near-psychedelic color from the extensive aspen groves at Conway Summit, along highway 395 just north of Lee Vining and Mono Lake along the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada range. When I visited the grove this past weekend the colors seemed to be essentially at their peak with alternating rows of red, orange, gold, and even a few lime green trees marching up the slopes toward the Dunderberg area high above.

If you hit it at the right moment, the aspen color at this location is second to none, and a bonus for many is that it is so accessible, being right alongside the highway. Brilliant colors can occur on both sides of the summit, but those on the north side seem to me to be more varied, and it is a bit easier and safer to find a place to stop alongside the road.

The lighting during my visit was “interesting” – which often means good but with some challenges. From my point of view, the best light at Conway Summit, at least when it comes to photographing aspen color, occurs fairly late in the afternoon when the sun gets low in the sky and can backlight the groves of trees. However, because of the backdrop of Sierra Nevada peaks the interval of good light can be short – and it is distinctly before actual sunset. The “interesting” element during this visit was that clouds were building over the crest. This produces some spectacular sky conditions at times, but it also cast shadows across the trees that dulled the colors and lowered contrast. Now a bit of this can be a good thing, and too much backlight can be a bit difficult to handle. By scoping out perhaps three of four possible compositions from my position, I could wait until the “good light” hit one or another of them, swing the camera around in that direction, and work quickly while the light lasted. For this detail shot of a colorful section of the aspen groves just below my position I had what can perhaps be the very best light for such subjects – a bit of directional light from behind filtered through clouds.

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Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Hills and Gullies, Twenty Mule Team Canyon

October 17, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning light across the shapes of hills and gullies, Twenty Mule Team Canyon, Death Valley National Park.

This is a photograph I made back in 2009 when I managed to get to Twenty Mule Team Canyon before sunrise and then continued to shoot for several hours. Though this area is very close to one of the most popular and oft-photographed locations in Death Valley National Park, it gets relatively few visitors from what I’ve seen. While it doesn’t generally present the huge and expansive vistas of some of the more famous areas, it is a great playground for those of us who enjoy the eroded and rounded landforms and the seemingly infinite variations of color and texture.

Here I tried to fill the frame completely with these shapes that have been produced by water eroding the relatively soft earth. The light was very interesting and a bit complex. Some diffused light was coming straight down from the sky, hence the bits of blue shadow in some of the gullies. At the same time, slightly diffused sunlight was directly striking the earth in a few spots. And in some of the foreground areas additional illumination was being reflected into the scene from nearby formations.

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Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Structures and Objects

Schoolhouse Ruins, Rhyolite

October 16, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning sunlight shine through the window frames of the ruins of the abandoned schoolhouse in the ghost town of Rhyolite Nevada, near Death Valley National Park.

The ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada is located just east of the boundary of Death Valley National Park, along the edge of the Amargosa Valley, and not far from Beatty, Nevada, which itself is close to the Nevada Test Site. Put all of that together and you have the potential for a bit of a spooky place!

Rhyolite was a short-lived mining town in the early 1900s, when it apparently was home to thousands of people who streamed to this forsaken landscape to find silver. The town was eventually abandoned – although some mining still takes place in the area – but a good number of the larger buildings are still there, in various states of decay. An old train station that looks pretty fancy is fenced off to keep us out, but you can walk (respectfully and carefully!) among many other old structures including the old school house that is the subject of this photograph.

I’ve been out here a number of times and dawn is my favorite time to photograph here. The light makes it to many of the old ruins very shortly after actual sunrise, and there is a moment of often beautiful light at this time. From Rhyolite the hills inside Death Valley National Park are visible to the west and above the nearer hills you can see Telescope Peak, the highest point in the park at over 11,000′ elevation.

The school (like a few of the other ruins) looks like it must have been a very large and robust structure. Even though the roof and the second floor are gone, almost all of the exterior walls still stand and don’t show any immediate signs of incipient collapse. On this morning I made a series of photographs from just inside one of the “doorways” of the school with a wide-angle lens. I selected and shared a few of them back in 2009, but I recently went back to my original raw files and decided to try this one in black and white.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Owens Valley, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Desert Pond and Sierra Nevada Dawn

October 15, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Morning mist rises above a high desert pond reflecting the lower slopes of the eastern Sierra Nevada near McGee Creek.

On the second morning of my first fall color to the eastern Sierra this autumn, having been less than astonished by this year’s color so far, I decided to head instead out into Owens Valley to shoot back toward the mountains and to shoot some subject in Owens Valley itself. I started at this little lake a few miles east of highway 395, where great reflections of the range lit by morning sun area often seen. This photograph looks across the small lake towards McGee Creek Canyon. (McGee Creek isn’t a bad place to look for aspen color…)

I arrived here before sunrise and was set up and ready to go before the first light hit the peaks in the area of Mt. McGee and Mt. Morgan. As I stood (freezing!) by the shore of this small lake, waiting for the light that I knew was coming, a truck came up the lonely road to this place, passed the pond, made a u-turn, and slowed down by my vehicle, which was parked along the main road. My first thoughts were “this is either another photographer or someone who is checking out my car… for purposes I don’t want to think about.” However the vehicle kept going. A few moments later I discovered that this was a photographer, and he and his dog took up a position along the far shoreline. A few days later I was looking through an online landscape photography forum and I came across a photograph that looked like it had been shot from about that photographer’s position, and in which the conditions looked darn near identical to what I saw that morning. I contacted the photographer and found out that, indeed, he was the person I had seen that morning. (If you wonder why we didn’t touch base on the scene… a) we were both busy shooting the entire time, b) we were on opposites sides of the lake, and c) even though I yelled a greeting he didn’t hear.)

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