Tag Archives: atmosphere

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

Subalpine Lake, Forest, and Ridges

September 30, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Evening light on a forested subalpine lake backed by alpine peaks and ridges, Yosemite National Park

When photographing or even when just looking at the world as a photographer, there are certain things that consistently get my attention — and several of them appear in this straightforward Sierra scene. I’m a sucker for layers, and there we have quite a few: the foreground forest trees, the lake with its reflecting water, the forest rising up the slopes on the opposite shore toward a granite dome, and across a deep canyon that is not directly visible there are high, alpine peaks whose features are muted in the atmospheric haze. And, yes, that haze is another thing that I often look for when making photographs.

Like many photographers, I also have an eye for juxtapositions and relationships between shapes and angles and curves and lines. If I recall correctly, the first thing that drew my attention about this scene was not the obvious lake but was instead the relationship between the granite knob just beyond the lake and the shapes of the high ridge in the distance. In fact, I made a series of photographs of those two things at different times of day and from somewhat different locations. All of that aside, the photograph also portrays a more natural sort of light than the warm and saturated light that we often photograph closer to sunrise and sunset.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne

September 24, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Haze fills the westward view into the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River

Far below the location of this photograph lies one of the greatest travesties in the national park system — the abomination of the Hetch Hetchy dam and reservoir. I now understand the political pressures that led to the damming of this “second Yosemite” — San Francisco’s obsession with water following the 1906 great earthquake and the subsequent fire — but in retrospect this was a monumental offense to the purpose and goals of our great national parks. The Hetch Hetchy Valley had virtually everything that its more southerly neighbor has and which astound people from all over the world — towering cliffs, beautiful domes, forest and meadow along a great river on the valley floor, tall waterfalls. After years of absence from this prostituted place, I returned a year or two ago on an afternoon when I was heading home from the Sierra… and I felt only anger and disgust at the the damned dam.

But here, miles upstream, the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River is still a wilderness, protected from overcrowding by tall and steep walls and a narrow gorge. In the late afternoon I walked a ridge near the edge of the canyon and looked west into the maze of successive ridges that separate creeks that feed the river and made this photograph.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Calero Oaks and Summer Grass

August 28, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Oak and grass-covered summer hills extending into late summer morning haze

This is a portrait orientation version of more of less the same scene I shared in an earlier photograph from the same mid-August morning hike through a familiar, long time favorite local hiking and photography location. It is an area full of grasslands and oak-covered hills, lush and green for a few months each winter and spring, and then California gold/brown for much of the rest of the year. I have hiked these hills and this specific trail for many years, though it had been several months since my last prior visit — it was good to be “home” again!

This morning was special for a few reasons. There was a wonderful feeling of returning to “my world” following a few months away from this place and my return, only days earlier, from a lengthy trip to the east coast that included more than a week in the very urban environment of New York City. It also turned out, a bit to my surprise, that this hike would bring my annual “autumn is just around the corner” experience — that day each year when something tells me clearly that summer is beginning to wind down and that the beauties of autumn are not far away.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Oaks and Grass, Late Summer

August 18, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Late summer morning fog clears about oak and grass-covered California hills

Today’s photographic journey was a short one — back to a local park where I have photographed for quite a few years, though not recently. This is a place that I used to go to almost every week, and where I hiked just about every trail, to the point that I became intimately familiar with the place in all seasons. It is a landscape of rolling hills with a few high, rocky outcroppings, many oak trees, and grassland. In the manner of most of California, the grass deeply affects the appearance — changing from “impossible green” in winter and spring to brown or golden, depending upon your disposition. I think of it as golden.

This morning I was in a bit of an autumn frame of mind. (A separate post today will have more to say about that pleasant state.) I got up early to discover that the area was covered by the typical coastal high fog. (I live perhaps an hour’s drive from the Pacific Ocean.) This is not the sort of romantic and moody fog that sits low to the ground and floats among trees. It is the higher, drab, gray kind of fog that produces an undifferentiated sky and very flat light. However, at this time of year that fog will most certainly clear, usually by mid-morning. So I left home in these gray conditions, planning to be among the oaks and grass when the fog began to break up.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: atmosphere

Subalpine Lake, Forest, and Ridges

Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne

Calero Oaks and Summer Grass

Oaks and Grass, Late Summer

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