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Clearing Autumn Storm, Cliffs, Evening

Clearing Autumn Storm, Cliffs, Evening
Storm clouds clear from cliffs above Yosemite Valley

Clearing Autumn Storm, Cliffs, Evening. Yosemite Valley, California. October 28, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Storm clouds clear from cliffs above Yosemite Valley

No doubt I have mentioned, likely quite a few times, that I love the fall through early spring season in Yosemite Valley — for many reasons but the clouds are at the top of my list. During the cooler season lots of interesting things happen in the atmosphere of and above the Valley, from morning mists in the meadows to the clouds of dissipating storms clinging to the upper slopes. Although this wasn’t the first “weather” of the season in the Valley, it was my first time this fall to be there for the show.

On the day I arrived there was quite a bit of rain, which soon began to pass, leaving behind beautiful light and fog and those thinning clouds. I arrived in the Valley in the afternoon and began following the light, and near sunset I ended up in a meadow with a clear view of an interesting section of the higher valley walls, where the cloud and light show was just beginning. I put a long lens on the camera and began to watch spires and trees appear and disappear as the clouds moved past. The action was continuous and I photographed almost without break as the light took on the warmer tones of evening, making this photograph shortly before the sun dropped behind mountains to the west and shadows replaced the light.


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” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Corn Lilies, Late Summer

Corn Lilies, Late Summer
Corn Lilies, Late Summer

Corn Lilies, Late Summer. Yosemite National Park, California. September 18, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Late summer corn lilies begin to take on fall colors, Yosemite National Park.

Corn Lilies are among my favorite Sierra Nevada high country plants. During their short summer growth period they begin as corn-cob-shaped shoots that spring up in wet areas as the snow melts out. They quickly grow into lush green plant in thick bunches that are intensely green and which have beautiful curving shapes and textures. (This makes them a very popular subject for photographers!) As the season continues they begin to show some “flaws” from insect damage and so forth, and at some point in August they begin to lose their green color, often beginning to pick up some brown coloration that can be nearly golden in the right light. At some point in September even the most durable specimens begin to be striped with yellow, brown, or even black and they finally simply fall over.

I found this bunch very close to our campsite in the back-country of Yosemite National Park around the middle of September. Although you cannot see it in this photograph, this clump of corn lilies had fallen over in a most interesting way – they all fell pointing away from the center of the group! So these plants are in the middle of falling over, and are lit by early morning light diffused by forest cover.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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.

Tuolumne River Canyon Below Glen Aulin

Tuolumne River Canyon Below Glen Aulin
Tuolumne River Canyon Below Glen Aulin

Tuolumne River Canyon Below Glen Aulin. Yosemite National Park, California. September 15, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

The Tuolumne River enters Tuolumne River Canyon below the Glen Aulin High Sierra Camp.

This photograph looks west from a rocky point along the Tuolumne River just below Glen Aulin in the Yosemite National Park back-country. In September I spent a total of four nights in this specific area and photographed in and around the granite bowl that rises from the river near the foreground rocks and spreads to the right of the area shown here. The photograph was made very late in the afternoon – it had been raining when I arrived at Glen Aulin but, as often happens in the Sierra, the clouds dissipated later in the day and the skies were starting to clear before sunset.

While my favorite Sierra landscape is at the elevations where the last small trees give way to alpine tundra meadows and the rocky slopes of the highest peaks, there is also something very compelling about these lower (from my point of view) elevation areas, and especially about this particular spot along the Tuolumne. Looking west from this point along the river I had the distinct feeling that I was standing more or less on a boundary between the higher and more alpine zones (exemplified by the Tuolumne Meadows area) and the beginnings of the lower areas in which I feel like I’m heading towards the Central Valley. Here, all of the really tall peaks are behind me (OK, some are to my right…) and before me the land overall drops towards the Valley, the slightly hazy light and air of which is in the far distance in this photograph.

Making this feeling even stronger for me is the fact that very close to Glen Aulin, the Tuolumne abruptly changes from a generally meandering river that descends very gradually for the most part past large meadows and forests to one that drops precipitously into an increasingly narrow and steep canyon surrounded by granite slabs and domes and peaks that begin to take on an appearance that reminds me of Yosemite Valley.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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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.

Tree, Granite Slabs, Evening Storm Clouds

Tree, Granite Slabs, Evening Storm Clouds
Tree, Granite Slabs, Evening Storm Clouds

Tree, Granite Slabs, Evening Storm Clouds. Yosemite National Park, California. September 20, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A tree and granite slab are lit by brilliant sunset light from a dissipating evening thunderstorm, Yosemite National Park.

This was another of those sometimes-surprising bursts of evening Sierra color that results in effects so gaudy that they almost seem unreal – but this is real. I was camped down in a valley among trees so I wasn’t initially expecting much in the way of spectacular sunset photography. Instead, I planned to take advantage of the early shadows in the valley and get some evening photographs under soft light without any direct sun at all. I first worked some moving water where the nearby river flowed across granite slabs, and then I contemplated photographing some small plants in deeply cracked and patterned granite. As a worked my way across this granite, I remembered a small tree on the other side of the bowl that had looked like an interested photo subject a few days ago, so I walked over to that area where the tree stands in a shallow granite bowl.

Earlier in the afternoon I could see huge thunderheads building up to my east, but they did not move far enough west to affect me with anything more than a bit of gray sky. However, as the clouds built up to higher elevations, their tops began to take on the familiar “anvil” shape and the upper portions of the “anvils” began to spread to the west and out over my position. This is a classic setup for potentially spectacular evening sky color. Near sunset the clouds can pick up intense red/orange coloration from the sun setting in the west. At the same time, the storms begin to dissipate, creating semi-transparent “curtains” of virga (falling rain that doesn’t reach the ground), unusual shapes along the bottoms of the clouds, clouds emerging out of the gray murk as the sunset light picks them up.

As I arrived at my little tree, I quickly lost interest in that subject as the cloud light show began. First the bottom of the thunderhead began to turn brilliantly orange and red. Then the lower reaches of the small storm began to produce very unusual cloud shapes including mammatus clouds. Virga produced a brightly colored by semi-transparent scrim. It quickly became so bright that the red/orange colors began to wash the granite bowl, and I turned my camera from the little tree to the uphill granite surfaces and the clouds above.

In this vertical format image the tip of a small tree extends above the top of a dome-like area above me, and the brilliant light from the clouds washes the dome with color. The colors here have not been “amped up” in post – in fact, I’ve actually toned some of them down a bit!

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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