Tag Archives: black and white

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Aspen Groves, Sierra Crest

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Aspen Groves, Sierra Crest
Aspen groves follow the contours of foothills rising toward the Sierra Nevada crest.

Aspen Groves, Sierra Crest. Eastern Sierra Nevada, California. October 4, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Aspen groves follow the contours of foothills rising toward the Sierra Nevada crest.

Just for fun… a fall color photography in black and white! I have the greatest respect for our photographer predecessors who set about photographing the beauty of fall color with only monochromatic shades to work with. It can be done, but it isn’t quite as straightforward as photographing fall color with today’s capable digital cameras. It is all too easy to let those colorful leaves end up having monochromatic tones that aren’t that much different from the same trees in the green season! Light helps, as does some selective use of filters — glass filters in the old days and post-processing analogs applied to digital files today.

I made this photograph close to a rather popular fall color photography location, though the exact location isn’t quite in the usual spot. It presented a challenge or two that I won’t describe here. The light was, to use the old euphemism, “interesting” at this point. The late afternoon light was coming in at a low angle and lighting up the trees nicely, but the sky was a bit tricky. Some high clouds were floating over the Sierra crest peaks, and their brightness posed a dynamic range challenge while their shadows fell across the peaks. There are many things I like about this scene — the way the curving forms of the groves lead away and up toward the Sierra crest peak, the long shadows, the alternation of sunlit ridge and darker valleys, and those distant peaks with a bit of autumn snow dusting their summits.

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

Trees, Meadow, Autumn Light

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Trees, Meadow, Autumn Light, Yosemite Valley
“Trees, Meadow, Autumn Light” — Hazy autumn light and trees in a Yosemite Valley meadow

Every autumn the Sierra Nevada experiences days when the air is full of wildfire smoke. It was only recently that I came to recognize that a large component of what I’ve always identified as “autumn light” is the atmospheric haze from wildfires — not just those nearby in the Sierra, but including the diffused smoke from wildfires further away in California and even beyond California’s borders. Yes, the lower angle light is part of the effect, but it is the soft and hazy atmosphere that is perhaps the most major element. I’m amazed that it took me this long to fully make the connection, but also happy to find there are still new things to “discover” and understand!

The atmospheric light in this photograph is the result of this effect. It was a very smoky day in Yosemite Valley — the sort of day when you might consider wearing a breathing mask. A big fire was still smoldering just south of Yosemite Valley, its smoke collecting each evening and then flowing downwards into the Valley. I made the photograph just as the edge of the shadow from nearby cliffs was beginning to cross this meadow, and the sunlight caused the smokey atmosphere to glow behind the trees. It is easy to think of wildfire smoke as an impediment to photography, but if you turn your thinking around just a bit you soon realize that these conditions can provide some very special and even lovely possibilities, ranging from the muted and slightly sienna tones of the light to enhanced effects of atmospheric recession. The potentials for producing moody and evocative photographs may actually increase on days like this!

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

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

Morning Wildfire Smoke

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Morning Wildfire Smoke
Early morning wildfire smoke settles into a Sierra Nevada valley

Morning Wildfire Smoke. Yosemite National Park, California. October 22, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Early morning wildfire smoke settles into a Sierra Nevada valley

I arrived at this point in the early morning while the sun was still very low in the sky and before the day’s breezes had begun to pick up. A wildfire had burned across this section of the Yosemite high country starting quite a few weeks ago, and by now it had transformed from a raging inferno that was rapidly chewing up the landscape into a slow-burning fire that continued to do the beneficial work of eliminating years of build-up of undergrowth. The latter, while smoky and disruptive, is a natural part of the normal forest ecology.

From this overlook I could take in the few back toward the valley where the fire was burning. At this early hour the smoke was mostly settled in from the previous night, layered in among the trees at the bottom of valleys. Like a river only much slower and less tangible, the smoke drifted down the bottom of the valley and followed the natural contours of the land. As I photographed and the sun rose higher, the air began to move a bit more. The smoke started to diffuse and rise, and before long it had come up to my position and it was time to go.

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, Photographs: Yosemite

Morning Light On Wildfire Smoke

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Morning Light On Wildfire Smoke
“Morning Light On Wildfire Smoke” — Early morning light on wildfire smoke drifting among forest trees

For a day that I began with only a vague plan (photograph Glacier Point at dawn) that I managed to miss (distracted by dogwood trees), I ended up with quite a photographic haul before it was over. I have a very early morning photograph of a lovely forest scene with autumn colors, a series of photographs of beautiful and mysterious drifting smoke along Glacier Point Road, several photographs of the autumn scene in Yosemite Valley, and finally a small set of photographs of sunset light on snow-dusted granite along Tioga Pass Road. All told, it turned out to be a rather remarkable day!

The least expected subject also turned out to be the one that produced the largest number of photographs — the early morning wildfire smoke that had settled down in valleys and among the trees overnight. If I had arrived at Glacier Point when I originally planned I might have missed this in darkness. Yet again, I got lucky, and after a delay brought about by my inability to resist stopping to photograph another forest scene I arrived here at just the right moment. The air was still and the smoke was barely moving among the trees in this large valley below my location. I had a good long time to stand and take it in and then work the scene carefully, with photographs ranging from those including the full scene to others, like this one, that zeroed in on small elements of it. Several things attracted me about this particular scene: the beams of lighting the smoke drifting through the trees at the bottom of the frame, the zigzag pattern produced by forest and smoke, the tall and thin trees on the far ridge, and the bits of Yosemite granite domes barely visible in the distance through the smoke.

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

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