Tag Archives: blood

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

Trees, Blood-Red Sunset Light

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Trees, Blood-Red Sunset Light
Intensely red light on granite slabs and trees in the Yosemite National Park backcountry.

Trees, Blood-Red Sunset Light. © Copyright 2021 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Intensely red light on granite slabs and trees in the Yosemite National Park backcountry.

This is the third and final in this short sequence of photographs from this late summer evening in the Yosemite backcountry. I had passed over the summit of a granite dome just before sunset and was descending granite slabs along the drop-off into a large canyon, heading back toward camp, as the sunset light became intensely red.

The intense color was largely the result of the not-so-great air quality to the west of here. September and October are traditionally the wildfire season in California, and the atmosphere is often softened by a sort of general haze at this time of year. In addition, because I was in a location where I had a direct line of sight to the horizon across the Great Central Valley, the light was passing through more of this hazy atmosphere than usual. The result was light with a color intensity that might seem almost unbelievable — but I guarantee that it was real.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Commentary, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Mono Lake, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Yosemite

Abandoned Buildings, Eastern Sierra

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Abandoned Buildings, Eastern Sierra
Abandoned Buildings, Eastern Sierra

Abandoned Buildings, Eastern Sierra. Near Lee Vining, California. July 25, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Blood-red dawn light illuminates eastern Sierra Nevada peaks of Yosemite National Park and morning clouds above abandoned high desert cabins in the sage brush along highway 395.

Many who travel the eastern Sierra on highway 395 have no doubt seen these two abandoned buildings along the highway not far from Lee Vining, set against the background of the Sierra’s eastern escarpment along the border of Yosemite National Park. I’ve noticed them for years and have tried to photograph them a few times in the past.

On this late-July morning I had gotten up very early at my Tuolumne Meadows camp site and decided that there might be enough interesting clouds to warrant a trip down to the South Tufa area of Mono Lake for a sunrise shoot. However, I apparently didn’t get up quite early enough (actually, I miscalculated the time of dawn) since the sun began to rise above the horizon just before I turned east from 395 onto 120 to get to the lake. For a moment I vacillated – should I hurry on to get to Mono as soon after sunrise as possible (since the light gets there a few minutes later) or shoot whatever I could see right then and there? The intense red light made the decision for me and I quickly pulled over near these buildings and made a few exposures as the saturated and very red morning light hit the mountains and the clouds.

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.

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Two Photographers: Two Videos

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I came across a couple of interesting videos of photographers on the web today.

The first is a wonderful video of Michael Kenna photographing in the snow in Hokkaido, Japan. The video is partly an interview, partly a visual narrative of Kenna at work, and partly a collection of interesting scenes and images associated with some of his photographs. There is a lot to think about and consider in the video, and it struck several chords for me. Among many was his use of the word “hunt” to describe the act of looking for and finding photographic images, and not perhaps just in the sense of tracking and capturing an image, but also, I think, related to the need to be patient and to understand the “quarry.” I often have thought about the “hunt” aspect of looking for subject. (Link originally seen at George Barr’s Behind the Lens blog.)

The second video is rather different but also features a very talented landscape photographer, Charlie Cramer. Unlike the slow moving and rather poetic video of Kenna with its long silent shots and occasional sparse music, this video interview (on the Marc Silber show)  is pretty “straight ahead” – basically a record of Charlie talking about his ubiquitous framing guide, a sheet of mat board with a 4 x 5 cutout that he uses to help him visual photographs while he is in the field. This is interesting and Charlie makes a compelling case for using this “tool.” (I’ve thought about it, but never “gone there.” Perhaps I will now…) More interesting to me were a few side comments that Charlie makes in the course of the interview. For one, he refers to the frame as a “blood pressure meter,” and suggests that he more or less “just knows” when a scene is going to work because when he views it in the frame he feels his blood pressure rises. (In another context he has spoken of hearing the scene whisper, “Take me!”) The point, I think (and forgive me if I have this wrong, Charlie!) is that all of the rules of composition in the world won’t help you that much in the end – essentially you need to be able to look at the subject and “just know” that it will work and how.