Tag Archives: base

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

Cliff, Trees, Snow

Leave a comment
Cliff, Trees, Snow
A band of trees at the snowy base of the face of Half Dome

Cliff, Trees, Snow. Yosemite National Park, California. February 25, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A band of trees at the snowy base of the face of Half Dome

Very early on two late February mornings, I was up and out the door well before sunrise, walking though shallow snow and sub-twenty-degree air to a nearby meadow to photograph that start of the Yosemite Valley day. On both occasions, my main strategy was to look upwards toward the cliffs and use a long lens to pick out small scenes that might otherwise be missed in the immensity of the scene.

Eventually the sun came up and light broke over the upper rim of the Valley, gradually working its way down the steep walls, first on the north side and eventually on the south side where I was focusing my attention. But it would be a long time — probably noon at least — until the direct light made it to this spot at the base of Half Dome. The low contrast and blue tone of the light along with the banks of snow reinforces the frigid feeling of this scene, with a row of straight and tall trees managing to make a living on this ledge at the bottom of the giant face of the mountain.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

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

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Eastern Sierra Ridges, Rain

Leave a comment
Eastern Sierra Ridges, Rain
A passing squall drops rain on hills at the base of the Eastern Sierra

Eastern Sierra Ridges, Rain. Round Valley, California. October 4, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A passing squall drops rain on hills at the base of the Eastern Sierra

I first stopped here with a very different sort of photograph in mind. I pulled off US395 just north of Bishop in a spot where I knew I could overlook pastureland spotted with autumn color cottonwood trees and backed by the mighty eastern escarpment of the Sierra. But the weather was extremely changeable, and within minute a passing squall almost completely obliterated the view, leaving me looking mostly at a thick curtain of falling rain.

I waited a bit, hiding under the rear door of my vehicle with my tripod set up, and before long the conditions began to change again — I could see that the moisture-filled atmosphere was beginning to glow to the south where clouds were thinning and sun was illuminating the falling rain. As I watched, the distant low hills of the eastern Sierra gradually began to re-emerge. These conditions not only make the view opaque but they also desaturate the colors. Believe it or not… this minimalist landscape is a color photograph!

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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

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

Receding Ridges, Rain

Leave a comment
Receding Ridges, Rain
A squall moves across hills near the base of the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada

Receding Ridges, Rain. Owens Valley, California. October 4, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A squall moves across hills near the base of the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada

This photograph belongs to a portion of my work that I think of as minimalist landscapes. They often focus on landscapes that are largely hidden or in which some elements are obscured. Not all involve mist, clouds, fog, and rain, but quite a few do. In many of them I am trying to work with a kind of light that is very special to me, where the atmosphere itself becomes luminous, perhaps when filled with haze or fog or dust and lit from behind, producing a kind of glowing effect that can be so bright that it is hard to look into.

On this day I had, or so I thought, finished my autumn photography on this trip, and I was in my “heading home” mode. I had driven down from the mountains, where I had photographed in rain and incoming light snow earlier in the morning, stopped in a town along US 395 for coffee and something to eat, then gotten into my vehicle to hit the road. Not 15 minutes north of town I came to a familiar spot where I often stop to admire the view and sometimes photograph. I pulled over and went a ways up a side road and watched the landscape disappear behind rain and clouds as a squall moved through. I set up under the rear door of my vehicle so that I could have some shelter from the rain, and I began looking for places in the landscape where there was just enough detail to suggest its form but no more than necessary. (Trivia fact: This is a color photograph!)

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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

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

Death Valley, Evening

Leave a comment
Death Valley, Evening
Evening light on the playa of Death Valley, with lower slopes of the Panamint Mountains rising beyond

Death Valley, Evening. Death Valley National Park, California. March 30, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Evening light on the playa of Death Valley, with lower slopes of the Panamint Mountains rising beyond

Since I’ve been traveling to and around Death Valley National Park for more than 15 years now, I’ve seen a lot of the park — but I most certainly have not see all of it, nor have I completely learned how to see everything in it. This is a huge place, varying greatly by location, terrain, season, weather and more. Frankly, the experience of coming to know such a place over time is one of the things I value most about such locations. While I love to “discover” a place that is completely new to me (and Death Valley was that place in the late 1990s for me), the longer process of learning the place and its rhythms more deeply is also, I think, more rewarding. It is wonderful to see a desert gully in evening light for the first time, but it may be even more beautiful to come back to it and recognize an old and familiar friend.

Along these lines, a few years ago, as I continued to push out my own boundaries of experience and knowledge in Death Valley, I began to think more about how to make photographs of things that I might have not thought worthy of a photograph before. I realized that many of these things that don’t scream “photograph me!” are otherwise a core part of the experience of this place: a vast and quiet “empty” landscape, midday sun, haze obscuring great distances, the edge between the last vegetation and a barren playa, a beam of light slanting across an alluvial fan. And if they are central to the sense of the place, it seems that there must be a way to photograph them. And that is a new challenge for me in my Death Valley photography.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

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.