Tag Archives: branches

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

Forest, Upper Yosemite Valley

Leave a comment
Forest, Upper Yosemite Valley
Forest, Upper Yosemite Valley

Forest, Upper Yosemite Valley. Yosemite National Park, California. October 30, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Trees recede into the distance in a quiet forest in the upper section of Yosemite Valley.

Late in the afternoon, after the light rain had mostly ended, I stopped to try to photograph some dogwood trees that were getting their fall colors. I started by looking at some trees very close to the road, but then saw more interesting trees a bit further into the grove so I wandered a bit farther from the road. Soon I saw a couple of trails leading into more open areas near the river, so I kept walking. This led to a trail that headed up the Valley – I followed it and soon crossed the Merced River. Continuing on (and now well beyond the grove that I originally stopped to photograph!) I crossed again on a second bridge and soon noticed an interesting section of more open forest off to one side. As I wandered down into this area I saw that there were quite a few rocks along the otherwise level forest floor here, and after making a couple of initial shots I also saw that nearby the level forest floor began to give way to more hilly and rounded terrain with occasional boulders and small rocky hills. I left the trail and began to walk about slowly, just watching for interesting arrangements of trees, colorful leaves, and places where the light glowed through the forest canopy.

When I stopped to make this photograph (and several other exposures in the same spot) I was attracted by the relatively open forest through which I could see the vertical forms of the trees receding, and by the interesting arrangement of the foreground trees. The soft forest light on this cloudy afternoon also gave the leaves and needles a luminous quality.

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.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
Flickr | Twitter | Facebook Fan Page | Facebook | Friendfeed | Email

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Creek Dogwood, Sierra Nevada

6 Comments
Creek Dogwood, Sierra Nevada
Creek Dogwood, Sierra Nevada

Creek Dogwood, Sierra Nevada. Bishop Creek, California. October 2, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Dense growth of creek dogwood with white flowers and fall color red leaves along Bishop, Sierra Nevada.

This is a plant I’ve been intrigued by in the past – literally the very same plant in the precise same location along Bishop Creek in the eastern Sierra. I think it is called “creek dogwood,” but here again I have to admit to my poor ability to offer proper identifications for many plants. (I’ve mentioned before that I often “know” the plants quite well – where they grow, when they come up in the spring, when they flower, and when the go dormant… but I often fail to register their names!) This plant acquires brilliant red leaves in the fall, and with some green leaves and round white “berries,” it has a striking appearance.

This is the next in the series of photographs of very dense vegetation. While it may be hard to make sense out of the photographs when presented as small web images, there is a lot of very interesting (to me, anyway!) detail in a print of this subject. It is even possible, I think, to make some sort of compositional sense out of all of this complexity as well – or at least I want to think so!

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.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Twitter | Friendfeed | Facebook | Facebook Fan Page | Email

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Fall Color, Eastern Sierra Aspens

10 Comments
Fall Color, Eastern Sierra Aspens
“Fall Color, Eastern Sierra Aspens” — A grove of aspen trees along Bishop at the peak of their gaudy fall colors, Sierra Nevada, California.

On a week of brilliant fall color during an autumn when the color was exceptional in parts of the eastern Sierra, this little grove of aspens was almost absurdly colorful. I first saw them while driving away from a nearby shot – their fluorescent colors got my attention while I was looking in a completely different direction. The colors nearby were quite something, but they literally paled next to this grove. (I’ve heard trees like this referred to as Cheetos trees – and I think you can imagine why.)

Should you think that this color is simply something I’ve pumped up in post processing, take a look at the boulder in the lower part of the frame and see the tree trunks and the pale grasses at bottom right. The fact that I shot in over cast conditions, late in the day, and in a very light rain did intensify the colors a bit, but this is what they looked like.

These colors present some photographic challenges. The main one is that almost all of the light is in the red channel, and when shooting a digital camera it is easy to blow out (grossly overexpose) the red channel and not even realize it. I have found that with this subject it is critical to use the three-channel histogram display that shows the separate levels of red, green, and blue. The single luminosity histogram display averages the values of the three color channels, and if one is extremely hot (as is the red channel here) you can blow it out even if the histogram looks fine.

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.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Twitter | Friendfeed | Facebook | Facebook Fan Page | Email

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Dead Branches, Bishop Creek

4 Comments

Dead Branches, Bishop Creek
Dead Branches, Bishop Creek

Dead Branches, Bishop Creek. Sierra Nevada, California. October 3, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A tangle of dead branches along the banks of Bishop Creek, Sierra Nevada, California.

Another photographic irony, perhaps, but I made this photograph within sight of the gaudiest and flashiest brilliant autumn aspen leaves that I saw during the first week of October in the Bishop Creek area. I’m not exaggerating. I had earlier spotted the “gaudy, flashy” trees as I drove away from a nearby location and looked, almost in shock, at their intense red, gold, and orange colors. For various reasons, I did not stop, but I made a mental note to come back here later in the day. When I returned went straight to the color and spent some time photographing it. (A photo of those trees will show up here before long.)

As I finished shooting that obvious autumn subject, I slowed down a bit and walked along the side of the creek in the fading evening light. As I did so, I noticed these tangles of old, dead branches along the bank and wondered how I might photograph them. The interesting and apparently random juxtapositions of the gray branches intrigued me right away, as did the various textures and shapes and combinations of bright and shadowed features. As I looked closer the colors of the scene began to become more visible – the red-brown colors of the pine cone at lower left, the similar tones of the fallen needles, and the slender lines of green where a few blades of grass draped across the branches.

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.

G Dan Mitchell Photography | Twitter | Friendfeed | Facebook | Facebook Fan Page | Email