Tag Archives: brush

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

Manzanita Plants in Bloom

May 8, 2012 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Spring manzanita flowers, Yosemite National Park, California.

The manzanita plant and its pink blossoms are ubiquitous in California – and, I imagine, in other places as well. I photographed these on a bit of granite slab in Yosemite National Park in mid-April, just as the (meager, this year) spring snows were melting away and spring growth was starting, at least in this exposed spot that is open to the western sun.

This might qualify as a bit of an “accidental photograph” – a photograph that came about as the result of some combination of finding myself somewhere for some reason, getting distracted by some other thing than what I came for, and then noticing yet another subject while photographing the first distraction! This particular photography day was one of those during which things were “difficult.” I had gone up the Yosemite area for single day, with some ideas about photographing California poppies and redbud in the Merced River Canyon outside the park boundaries. I arrived in that area in the early morning and photographed some blooming redbud plants, but poppies weren’t really an option because they don’t open until they get the brighter sunlight that comes to these parts of the canyon a bit later in the day. So, mid-morning arrived and I sort of felt like I was more or less done for the morning in the canyon, so I drove up into The Valley looking for whatever. I found a bit of “whatever” in the form of some dormant trees along a stretch of the Merced, but then the light went flat, I was tired, and I wasn’t “seeing it” – so I parked the car and took a nap! (This was perhaps necessary given my 3:55 a.m. wakeup time.) A bit later the light was still not inspiring me – hey, it happens. I killed a bit of time by visiting the Yosemite Renaissance show in the Valley, and then driving off to visit another potential subject… that turned out to not work in the light of that particular late afternoon. In case you are starting to think that this sounds like a pretty sad and disappointing story… I’ve learned to be philosophical about it when I run into “blah” conditions or otherwise am just “not seeing it.” I really do understand that the counterpoint to those moments when something astonishingly beautiful happens in the landscape are those other moments when less astonishing things are all that I can find. In any case, after my drive to this other unsuccessful subject, I turned back toward the Valley and as I descended toward Wawona Tunnel I decided to stop at a turn out before the tunnel that provides an impressive view of the Valley. I stopped. The view was impressive… but still not worthy of a photograph. But I looked across the road and saw a possibly interesting little rivulet of melt water running down a crack in a granite slab, so I hoisted my gear and wandered over there to see what I could do with this subject. While photographing this feature, some clouds obscured the sun and made for temporarily poor light so I looked around a bit while waiting for the light to return, spotted thick bunches of manzanita flowers nearby that I had overlooked before, and went over and photographed them in the soft, cloud-filtered light.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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

Fractured Sandstone Cliff, Plants

May 1, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Plants grow among cracks of a fractured sandstone cliff, Zion National Park.

On my first morning in Zion (we had arrived there the previous afternoon) we headed up into the park and Zion Canyon, though which the Virgin River flows. Although I was more or less not looking for icons to photograph, I had stopped along the way to photograph that icon, the view of the Watchman from the bridge on the Mt. Carmel highway. (At least I could console myself that I was not shooting it at the usual sunset time, but instead in the early morning. ;-) After a brief stop for that purpose, I headed up the canyon with a plan of visiting the Weeping Rocks and seeing what sort of photographs might be possible there.

After a short walk up to the rocks, I figured out that it wasn’t going to quite be my photographic “cup of tea.” However, along this walk I did find some other interesting subjects. One that I’ve shared previously was a very close view of some brand new spring leaves on the trees that grow along the trail. Another subject was the nearby sandstone cliffs that here come down close to the level of the trail. One area nearby featured immense vertical blocks of the striking red sandstone, with interesting crack systems and some plants growing in the cracks. I made several exposures of this area in full shade, and this vertical composition is one that I like a lot. I’ve probably said this before and I’ll no doubt mention it again, but for a guy who is so used to shooting the equally impressive but much less colorful granite of the Sierra, the colors of these rocks proved irresistible! And the color variations are amazing – here you can see some areas where the color trends toward purple.

