Tag Archives: basin

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Autumn Aspens and Peaks Above North Lake, Morning

October 15, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Morning light on colorful autumn aspens below the alpine ridges and peaks at North Lake, Sierra Nevada, California.

This was a particularly beautiful morning at iconic North Lake in the Bishop Creek drainage of the eastern Sierra Nevada. While dozens of photographers lined up tripod-to-tripod at the lower end of the lake, I decided to look elsewhere. After spending some productive time walking the road along the shoreline of the lake and searching out some of the smaller and perhaps less-obvious subjects, I saw the conjunction of this very colorful group of aspens at the bottom of the frame, the morning light on the peaks and broken by the passing clouds, and the carpets of smaller aspen trees ascending the higher slopes of Piute Crags. Rather than doing the classic “lake with mountain shot” that we’ve seen so often from North Lake – and it is a wonderful view! – I thought I’d try to more tightly frame these portions of the scene that got my attention.

I made this photograph with what some might regard as a somewhat unusual landscape lens, the Canon EF 135mm f/2 prime. This is a really wonderful lens that is often used for other subjects such as low light photographs of people and even for portrait work. It is a wonderful lens – in many ways not all that flashy, but just a very reliable and quality performer. I’ve written before that I most often use zoom lenses to shoot landscapes – and there are a number of reasons for this that I won’t go into right now – but I also carry a small number of primes when shooting like this, and if I have the time to work more slowly and the composition works for one of the primes I’ll use it instead.

This photograph is 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

Autumn Light, Yosemite High Country

September 26, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Late season evening light on a trees and a small meadow near Upper Young Lake, Yosemite National Park, California.

After hiking up from Lower Young Lake and arriving at the upper lake well before the good light I wandered off along the southwest shoreline of Upper Young Lake to scope out photographic subjects for the “good light” period that was going to start very soon. First I walked along the shoreline where I found several prospective shots of a rock outcropping with trees at the end of a peninsula that curves into the lake. I kept walking along the shoreline and found a few more interesting formations with the backdrop of the more distant hillside leading to the ridge that runs along the edge of the basin. Eventually I worked my way a bit beyond the lake to a point where small, grassy gullies began to drop toward the steeper terrain leading to the next lake down the valley, and here I found some interesting backlit trees and boulders, again with the hazy image of the more distance hillside beyond.

This photograph was made pointing almost directly toward the lowering sun – it is actually just a bit to the right and behind some rocks and trees that are out of the frame. Because it was so close to the end of the day – and because of the late time of the season – the light soon became very saturated and warm colored. To me this scene says “end of summer” in the high country – while it is still comfortable and the winters snowfall is still weeks in the future, there is a time in September when the days shorter, the grasses turn golden brown, the aspen color is only weeks away, and most of the tourists have left when the changing of the seasons can no longer be denied.

This photograph is 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: Sierra Nevada

Sunset, Unnamed Lake and Great Western Divide

September 16, 2010 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A boulder sits in the still water of an unnamed sub-alpine lake in the Upper Kern River Basin as the sunset light streams over the Great Western Divide.

This photograph comes from a week-long pack trip with a group of friends into the southern Sierra Nevada, this year’s installment of our ongoing annual back-country trips. After crossing over 11,760′ Kearsarge Pass and then 13, 200′ Forester Pass we entered one of my favorite parts of the Sierra back-country, the high plateaus of the upper Kern River basin. This area is surrounded by peaks rising as high as 14,000’+ in almost all directions and the view is expansive because much of the area is a very high plateau with nearly level areas at and above 12,000′.

I have been in this general part of the Sierra many times, going all the way back to my college days when I came over Forester Pass for the first time. On this year’s trip we followed the usual John Muir Trail route down to Tyndall Creek and camped there on day 3. From here we decided to spend the next couple of days exploring a little-visited area to the west where the Kern River has its source and just below the impressive peaks of the Great Western Divide. The lake in this photograph is one of several beautiful but unnamed small lakes in the area in which we camped. Peaks of the Great Western Divide are beyond as sunset light streams between them.

This photograph is 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: People, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Backpackers Near Milestone Basin

August 21, 2010 G Dan Mitchell 3 Comments

Two backpackers descend through sub-alpine meadows toward the peaks of the Great Western Divide near Milestsone Basin, Sequoia National Park.

My two friends, Caroline and Owen, head through a lovely sub-alpine meadow toward the peaks of the Great Western Divide and the upper Kern River drainage of the Sierra Nevada in early August. (When doing backpacking photography it is always good to be accompanied by friends with colorful gear! My clothing color scheme is not conducive to photography, consisting mostly of colors that match the rocks, grasses, and dirt…)

This is a spectacular and less-visited area of the Sierra, being very high and at least two days from any trailhead – and those trailheads lead over very high Sierra crest passes. We hit it at perhaps the peak of its seasonal beauty – despite the clouds of mosquitoes, everything was tremendously green. Even in the late morning hour – not typically the time for photography – the scene was quite something. Our trail here passed through a succession of small, intimate meadows surrounded by rolling hills and filled with scattered glacial rocks, occasionally passing by small lakes and tarns — perhaps my favorite kind of Sierra terrain!

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.

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