Tag Archives: brush

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

High Desert Aspens

November 3, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

The golden leaves of a small grove of autumn aspen trees against the rolling hills of high desert sagebrush country

As I have photographed the beautiful autumn color displays of the eastern (and not so eastern) Sierra Nevada aspens, I have thought more about variations on this location theme. There is no question that there are very beautiful aspen trees up high in the eastern Sierra, and I go there every fall to photograph them. There are high elevation stands of interestingly twisted smaller trees, dense stands in lower and sheltered areas, some examples of big stands of tall and straight trees, and more. I have some favorites that I return to every autumn, and I still find new ways to see them and photograph them.

However, I’m also starting to think more about some slightly different opportunities for aspen photography that aren’t all that far from these familiar places and which present the trees in slightly different ways. I’d rather not get too specific at this point, so I’ll just say “think east.” This particular group of trees isn’t all that far east, but it has some of the characteristics that I’m interested in exploring: a narrow band of colorful trees set against a more open and barren essentially high desert landscape. Here the trees seem to tend to grow in (mostly) smaller groups, and in some ways they almost seem more special for being a bit less dense and for growing it what seems like a more difficult environment.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Pacific Northwest

Olympic Peninsula Forest

August 23, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

Sunlight filters through dense forest in Olympic National Park, Washington

During mid-August we traveled to the Seattle area – not primarily for photography but mainly to see the Seattle Opera production of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle. The Seattle Ring is sometimes referred to as the “Green Ring,” largely because the production design draws heavily on the natural world of the Pacific Northwest, and especially on the forests. Even when photography is not the primary focus, it is never too far away, so on a day when there were no performances we decided to take the ferry across Puget Sound to the Olympic Peninsula and see what we could find. We left the Seattle area in heavy fog – the subject of at least one photograph that I’ll post later on – but when we got across the water it was relatively clear. That was a bit surprising since I’ve had seem some pretty cloudy and rainy weather out there in the past, including one memorable trip to Hurricane Ridge when we arrived to find visibility that must have approached, oh, about fifty feet.

One of my brothers, also a photographer, lives in the area and after seeing the positive weather forecast he had suggested that we start at Sol Duc Falls. In actually turned out that the weather was perhaps a bit too nice, as this heavily forested area ended up exhibiting that deadly combination of bright light beams coming through the trees and deep shadows down below, an effect sometimes called “pizza light.” It is about the most difficult thing to photograph, as the dynamic range of the scenes is just far too large for cameras. We hiked to the falls, a short and pleasant hike, and arrived to find that the base of the fall, which is in a deep gorge, was in dark shade while brilliant direct sunlight hit the top of the water. I decided to not try to photograph this – “been there, done that!” – and instead see what I could find in the surrounding forest itself. The light issue remained here, too, but I noticed that a few puffy clouds were blowing around and I figured that I could set up the shot and wait for the nice soft light to arrive in the shadow of one of the clouds. This photograph was made in exactly those conditions – a passing cloud momentarily obscured and softened the light. I think that seeing the beautiful forest-inspired set of Seattle’s Ring had put me in a frame of mind to find and photograph this sort of thing, and I feel like this photograph reflects that connection.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Cottonwoods, Meadow, and Stumps

July 11, 2013 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Stumps of dead brush in a meadow with autumn cotton wood trees, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

We encountered these first autumn-foliage cottonwoods shortly after we entered this canyon, and this being our first day shooting in this area, I think we (or at least I) felt obligated to shoot every possible subject, since everything was so new on this day. Later I might have passed up these cottonwoods which, despite their brilliant color, were it a tricky spot to photograph and were just about to end up in the direct morning sunlight.

Trying to find some sort of composition that could include them but not make them the whole story, I first saw the brushy meadow with its light green grasses and older dry grass, but that was too featureless of a foreground for what I had in mind. Then I saw these old dead stumps of perhaps tamarisk or some other desert plant that were still standing in a section of this meadowy area, and I decide to use them to fill the foreground.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: The Southwest, Photographs: Utah

Autumn Color, Canyon Walls

July 8, 2013 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Autumn color foliage marches up the lower slopes of Zion Canyon, Utah

I was in Zion three times during October this year – it is a long story how that happened! On the final occasion, we were passing through the area on our way back to California at the very end of the month, having stayed the night before in Kanab and having a plan to stage the next day’s long return drive from St. George, Utah. The drive between those Kanab and St. George is not all that long, so we figured we would see what Zion might offer up as we passed through. Since we had photographed the high country along the Mount Carmel Highway earlier in the month, and since the fall color was rumored to be starting in Zion Canyon, we decided to head there in the morning. (In the end, we finished up here a bit sooner than we might have, so we ended up driving well past St. George, but that’s a different story…)

The height of the Zion Canyon color typically comes a bit later than this, so we figured that we might not see the very best color – but Zion is sort of like Yosemite in that there is something to see no matter what. After many days of shooting, this was one of those days when energy was at a bit of a low ebb. We started out in the upper end of the canyon, where we found some colorful red maples, but I don’t think any of use were necessarily quite “seeing it” at this point. So we moved down that canyon a bit, looking for whatever might turn up, and hoping for a bit more color that we were seeing. One of the last places we stopped to shoot was in this area from which features such as the Great White Throne and The Organ are visible. Here we were a bit more inspired, since there was a variety of things to see: the Virgin River, the flats along the river in the bottom of the canyon, a decent amount of developing fall color, towering rock walls, and evolving light. As I poked around along the river bottom I saw that some very colorful trees were visible up high along the base of the steepest cliff walls.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: brush

High Desert Aspens

Olympic Peninsula Forest

Cottonwoods, Meadow, and Stumps

Autumn Color, Canyon Walls

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