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

Sandstone Tower and Cliff, Morning

April 30, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A nearby sandstone tower backed by a more distant cliff face in morning light, Zion National Park.

If you look at the photograph that I posted yesterday, you can probably locate almost the entire composition of this photograph contained within the earlier one. This perhaps illustrates one or more things about how I sometimes think when making photographs. One approach that I think I use quite a bit is to try to isolate small sections within much larger landscapes. If you look at yesterday’s image, you’ll see that it uses a fairly familiar sort of approach, namely to include a fairly large swath of “stuff” from close to far away within the frame. Today’s image, though, eliminates out all of that other stuff that might provide a wider context and instead just “shows” one small, interesting bit of the larger scene. And, obviously, I used a longer lens – something else that I often do when shooting landscape. I’m most certainly not one of those photographers who buys into the notion that “landscape photography is done with wide-angle lenses!” I also like juxtapositions. In this scene there are perhaps quite a few – and you might even see some that I’m unaware of. There are color juxtapositions the bright green at the bottom against the very different tones of the rocks; the brighter reddish rocks in the foreground against the darker and more blue or even purple tones of the more distant rocks; the clarity of the close and sunlit red rocks against the lower contrast and somewhat haze-obstructed character of the distant cliff.

The location is in the Virgin River drainage of Zion Canyon. One person described it as “Yosemite in red,” and now that I have been there I can certainly see why! While the overall scale of this valley is smaller than that of Yosemite, the verticality of the place is just as stunning. In fact, in some ways, because the walls are closer and because of the wild colors, it may be more stunning. (Of course, Yosemite does have those waterfalls… and some crazy dome formations… and the massive scale of features like El Capitan. I digress… ;-) The smaller scale makes some kinds of photography perhaps a bit easier. For example, those “juxtapositions” I mentioned above can be fine tune a bit more readily by moving the camera position a few feet. (I did that here as I moved the camera a bit to get three trees way up on the far cliff to line up to the left of the upper section of the closer formation on the right side of the frame. Ironically, you probably didn’t even see them until I mentioned that… ;-)

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

Green Hills, Rose Light

April 28, 2012 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Subtle colors illuminate a ridge top and sunset clouds in the Sierra Nevada foothills, California.

This is yet another virtual “happy accident” photograph. I posted a different version of it earlier, but it may have been long enough that I can tell the story again. I had been in Yosemite Valley and surrounding areas for the day, and late in the afternoon I left The Valley to head into Merced Canyon where the redbud and California Golden Poppies were blooming. The plan was to get into the canyon while there was still sun in the sky but at a time when lengthening shadows would bring some soft light to various deeper/steeper sections of the canyon. So I shot there until a bit less than an hour before sunset and then decided to head on home, starting the long drive back to the San Francisco Bay Area.

I headed down the canyon, still unable to completely stop looking at the newly green grasses, the plants that were starting to leaf out, and the profusion of purple redbud blossoms and bright orange California Poppies spreading up some of the steep hillsides. But as beautiful as much of this was, I wasn’t seeing photographs in it, so I continued on. Soon I reached Briceburg, where the road leaves the Merced and climbs steeply as it heads toward Mariposa. Climbing this steep section I continued to glance back over my shoulder at the green, chaparral-coverd ridges behind me and the clouds above them that were beginning to pick up a bit of sunset color. As I neared the top of the climb I almost kept going – doing the internal debate between it might make an interesting photograph and I’m hungry and I want to start home! – I passed a photographer set up beside the road, and I quickly recognized him as a friend. Now I had no choice but to stop, so I did a u-turn at the first turnout and headed back down the hill to where he and his wife were. I grabbed my gear, said “hi” as I set up, and figured that I might as well make a few final exposures of the delicately colored sky and the subtle tones that the last light imparted to the upper ridges.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: brush

Manzanita Plants in Bloom

Fractured Sandstone Cliff, Plants

Sandstone Tower and Cliff, Morning

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