Tag Archives: boulders

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

Shoreline Forest, Lower Young Lake

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Shoreline Forest, Lower Young Lake
Shoreline Forest, Lower Young Lake

Shoreline Forest, Lower Young Lake. Yosemite National Park, California. September 14, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Morning light on the shoreline forest at Lower Young Lake.

After finally managing to convince myself to get out of my warm sleeping bag and bivy sack oh-so -early on this cold, late-summer morning, I grabbed my tripod, camera, and lenses and headed down to the shoreline of this lake. (That’s right – no breakfast. My routine is generally to simply get up and start shooting. I might work for as long as a few hours before the light is no longer what I want, at which point I make my way back to my camp to fix coffee and breakfast.) Although I know this lake pretty well at this point, there are always new things to discover when I look closely, and the conditions are never the same twice. Although I’ve walked past this little bit of shoreline forest many times – the trail goes right through here – this is probably the first time I’ve photographed this spot. I’m often intrigued by backlit trees – for the long shadows, the color of light coming through leaves and branches, and the darker and mysterious quality of the trunks – and several other things also caught my attention here. There was still a bit of late-season green in the small plants down close to the ground, and I liked the obstructed view of the lake surface, the far shore, and the rocky slopes above.

This type of scene and lighting poses some challenges, the most obvious being the wide dynamic range. There are very bright specular highlights reflecting from the needles of the trees and the bright areas of the tree trunks can also be very bright. In this scene there was an additional source of “bright” where the rocks above the far shoreline were directly lit by sunlight. The trick is to not blow out all of those highlights – though a bit of “blow out” on tiny specular highlights can be OK – while still retaining some detail on the shaded side of the trees. Often I resort to exposure bracketing (making two or three different exposures to be blended in post) and, in fact, I did approach this scene that way. However, by shooting RAW and working carefully in post I was able to control the highlights and bring back some of the subtle shadow details.

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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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Kearsarge Pinnacles

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Kearsarge Pinnacles
Kearsarge Pinnacles

Kearsarge Pinnacles. Kings Canyon National Park, California. July 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Late afternoon like on alpine lakes, meadows, and forest below Kearsarge Pinnacles, Kings Canyon National Park.

Kearsarge Pinnacles shares its name with (Kearsarge) lakes and a (Kearsarge) pass just to the west of the Onion Valley trailhead. This is not exactly an untraveled spot in the Sierra, given that it is merely one day in on a reasonable (by east side standards) pass and that it provides access to some very popular areas of the Kings Canyon back-country and to the John Muir Trail.

I’ve been over this pass a number of times. I’ve come in this way to start trips north over Baxter Pass and south into the upper Kern River basin and over Mt. Whitney. I exited here some years back on the ninth day of a trip that started at Bishop Pass and crossed a series of JMT high passes including (in addition to Bishop) Mather, Pinchot, and Glenn passes.

Here late afternoon light, filtered by clouds, illuminates the granite benches and scattered trees above a couple of the upper lakes in the basin. Despite the obvious impressive beauty of this location, I find that it presents some photographic challenges, at least when I try to photograph “grand views” of the area and the surrounding landscape. One of them, at least in my experience, is that the light angles can be a bit tricky. For example, as the sun sets it isn’t quite far enough north to light up the slopes of the pinnacles, and some of the interesting foreground subjects go into shadow as the light warms up. On this evening I made one of those timing discoveries that I’ll have to remember and apply the next time I’m there – from about the location of this photograph there was a minute or two of very interesting light right on the upper edges of the closer ridges… which I wasn’t quite quick enough to capture!

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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Photographs: Cascades, Photographs: Nature

Trees and Boulders, Artist Point

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Trees and Boulders, Artist Point
Trees and Boulders, Artist Point

Trees and Boulders, Artist Point. Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Washington. August 28, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Ridgetop trees and boulders along the trail catch the afternoon light at Artist Point, Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Washington.

I had been admiring this steep, rugged, and distant ridge all afternoon, starting with our first shooting location down lower on the mountain. As we hiked up the Artist Point trail, we took a detour to the right and I noticed this low rocky ridge covered with trees and the ridge in the distance. At first I couldn’t quite see a shot and I looked elsewhere, but soon I came back to this spot and thought that something with the foreground rocks and trees along with the clouds and more distant ridge might be interesting – but as soon as I saw this a large cloud floated over and blocked the sun from my position, leaving the nearby trees and rocks in shade!

Sometimes when this happens it makes more sense to move on and look for a photograph that works with the conditions you have, but other times it can be worth waiting. It is hard to know for sure which is right, but I decided to set up and sit tight, waiting to see if the light would improve. The light shining around the edge of the cloud was tantalizingly close, but the cloud was stubborn about moving. At one point the light increased a bit for perhaps 15-20 seconds, but then quickly went away. I continued to wait. Finally, the light began to gradually increase, and I got about one minute or less of sun before the cloud again blocked the light – but this was long enough to make a few exposures of this scene.

I have a favor to ask of anyone who is familiar with this area – help in identifying the trees and, even more, help in identifying/naming the distant ridge and the peaks that sit on it. I’m not great at plant identification, but I’m really out of my league in the Cascades. One person walking by as I made the shot seemed to think that the trees are mountain hemlock – but I’d be grateful if anyone can confirm this… or set me straight. Although I was impressed with the peaks on the ridge in the distance in this photograph… I do not have any Washington topographical maps or guide books, so I’m completely in the dark about what to call this ridge or the peaks. Here, too, I would be grateful if anyone can help me identify the ridge, the peaks, and any other important features in the photograph.

Update: A Facebook reader shared information about the peaks on the distant ridge in this photograph…

Alan Majchrowicz writes: “From left to right, Tomyhoi Peak, Canadian and American Border Peaks, Larrabee Mountain. Nice photo Dan, hope I can break away this week and spend some time up there!”

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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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Cascade, Tyndall Creek

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Cascade, Tyndall Creek
Cascade, Tyndall Creek

Cascade, Tyndall Creek. Sequoia National Park, California. August 1. 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

High in the Upper Kern River drainage, water dashes over the rocks of Tyndall Creek.

Tyndall Creek is in one of my most favorite areas of the Sierra Nevada. It runs between Shepherd Pass (located on the Sierra Crest a bit north of Mount Whitney) and the upper reaches of the Kern River in Sequoia National Park. It begins, more or less, in a small, barren lake right on the crest at the verge of the drop-off into Shepherd Pass, flows gently westward through alpine rock gardens as it descends towards timberline, and then drops more quickly to join the Kern a few miles later. It crosses the John Muir Trail where one encounters almost the first trees after descending from 13,200′ Forrester Pass to the north. Quite a few JMT travelers camp at this spot – partly because of the shelter of the trees and partly because of the terraced rocks over which the creek passes here.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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