Tag Archives: california

Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Fall Color, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Big Leaf Maple And Forest, Autumn

November 11, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Yosemite Valley big leaf maple trees in autumn

I’ll start with a story about crowds, but I’ll end on a better note. :-) I drove to Yosemite Valley on this late-October weekend partially to photograph early fall color in The Valley, but also so that I could attend an exhibit opening at Gallery Five in Oakhurst — where the final showing to the 2017 Yosemite Renaissance exhibit had been installed. I have visited the Valley for years at about this time, since fall colors there typically peak around the end of the month. On this trip, my first indication that I wouldn’t exactly be alone in the park — despite there being a lot of wildfire smoke — was the extraordinarily long line to enter the park, even very early in the morning. Further into the Valley I was stunned by the number of cars and visitors — it wouldn’t have been anything special during the summer, but near the end of October? I decided to head up to the Curry Village (sorry, “Half Dome Village”) area to park where I could wander off and make photographs, but when I arrived there was literally no place to park — not the Village lot, the overflow lot, the nearby roadways, or anything else all the way up to nearby campgrounds. I was floored…

I finally left that area and found a pull-out along the roadway, parked my car near some a portion of the forest filled with colorful big leaf maple and dogwood trees, and headed off into an area where there was virtually no one else around. Yes, there are such places here, even on busy days. As I walked I spotted a number of potential photographs, but I kept going, walking slowly until I finally reached the banks of the Merced River. I made a few photographs there in solitude before turning around and slowly starting back the way I had come. I now had in mind a few trees that I thought might make interesting photographs, so I paused and poked around near them looking for compositions. This photograph falls into a category that I think of as “order from chaos” compositions, in which there is an almost overwhelming amount of detail tied together (I hope!) by some underlying compositional order. Here the darker branches and trunks of trees supply that order underlying the complexity of the colorful big leaf maple leaves.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Wildfire, Forest, and Ridge

November 9, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Morning wildfire smoke settles among forest trees below a burned ridge

Yes, another photograph of wildfire smoke, made on a late October morning along the Glacier Point road, where a fire had been smoldering for weeks just to the east and south of the road.I arrived well after dawn, but still at a reasonably early hour when the winds had not yet stirred the fog that had settled into valleys and among the forest trees. The fog stretched a good distance across the low valley east of my vantage point, and the combination of the foreground trees and the thinner trees running up the ridge caught my attention.

This photographic subject is a bit magical. At this early hour, when the smoke is backlit, everything seems to glow. Although the still air permitted the smoke to pool in low places and among the trees overnight, by this time of the morning the air begins to move and the smoke drifts among the forest trees. And this ephemeral landscape of smoke is in constant motion, changing as a bit of wind passes through, as the angle of the sun changes throughout the day, and as it drifts among these trees. I made a small number of exposures of this precise composition, and when I look at them know I can see that each differs from the others in important ways.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Trees, Tarn, Mountains

November 8, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Late afternoon skies darken above alpine peaks and a meadow holding a small reflecting tarn

No, I’m still not finished with the photographs from our nine-day photographic sojourn into the John Muir Wilderness, on which a group of us base camped in a stunning backcountry location and wandered off daily to photograph the area. Today, on a morning that is the first one of the season to feel winter-like here, it seems both odd and pleasant to think back on these summer days of photography, friends, sun, thunder showers, green meadows and flowers, cross-country hikes into high places, and more.

This meadow and its tarn were located perhaps 10-15 minutes above the location of our camp, and once we “discovered” the place we visited almost daily. It was a stunning place, filled with green meadow plants and wildflowers and surrounded by alpine scenery. The mountains to our south were a daily presence as they rose on the other side of a deep river canyon, and I had wanted to photograph this small tarn since I first saw it. That became my focus on this visit, and this photograph is one of several in which I tried to combine the meadow, tarn, small trees, and the distant view.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Paintbrush Flowers, Meadow

November 7, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Late-August paintbrush flowers blooming in a Sierra Nevada meadow

This photograph takes me back a couple of months, and now that autumn is here and aspen season has mostly come and gone, that late summer time seems a long ways off. We were part of a group of photographers and friends who made our way to this backcountry location, where we base-camped and photographed the nearby mountains for nine glorious days. In a more typical summer this part of the Sierra would likely be rather dry by late August, but in this year of record precipitation the meadows were still green and wildflowers were abundant.

We camped on a glacial moraine above this meadow and lake. Despite the size of our group and our presence here for more than a week, I’m confident that most other visitors to the lake would not have even seen our camp. (If they came through in the early morning or evening hours they probably would have found us out making photographs.) Although we stayed here, it wasn’t until rather late in the trip that I finally got around to photographing this meadow. I guess it was too close that I focused more on subjects that were a bit further away. The photograph focuses on the multi-colored paintbrush flowers growing in the meadow, and it includes the mountains across the valley that were “in our sights” for the whole time we were there.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: california

Big Leaf Maple And Forest, Autumn

Wildfire, Forest, and Ridge

Trees, Tarn, Mountains

Paintbrush Flowers, Meadow

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