Tag Archives: blue

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Owens Valley

Sierra Wave Clouds Above Owens Valley, Dawn

October 19, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 7 Comments

On this morning I was up well before dawn – I checked out of my motel in Bishop, California and was on the road while it was still dark, with a semi-plan of photographing aspen trees around dawn up in the northern portion of the June Lakes Loop. As I headed north out of Bishop and through Round Valley, the very first light arrived and I saw the dim outlines of Sierra wave clouds forming over and just east of the crest. Now, this was an interesting development!

As I continued north and the light increased, the clouds began to interest me more than the possibility of photographing more aspens – I could do that later, but such clouds are unpredictable and transitory. I could see that subtle color was beginning to appear along the edges of the clouds even though it was not yet sunrise, and I decided that I needed to find some landscape feature – almost any would do! – that could serve as a foil to these clouds so that I could photograph them as they began to pick up sunrise color.

A week earlier I had photographed at some small lakes out in Owens Valley, and it occurred to me that if I could get there in time that they might reflect the clouds nicely, though I was a bit concerned about how the lake and the mountains and the clouds would actually align. But not having any better ideas and having very little time, I decided to make the lake my goal and without much further thought took the turnoff, parked my car near the largest lake, grabbed my gear, and headed across the sage brush landscape to the shore of the lake. My initial thought that I might be able to include the Sierra range in the image with the clouds clearly wasn’t going to work due to their relative positions, so I circled a bit further around the shore of the lake and instead composed a scene that excluded all but the tiniest bit of the peaks of the Sierra.

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

Sheep Peak, McCabe Lakes Basin, Sunset

October 1, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The last light of the day touches the top of Sheep Peak in the McCabe Lakes Basin, Yosemite National Park.

This was a beautiful and fun evening! We were camped at the lower lake in this basin for a few days. The routine, roughly speaking goes something like this: Up before dawn and off to photograph some morning subject until the light goes or the energy wears down; back to camp for breakfast; do camp chores and generally hang out and shoot the breeze into the afternoon; dinner sometime around 3:00 or 4:00; then off to whatever locations is on the agenda for the evening shoot; back to camp after dark. On this evening we all were on the same page and we all headed up to this lake, a few hundred feet higher and no more than a mile from our camp.

The walk was steep but mostly pleasant, at least as long as one went relatively slowly and stayed out of the creek with its willow thickets and instead found a route through the forest nearby. Eventually the route – there is no trail – began to level out at a meadowy area below the lake. This was gave a false sense that the climb was over, but at least the walk up the meadow was very enjoyable, as the small outlet stream twisted through grassy meadow and past the occasional boulder and some trees, with the higher peaks visible above. At the upper end of this meadow was the lake’s basin, with a tall peak on top of the headwall at the upper end, forest beyond the shoreline meadows to the left, and rugged talus slopes and rocky peaks along the right shoreline.

Here we split up and looked for our own shots. As I sometimes do, I found “the spot” and more or less worked it until the light went away. I walked along the thin shoreline meadow, resisting the temptation to just set up and start shooting, and eventually came to this little group of shoreline rocks and trees that I could use as the close element of photographs of the lake and the peaks beyond as the day came to an end.

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Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Ocean & Coast, Photographs: San Francisco

Departing Freighter

September 16, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Freighter approaching the Golden Gate as it departs from San Francisco Bay.

On this hazy but fog-less August morning I had stopped above the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge on my way north towards Point Reyes, where I planned a day of photography. I cross the bridge frequently, but I almost always schedule my crossings for times when the light might be interesting, at least if I have any control over my schedule. A summer day like this can bring any of a wide range of conditions: the bridge and bay could be totally socked in my fog, a finger of fog might extend inland while everything else is for-free, the sky could be crystal clear. On this morning the morning haze obscured a lot fo the long views… but it also increased the sense of distance and hid some distracting background elements that might have been visible in clearer conditions.

Some minutes earlier, while photographing a very different landscape from this spot, I had seen this ship beginning its outbound voyage all the way back under the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Having watched these ships before I knew that it would eventually make its way past Treasure Island, around Alcatraz, make a wide loop, and then turn back to cross in front of me as it approached the passage through the Golden Gate. With this in mind, I kept an eye on it, and once it cleared Alcatraz I kept a close eye on it, making this exposure just as it made its final turn toward the Bridge with only the surface of the bay, the faint and distant hills, and the sky creating a blue background.

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Photographs: New York City

1 WTC, August 23, 2011

September 11, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The 1 World Trade Center (1 WTC) building under construction on August 23, 2011, New York City.

“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.” – Ansel Adams

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.

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